Well, First and foremost a huge shout out to the CNCZone community for all of your contributions. As a result of the plethora of thorough and extraordinarily helpful posts on this forum I was able to get through my first build with relatively few bumps in the road, for the most part experiencing only minor issues which others had addressed before me. I had originally built a sort of CRP2448 about a year ago using CNCRouterParts custom build kit and a recycled steel table of approximate size with a wood top to mount the 8020 extrusion frame to. This entire setup served as a wonderful platform to enter the DIY CNC arena and I have learned something from it almost every day since then (that does include learning the same thing on multiple occasions
It’s time for the first rebuild of my machine however, incorporating some of the things I’ve learned over the last year to help improve rigidity, speed and perhaps accuracy as well – even though so far I’ve been fairly happy with that aspect of the CNC. I’m also gathering parts for building a vacuum table for the machine – another reason I’m doing the rebuild. But this project is a couple rows down the list so it may take the backburner for a while. Currently I’m working on the steel base for the new machine; I plan on making steel legs/frames which bolt directly to the 8020 extrusion in a similar fashion to the way shopbot sets up their frames (minus the precision cnc bent steel). In the essence of not wanting another underkill base I've decided to go way overkill on the steel using 2”x4”x36” vertical legs (.125” thick) with 2” square tube welded in-between. The pictures I’ve attached are the legs being processed from bare steel into something I can use for a frame.
I plan on updating regularly throughout the entire process of re-assembling the machine and rebuilding the electronics enclosures to a rackmount workstation cabinet. I hope that in some small way this can repay the favor of all of the great contributors to this forum, and I look forward to becoming part of the community!
Regards,
-Gerald Von Bargen