[widgitmaster]

Next, I used the same 3/4" ball endmill to remove the corner and create the fillet radius. This has increased the travel too!

[widgitmaster]

With all the material removed from the sides, there is no longer a place to attach the "Bimba" air cylinders!
To fix this, I will need to make a replacement top bearing plate, and move the cylinders further out!
Then I'll make a couple clips which will attach to the slide to anchor the long pistons!

[widgitmaster]

So far, I've finished all the milling and drilling features on these blocks! Now it's time to make a fixture to hold them in the rotary-table. Then I can finish milling all the outer radius's, and blend them in with the fillet radius's !
Starting with a 4" diameter aluminum bar, I placed it in the lathe's 3-jaw chuck and trued the other end with a dial indicator. Then I center drilled the end so the tail center could support the long bar.
Next I turned a 4 1/2" long section to the exact same diameter as the spindle''s outer casing, then I cut the turned section off in the bandsaw. Now I can face the ends to length, about 0.010" less than the mounting brackets it will be holding. After drilling & tapping a 3/8-16 UNC hole on one end, I put a small radius on the part's corner. While I have the part in the lathe chuck, I drilled a hole in a piece of scrap, and bolted it to the part. Then I turned the scrap plate to 1/2" diameter larger than the fixture. Now I have a cap to clamp the parts with!
After removing the part from the lathe, I placed it in the mill vise and dialed it on center with the spindle. Next I drilled & reamed a slip-fit for a 1/4" dowel pin, and drilled 7 tapped 4x 1/4-20 UNC holes. The post & clamp are finished, now I need to attach it to a base plate! A piece of 1/4" aluminum, 6" x 6" will work fine, I drilled, reamed & countersunk the mating holes for FLAT head hex screws. After assembling the post & base plate, I drilled 4x more holes to attach the fixture to the rotary table. Then I put the rotary table in neutral, and dialed the post true to center.

[widgitmaster]

Now I can place the parts on the fixture, tightly screw the two halves together and place the cap on top and tighten the big bolt! With the parts mounted, I put a 4" long x 3/4" diam 4-flute endmill in the spindle, and set the mill's RPM to 80. Then I carefully moved the rotating cutter towards one of the remaining points which needs to be removed.
When using long end mill's, NEVER climb-mill! Always know where the table's backlash is, so the cutter doesn't grab and destroy the part & the cutter!
At 80-RPM, I carefully removed 0.040" per pass. By cutting into the base plate a few thousandths, it allowed me to see where the cutter is in relation to the existing fillet radius's! With the two small sections finished, I re-setup for the big radius area on the other half of the clamp. After raising the cutter 0.625" away from the base plate, I proceeded to mill off the bulk material. Painting the part with cutting oil stopped the aluminum from sticking to the cutter, making it easier & quieter to use!

The 0.625" area will be removed in a different setup, after the parts are removed and flipped upside down! Then I will mill the tabs to which the LED's will attach to!

[widgitmaster]

In order to mill the tabs for the LED's, I need to set the Rotary Table to a fixed position. 90-Degrees is a good point! Then I installed the two halves so the base was parallel to the mill's table. Then I dialed in the base, set the ro-tab's backlash in the correct direction, adjusted the pointer to exactly 90-Degrees. Next, I made sure the spindle center and the DRO were the same zero! By offsetting the mill to half the cutter & half the tab, I could mill off the excess material and blend the new fillet radius with the existing radius! Then I repeated the process four times to make both tabs.

[widgitmaster]

There is only two setups left that will use the Rotary Table & fixture, but now I need to add the 90-degree head to the mill's spindle! This will allow me to mill away the excess material under the tabs, and blend with the existing radius! After installing the 90-degree head, I locked the spindle in it's highest position, and dialed the side of the right angle head parallel to the mills table. Then I locked the screws tight and put a dial indicator in the horizontal spindle. Then I positioned the Rotary Table so it was closer to the end of the mill's table, and tightened it. Now I need to dial the center of the fixture true to the center of the spindle.
A long endmill with a radius on it's points worked fine, this process went quickly!

