[audioandy1762]

Well it’s been nearly four years since I started to look at building my own machine, my interest started because I was looking for an alternative to using chemicals for making printed circuit boards, after finding a home built CNC controlled PCB engraver on Ebay I started searching and soon found CNCZONE.

After reading a lot of the threads I started to design my own machine using Autocad, because my initial interest was PCB’s I was only looking to build a small machine , I started to acquire various bits, the first being three Gecko 210 stepper drivers and three Nema 34 stepper motors.

Fortunately for me (or unfortunately depending which way you look at it) I work in a factory which uses quite a bit of automation and over a period of time I have acquired a lot of very lightly used ball screw assemblies, linear rail and carriages and aluminium extrusion which has dictated the final size of my machine.

I built all the electrical/electronics first. My power supply is home built giving me around 50 volts dc to power my steppers and capable of delivering around 16 amps. Although I have had my machine running it is still very much work in progress, I have purchased a MPG, a small PLC with MODBUS capability to give me more I/O.

Anyway that’s enough of me babbling on, as they say a picture paints a thousand words here are a few photo’s, I have also taken some video of it cutting a sign for work nothing exciting.

Specs of the machine:-

X Axis 680mm
Y Axis 680mm
Z Axis 220mm

5mm Pitch Ball Screws On All Axis

Hiwin 25mm Rails And Carriages on Y and Z Axis

Hiwin 30mm Rails And Carriages on The X Axis

Gecko 210 Stepper Drivers

3Nm Stepper Motors On All Axis

CNC4PC 11T BOB And the C10

2.2kW Water Cooled Spindle ( one of the Chinese ones)

Mach 3

Here is the link to vid, the machine specs on the vid are different to the ones in this post,my son did the video and I forgot to tell him the dimensions had changed.


[ame="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qf_H_GzIpp8"]YouTube - Andy's CNC Machine[/ame]

[CarveOne]

Wow, that's an ambitious build! The video is awesome too. Thanks for posting this.

CarveOne

[Hdale85]

How do you like that Chinese Spindle? Kind of seriously considering one my self. I know one complaint is the lack of documentation in english. Did you have many problems hooking it up? Did you buy from Ebay or Keling maybe?

[audioandy1762]

Thanks CarveOne "that's an ambitious build!" yes I thought that many times during in the build, but just kept plugging away at it and being a member of forums like this one just drives you to keep going.

Hdale as you can see I hav'nt done much with the machine so not put the spindle to much use yet, but my I must say so far I am very pleased with it,as regarding hook up I didn't have any problems at all and for the model of VFD that I have the English manual is quite good plus there are that many people with these now you only have to ask and I'm sure someone would be able to help.

I purchased mine from Linearmotion off eBay, when it arrived the water fitting were broken but within a week, two new ones were posted out to me so no complaints.

Andy

[pminmo]

Great looking machine! However, your son's video might have upstaged you...:-)

[audioandy1762]

Thanks Phil

My son upstages me all the time I'm getting used to it now

[hemsworthlad]

Spielberg eat your heart out. . . Lol.
Love it Andy cant wait to see it strut it,s stuff in the flesh, will have to sort some time for a drive over.
Dean

[audioandy1762]

Hi Dean

Thanks for the comments, I will have to get something worth cutting sorted then invite you over.

Still sorting the machine bed out level wise but almost done so should be back in full production by the end of the week.

Catch you later

Andy

[audioandy1762]

Hi All
I am going to tag this on the end of here because I'm not sure where to post it.

This is my first corian Lithopane with some help from my son.

The music in the video has been removed by Youtube : (

[audioandy1762]

New Link with music : )


[nomedia="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sM3nzUx_9q4"]YouTube- Corian Lithopane Tiger CNC.mp4[/nomedia]

[louieatienza]

New Link with music : )


YouTube- Corian Lithopane Tiger CNC.mp4

Sweet Andy! The machine looks like something HR Gigier would have designed! Very nice build!

edit: I'm a huge Tommy Emmanuel fan, him and his brother Phil are INSANE!

[audioandy1762]

Tommy did a tour over here in the UK at the beginning of the year. He was fantastic one of the best concerts I have been to.

And thanks for the comments.