[CarveOne]

Made a 5 hour drive over to visit with CNC Zone's beermkr today. Had lunch at the restaurant/brewery and then got a look at the CNC machines he has built. Had a good time while visiting. The trip back wasn't so good though. Rained all the way home and I missed one turn in the dark. I managed to get home though, and didn't hit a single deer in the dark back roads of central Virginia's hills. Cheers Mike! Thanks for the invitation. :cheers:

CarveOne

[beermkr]

Pleasure having you visit. Hope that skirt material works well for you! Sorry to hear the drive back was miserable!

R/

[CarveOne]

I'll install the skirting today and see how it works out. Have you tried two layers with the cuts staggered? It should still be flexible and seal better. If I change it to brush material later it will be because the 1,700 cfm dust collector is too powerful for this material. I'll try a couple of things with this material first.

The new Honda Civic LX coupe needs brighter low beam bulbs. Couldn't see where I was going after dark in the rain and with a wet windshield. Hi beam lights the world when I can use it though.

CarveOne

[cd_edwards]

WOW. finally finished reading this entire thread. Loads of useful information to be found. And once again thanks for the files. Hopefully the rest of my parts appear soon so I can finish my build.

[CarveOne]

Thanks! That must have been tortuous skipping through the chatter to find some more useful reading.

I hope you get some use out of the Haab file. I hope to do something interesting with it in the next few months.

CarveOne

[CarveOne]

I finally finished drawing the IGUS Z16 e-chain adapter parts, the scaled up e-chain parts, and cut a few of those parts today for trial fit.

The 1/4" thick birch aircraft plywood looked awful after cutting due to how splintery birch is. Fortunately the parts look good after they are all cleaned up and glued together on one side with 5 minute epoxy. The holes needed to be opened up a little using a 1/2" diameter tapered round wood rasp so that they fit the "pins" on the mating parts. The narrower strips of 1/8" x 1/2" birch plywood will be glued (maybe screwed) in place after the chain is in place with the existing cabling. The assembled links fit into the same support tray as the IGUS plastic links.

The assembled parts work nicely together. The built in stops may need to be tweaked a bit to get the radius small enough since these parts are longer than the IGUS links I already have.

Only about 18" worth of these links are needed and I'll start making a cut file that fits as many as possible on a 12" x 24" sheet of plywood. 16 pairs should fit with plenty of room and that will be more than enough.

CarveOne

[88rob88]

218 pages to go....

[CarveOne]

218 pages to go....

Thanks! I really appreciate my readers, but I gotta say it - you guys sure are dedicated if you read all the way through this one. I read through some of the ones that were similar to what I wanted to build when I first came here, and I'm still doing it.

CarveOne

[amishx64]

Cool chain links. How rigid are they?

[CarveOne]

I finished making the drawing and gcode for 7.5 pair of each type of links on a 12" x 24" piece of 1/4" birch plywood. Should take about 1.5 hours to cut at 200 ipm feedrate. These parts will make 18.5" of chain, with the parts I made today it comes to over 20.5" total length. Just a little more I need.

CarveOne

[lukewarm]

Neat E-Chain Carveone. I'm interested to see how they turn out. Also what bit did you use to cut the plywood and at what speed? My bits turn ply into...well, a real mess.

[CarveOne]

Cool chain links. How rigid are they?

Once the second separator plate is glued in place they will be rock solid. They're plenty stiff with just the wider plate glued. The sheet of parts I'll cut tomorrow has been modified to have both plates 3/4" wide. This makes them completely generic other than being two shapes. The distance from pin to pin is 2.5" and the inside dimension between the side plates is 1-15/16".

Since the flexible system I made for the smaller steel machine is working so wel I don't see the need to make these for that machine also. I just want to get the full 11' 4" travel out of the big machine at this time.

When these files are proven I'll post them here.

CarveOne

[CarveOne]

Neat E-Chain Carveone. I'm interested to see how they turn out. Also what bit did you use to cut the plywood and at what speed? My bits turn ply into...well, a real mess.

