[Stigoe]

Has anyone made a dustshoe yet? I've tried to make one, but I have problems bending the brush without the steel wire inside popping out...

[ronsand]

I got my X6-2200L 3-axis machine delivered today. Since I am away for work at least until 23. december, I will have to wait with inspecting the machine. Hopefully everything is OK

[Dustmite]

Has anyone made a dustshoe yet? I've tried to make one, but I have problems bending the brush without the steel wire inside popping out...

Actually yes I've made a nice dustshoe! Using a combo of mdf, plexiglass and 6 neodymium magnets and the brush material from McMaster Carr. Actually made it right on the machine too! How nice! And the friction fit port for the shopvac hose was from rockler I believe. A dust deputy is also a MUST have for a shopvac based dust collector. If you're like pics/links/dimensions etc just let me know bud.

Meanwhile, I began lubricating once I added dust collection. I'm using the goldish colored Mobil ep grease on the guide rails and brushing on gulfway 68 oil for the ballscrews (borrowed a Pepsi bottle of it from work, its what our CNC machines use as lube for their ballscrews so must be the right stuff). Thinking about switching to a dry lube tho since the oil seems to make a mess.

But I'm wondering what anyone else is using for an adapter to attach to the grease fittings on the z axis. I couldn't really attach onto them with mty flex hose on my grease gun. Thinking about trying this:

http://www.amazon.com/Thexton-THE418-Grease-Coupler/dp/B0002SR6XO#productDetails

And also wondering if the covers on the z axis are really necessary once dust collection is added, since it makes it kind of hard to lube things, I like to keep everything well lubricated.

[Dustmite]

Do you mean under Config - Ports and Pins - Motor Outputs? If so, I have swapped the pins between X and Y without any change.


Where do I find this? Under PlugIns Control - XncPod vX.XX Config?

Stig

Ya stig, that plugin config is important if you start messing with axis direction etc, otherwise you could end up hitting the home switch and have it try to keep moving past the switches instead of retracting off them. I actually converted my machine to imperial rather than metric, so I had to change these values since they were originally metric.

[Stigoe]

I didn't manage to get the axes swapped do I swapped the cables instead. I also managed to get the homing to work correctly. It seems it doesn't hit the limit switch and then back off until the switch releases, but it runs until the switch triggers and then it depends on a setting in the plugin what it does. I have it set to back off a few millimeters.

[Stigoe]

I've also used the router to make the dustshoe, but I need to remake it and just use straight lines so I don't have to bend the brush material. Ordering from McMaster is next to impossible when you don't live in the USA... The brush material I've found here is not long enough to be used alone, so I'll make one piece which will be mounted to the spindle and another part with the brush and keep them together with magnets.

If you have some pictures to show us, please do... ☺

[Dustmite]

I've also used the router to make the dustshoe, but I need to remake it and just use straight lines so I don't have to bend the brush material. Ordering from McMaster is next to impossible when you don't live in the USA... The brush material I've found here is not long enough to be used alone, so I'll make one piece which will be mounted to the spindle and another part with the brush and keep them together with magnets.

If you have some pictures to show us, please do... ☺

Ill snap some photos soon as I get a chance and post them up! My dustshoe is a rectangle shape so rather than bend the brush strip, I cut it into 4 pieces and gpoued them to each edge.

[aarggh]

I found a local company that makes the large brushed rollers for conveyors, etc, that had long strips of 100mm long nylon bristles set into an 8mm x 8mm flexible rubber strip. This I've found is pretty damn near perfect for a dust shoe. I'd suggest try trawling some of the local industrial sites that cater for dust curtains, rollers, brush mudflaps for trucks, etc, and see what you can find.

cheers, Ian

[m1n1m]

Would be sweet with some photos of the various dust shoes ppl have made for this machine

I got mine up and running today with only some minor issues.
-had to loosen the nut on the Y-axis ballsrew a bit since it was binding some. How hard should this be set? Now I have just set it so I could barely feel that it was getting heavier to turn when turning on the stepper motor without power on it.
-missing grease plug on the ballscrew.
-loose plug on the connector for Y stepper caused it to work intermittent.

Else the machine seems to work perfect. I have yet to connect the water pump since I'm missing a radiator for it but I'm going to hook it up tomorrow if the radiator don't arrive.

A friend of mine wanted to get rid of this bench also so I picked it up yesterday and installed it now for the machine. I will eventually build a more suited enclosure for the machine but for testing I felt that having it open like this was better.

Attachment 301102
No clue why the picture is upside down when I upload from my phone ^^

[jyotti]

What kind of grease are you using for the ball screws and rails?