[widgitmaster]

After removing everything from the mill, I put the Kurt vise back on!
First I milled a small radius on the corners of the tabs, then I removed the z-axis bottom bearing plate and removed the corners with a 3/4" endmill. Then I did a full assembly to see how everything fit! The upgrade is moving along quickly, as all I need to do is remake the z-axis top bearing plate to include the new location of the air cylinders!

[widgitmaster]

While I've been making the new spindle mounting bracket out of aluminum, the electronic components have been delivered daily!
The big box will need to have many holes for the components to mount through, and that is another few weeks of work!
After everything is mounted in the box, then I can start running wires

[widgitmaster]

This morning I reassembled the router with the new spindle mounting bracket, and was pleased that everything went well! The spindle dropped to the bottom without the stepper motor attached as expected, and remained in place with the stepper motor installed! This is good news, but I still believe the air cylinder's are necessary to balance the inertia forces while cutting!
After the install, I decided to remove the four corner posts and the polycarbonate side panels! These will be in the way of the new & larger dust boot!

With all the changes going on, I still have not figured out where to put the VFD cable & water lines! The wire chain is too small to accommodate the large VFD cable & two water lines! So much work went into making the existing acrylic blocks to attach the small wire chain, and I really don't want to re-manufacture a new & larger set! Not to mention that I can get solid blocks of aluminum much cheaper than large solid blocks of plastic (has something to do with high oil prices!)

[CNCMAN172]

Widget,

Looks like a barrel of monkeys, should be lots of fun.

Russ

[GigaWatt]

Fantastic work! You must live in a warm climate or have warm floors judging by the reflection of bare feet in the bottom of the first pic.

[bill south]

Widgit;
Looks like little bit will be ready for the xmas season (assuming you get the controls finished)!. You must purchase some paint and turn bit into "little red" just for consistency. Quick question regarding the big machine. Did you design your rack and pinion system or use one that is already available? My machine is in dire need of updating and I want to eliminate the long screws and install a new servo system. My geckos are the old 320's and are getting cranky in their old age and the machine is having a reliability issues.
Many thanks for posting. Always a pleasure to follow one of your projects!
Bill

[widgitmaster]

Thanks Guys!

Bill,
I ordered the rack & pinion, pulley pinion from cncrouterparts.com! Then I made my own pivot plates to support the NEMA-34's
Their kits are well made, and are easily adapted to any machine!

[widgitmaster]

OK, I think I figured out how to run the VFD cable and water lines without removing ALL the existing cable-chains & custom mounting blocks!
While digging through my closet of leftover's from Big-Red, I found several feet of 1 1/2" x 1" ID, IGUS cable-chain! The other chain is 3/4" x 1/2" ID, and it's full! Then I found a large block of cast acrylic, which I can use to make more custom mounting blocks! The only one which needs to be replaced is the upper block, as it will have both size chains attached to it!
The only other problem is the 2 1/2" dust hose, and I'm thinking of putting a pivoting tower on the back corner of the Router's table, the tower would let the hose hang in the center of the router's table and have enough length to reach the corners

[widgitmaster]

This morning i made the replacement Z-Axis top bearing plate, which now has the proper location of the air cylinder's!
The only problem is the push-connect fittings are at an unusable angle when the cylinder's are tightened! So i loosened them and used a set of feeler gauges to see how much of a shim is needed to make them align when tightened! I looks like a 0.008" shim is all that's needed!
So I took a sheet of 0.008" stainless shim stock out of my assortment package, and found my punch & die set! The OD of the cylinder is 0.625", and the ID for the threaded end of the cylinder is 0.4375. Fortunately, the punch & die set is in inches, so I punched out two 5/8" OD discs. Then I carefully aligned the tiny disc under the 7/16" punch, getting the center as close as possible! Then I punched a hole in the center of the tiny discs!
Now when I tighten the cylinder's, the push-connect fittings align perfectly! The air line only needs to be 5/32" OD, as there is NO air flow, just pressure in the cylinder's to pull up on the heavy spindle motor!