These looked bad too. They cleaned up ok though. I was worried that the "pins" would break off but they didn't. It wouldn't hurt to put a little thin CA adhesive around the pins so they are stronger. This is the birch plywood that is sold for R/C model and other project building. The cutter is a Precise Bits 1/8" carbide 2 flute end mill. Feed rate is 200 ipm.

CarveOne

[lukewarm]

Thanks for the reply! Sorry I forgot to ask what RPM did you route them at?

Also I request a video of these chains in action once you get em put on, please! I'm using a pendant style setup right now but I have some interest in converting over if I can cut them easily enough.

[CarveOne]

Thanks for the reply! Sorry I forgot to ask what RPM did you route them at?

Also I request a video of these chains in action once you get em put on, please! I'm using a pendant style setup right now but I have some interest in converting over if I can cut them easily enough.

It's about 5 on the Hitachi M12VC router speed control. I think that's about 16,000 or so. I have a PC 7518 router and Super-PID to go on this machine that will let me set the rpm more accurately, but as long as the Hitachi holds up it may not get installed anytime soon.

I video is planned, just for you. All this does is let the gantry reach end of travel, which puts the router bit a few inches past the end of the table top and I can finish surfacing that end of the table top. It also allows the possibility of adding a lathe function to the end of the table or add a clamp system for cutting fancy dovetails into boards.

CarveOne

[CarveOne]

Btw, these can be scaled up or down in Vcarve Pro and arranged to fit any size material you want to use. I'm finding that the CAD drawing tools are easier to learn and use than the other 2D CAD programs I have used. +1 to Vectric for their efforts.

These links are being scaled up from a drawing file that ger21 posted earlier and I saved it for future use.

CarveOne

[cd_edwards]

good to know that it can be scaled. I just ordered 80" of 1.6" chain off of ebay for $55 plus shipping. and I might need some more for my 4x4 machine. today I scored some acrylic sheet.. I walked into a plastic place and asked about offcuts. guy says follow me, so off me go through the shop and into a storage room in the back. out past the 5x7 of so cnc machine. Those spindles are sure quiet I can tell you. It was running and we were having a conversation next to it.. Anyways, I asked for a price he said depends on what you want, so I told him I had $40 in my pocket and wanted some 1/4 to 1/2. I didn't get any of those, but got probably a little over a 2 sheets of 3/8 in 2ft squares. On the way out, we walked past the 5x7 and I had completely missed seeing the 8x12 machine when I walked in. guy was busy so I didn't ask for any demo's or anything..

Colten Edwards

[cd_edwards]

Here's a link of interest for anyone cutting a stargate..
Luminglas - 6" Plasma Lightning Display

I'm thinking that might make an interesting center to a stargate.

[PaulRowntree]

Here's a link of interest for anyone cutting a stargate..
Luminglas - 6" Plasma Lightning Display

I'm thinking that might make an interesting center to a stargate.

Or a regeneration station like Seven of Nine has ...

[CarveOne]

good to know that it can be scaled. I just ordered 80" of 1.6" chain off of ebay for $55 plus shipping. and I might need some more for my 4x4 machine. today I scored some acrylic sheet.. I walked into a plastic place and asked about offcuts. guy says follow me, so off me go through the shop and into a storage room in the back. out past the 5x7 of so cnc machine. Those spindles are sure quiet I can tell you. It was running and we were having a conversation next to it.. Anyways, I asked for a price he said depends on what you want, so I told him I had $40 in my pocket and wanted some 1/4 to 1/2. I didn't get any of those, but got probably a little over a 2 sheets of 3/8 in 2ft squares. On the way out, we walked past the 5x7 and I had completely missed seeing the 8x12 machine when I walked in. guy was busy so I didn't ask for any demo's or anything..

Colten Edwards

I haven't found any of this particular size chain links I have recently and I assume it would be too expensive to get a small amount from IGUS, so I decided to scale up these from Gerry and make what I need. It would be a lot of work cleaning up enough parts (~6.5') to equip my smaller machine unless I make them from something that cuts more smoothly than birch plywood. It wouldn't hurt to also shorten these links because on my smaller machine the bend radius of these 2.5" span will be too large.

CarveOne