Well, I use a product that is specifically designed for ball screws, from the ball screw experts .. jmho. Nook E-900. As for using Grease .. probably not such a good idea, especially with MDF or wood. I have the legacy X6-1500GT machine .. circular linear guide rails, so one product works splendidly for both. I can't say if there is outside vendors for this stuff .. I bought mine along with an order for some lathe retro-fit parts. Happy Holidaze

E-900 | Nook Industries

[m1n1m]

I'm using the generic Mach3 post in Fusion 360 and that seems to work ok. I've only made a couple of things so far though.

How does it handle tool changes? I made 3x operations now where 1x uses a 6mm endmill and 2x uses a 3mm endmill but when I'm post processing the G-code I can't find any actual tool changes down in the list. I haven't tried running the code tho so I might be surprised I would want it to stop so I can change tool, use the auto Z tool and hit play again so that it goes for the home limit switches to reset itself and then carries on with the correct tool offset for the tool I have programmed in without me having set anything in Mach3. Is this how it works or am I dreaming here?

Edit: I must have done something stupid last night ^^ now when I did some minor tweaking on the toolpaths and made a new post it did include a toolchange. I did also test it and it does stop the spindle. However I couldn't job the machine with this setting so I had to use the auto-z tool at a bad spot.. Did I do something wrong here? I tried to toggle the jog on/off button asswell but I guess it didn't let me do it since it was just holding the program. It stops with the M1 command if that makes a difference ^^

[Dustmite]

Ok heres a bunch of pics of my dustshoe and a few of my active cooling addons to the x/y stepper motors!

[Stigoe]

Nice!

Why do you have the plexiglass there? To increase the suction around the cutter?

Why the extra cooling for the steppers? Normally it's not a problem that the motors are quite warm. As long as they're under around 85 degC (IIRC), they're good.

Stig

[Dustmite]

some of my jobs run 4 hours or longer, and the motors were getting too hot to touch, so now with the heatsinks and fans, they stay cool to the touch no matter how long i run it. and the plexiglass is to target the suction to just around the cutter, because if it was a big open area it would lose the static pressure that the suction from a shopvac has. shopvacs have a lower cfm than dust collectors but they have a high static pressure, so it has to be kept confined to roughly the same area of suction from start to finish to keep the pressure there and effectively pull the chips off the table.

[m1n1m]

nice pictures dustmite I really need to make me something similar for mine as it's to boring to manually handle the vacuum during the whole cut ^^

How does it handle tool changes? I made 3x operations now where 1x uses a 6mm endmill and 2x uses a 3mm endmill but when I'm post processing the G-code I can't find any actual tool changes down in the list. I haven't tried running the code tho so I might be surprised I would want it to stop so I can change tool, use the auto Z tool and hit play again so that it goes for the home limit switches to reset itself and then carries on with the correct tool offset for the tool I have programmed in without me having set anything in Mach3. Is this how it works or am I dreaming here?

Edit: I must have done something stupid last night ^^ now when I did some minor tweaking on the toolpaths and made a new post it did include a toolchange. I did also test it and it does stop the spindle. However I couldn't job the machine with this setting so I had to use the auto-z tool at a bad spot.. Did I do something wrong here? I tried to toggle the jog on/off button asswell but I guess it didn't let me do it since it was just holding the program. It stops with the M1 command if that makes a difference ^^

Does anyone know a solution to how the machine can be jogged when it's stopped with "M1" command during tool change?

Today again I made a prototype of a sign for a customer and the plywood that was used as material was not 100% flat. Surface milling was out of the question since it's waterproof plywood and the coating was used as contrast so I had to work with it. I first milled with 6mm endmill to rough it and then changed to 3mm to mill of the last 1mm that was left from the roughing process. Now when I did the tool change I had to zero off the new tool at another place than I zeroed off the 6mm tool and that was offset just enough for it to be a visible difference from the 3mm fine cut at the edges compared to the 6mm cut in the center of the letters. If I could jog the machine during tool change process (when it's stopped with M1 command) I could zero them off at the same place and this would not be a problem.

Attachment 301370

[Dustmite]

m1n1m, theres a good chance that it wasnt the material that had a flatness issue. Its very likely that your machine bed isnt perfectly flat/level across the whole surface. I have an mdf spoilboard on my machine bed that i mill across the whole surface to make sure its flat relative to the spindle.

[m1n1m]

I could actually see that it lifted 1mm+ off the bed at some spots so the worst part of it was the plywood at least but I'm aware of the bed not beeing 100% on these machines. For these matters it would help a lot if I could zero the Z at the same spot since then both cuts would be the same amount of "wrong" offset at the same places

I will make a spoilboard like you suggest for later and I want to try to go trough the procedure this guy describes in zeroing the spindle.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DmuipSuDNAs

[Dustmite]

oh ya for sure, i have yet to do that.

[Dustmite]

How about those small bearings at the ends of each axis that the ballscrew goes into, right before the motor coupler. I think the pocket that holds the bearing on my z axis is loose/sloppy because I can see it moving around a bit and it makes this clicking noise while rapiding up or down....

[daniellyall]

if you are using fusion turn the M1 off