Next, I'll make the little brackets to attach the pistons to the z-axis slide block! But not today!

[widgitmaster]

Last night I removed all the cable chains, wire blocks & wires from the machine! This was not an easy decision, but after several hours in CAD, I could not ind any simply ways to add dual cable chains to this small machine! So I made a few calls, and found someone who has thick blocks of Cast Acrylic for sale! Now I have redone all the CAD drawings to include larger blocks for the larger cables!

If anyone is interested in the used wire-blocks & cable chains and the KRESS 800-MFE spindle mount, send me a private message!

[widgitmaster]

Before I start cutting the plastics, I decided this is a good time to modify a few of the existing aluminum parts! The bottom plate of the front dashboard needs a bore to hold the mini air pressure regulator,
The top plate of the dash is on a 45-deg angle, and it needs a bore for the pressure gauge, and a rectangular hole for the programmable thermostat! In order to make the rectangular hole, i placed the mill's spindle and the DRO to zero above the hole. Then using a 1/4" endmill, I made my calculations for X & Y-axis offsets. Now I like to mill a .002" deep path to show the location, so I can rough out the pocked by plunge cutting within the path limits. The plunge is .050" and only uses the end of the endmill, to move it through the soft MIC-6 aluminum would require a spray or flood of coolant to keep the material from sticking to the cutter! The plunge process only requires a little brush of oil!
With the pocket roughed out, leaving .02" on all sides, I used a 1/8" endmill to finish it to size. Then I moved half the cutter into the corners, because the plastic thermostat has sharp corners!

The only problem is the clamp which came with the pressure gauge, it's made for mounting in thin sheet metal, not 1/4" thick aluminum plate! The legs of the clamp are 1/8" too long, so I had to setup the mill to remove the excess material!

[widgitmaster]

The holiday has kept me busy, but I have been working on this project's electrical system!
Here is a layout of all the PMDX boards and the 2.2Kw Inverter and the respective connections!
Hopefully it will help someone simplify there project!

Happy New Year to all ZONER's
Widgit

The DXF file is in ACAD-2000 format!

[TOTALLYRC]

Wow, a wiring diagram! What next, a manual on how to run the machine??????

ROFLMAO


Mike

[widgitmaster]

For the last week or so, I've been making all the little side plates for a pair of electrical boxes, The boxes will have all the electrical sockets, compressed air connection, spindle coolant line connections. There will be two 1" diameter cables with 31 wires each coming from the big 20"x20"x12" control box, the wires are 16-gauge stranded. This is more than is needed, but the ability to expand at the next upgrade is welcome!
The boxes are made from 1/8" aluminum scraps, with one end on each made with 1/4" plate. After a few trips to the welder, I finished machining the recess on the fronts, and bored the holes for the connecting conduit tube.The boxes are connected to the font dash board by another conduit tube.
In order to connect the wire chain to the box, I had to make a connecting point out of aluminum. Then have it welded to the box, and mill an opening in the box for the wires & hoses to pass through! After milling, I used a die grinder to soften the edges of the aluminum, so the plastic tubes and wires don't get damaged !

There are only a few more items to make out of aluminum, and I'm still waiting for the Cast Acrylic blocks to arrive!

The assembly of the big control box is on hold, as I'm still looking for a particular type of dust filter for the bottom of the box. This is where all the sawdust will be, and I don't want to use a crappy paper framed AC type filter. As the dust goes through them to easily! My thoughts are to find an automobile filter, that is easy to get, and make it easy to replace! So far, I don't know if it will be installed inside the box, or under it!