[Devastator]

Makes me hungry for chocolate.

[crane550]

Makes me hungry for chocolate.

Perhaps I should have painted it the color of CHICKEN WNGS!! Oh wait... I guess I painted my shop that color. No wonder I keep craving buffalo sauce.

Great progress to show for. She is starting to look like a CNC again.

Continued working on the control box. Note that I will no longer be running via parallel ports- and my input is now here which connects to my Smooth Stepper by Warp9. I have not got to run it yet, but will let you know how I like it compared to directly driving it via the parallel ports.



Placed the gantry back on by myself. Wasn't too bad with the help of a cherry picker.





Ran a dial indicator back and forth to align the top master rail with the gantry beam. Now I understand the gantry beam will not be perfectly straight, so some error is expected. The rack sits on top of the gantry, so this is mostly for rack alignment. I shot for 5 thou and got 3. Way more precise then any of my needs on this machine will dictate.



Reassembly of the transmissions.



Also spent some time soldering up some cables. These were just jumpers for inside the cabinet. BTW, I am wondering about grounding. I have shielded cable for, well, everything that leaves the box. Do I need to connect the shielding to the ground of the box and if so, how well? The connectors I bought aren't too good. They are hard to install, and the plug is so short its hard to get the strands from the shielding to make contact. I did my best, but didn't feel like any of the connectors really made that great of contact with the shielding. I did run a continuity tester on each one (shielding on the far end of the cable to ground) and I did have continuity. I just wish the connectors made better contact with the shielding. Again, not sure how much that matters. Here are the connectors for the cabinets end.



Last task for today was wire management. Everything now is contained and nicely routed. I now have my drag chain for the X going, firewall plugs, and all my wire has been upgraded to actual CNC motor wire for IGUS. (expensive, but oh so pretty)

I did do one of the locking connectors for connecting one of the motors to the cable. It was such a pain I just reverted back to Molex for the rest. The Molex has served well for the last 3 years, and if it's not broke...





Measley Molex connectors for the rest...



And the current state of affairs



The carriage is off at the machine shop right now. Just doing a couple of small mods. I will elaborate more once I get it back.

[crane550]

The work continues. I'm actually getting very close to calling it good.

I got the bed and sacrificial layer both secured. Leveled the bed and was pleased to see it was very level to begin with. Only took off about 20 thou at most, and that was on one cross beam where I knew because of the weld it was a bit high. Pleased with the state it is in now.

Also got my new fixture positions marked and cut new keyways for the hold down channels. Changed orientation from where it was before and tweaked positions to make it more suited for my needs. It's an evolution.



Forgot to select G54 and made a mark in the new sacrificial layer...so I guess its broke in now!



Also as promised here are some pics of the newly boxed in carriage. Again, I don't think this was absolutely necessary, but since I was taking the time to refresh this machine I thought I better go ahead and do it.





Also love how few cables show now. There are only 4 going up to the carriage at this point- 2 steppers, spindle, and a proximity sensor wire.

[crane550]

Here is something that might be valuable to others. I decided to hook up my Hitachi X200 VFD to Mach3 and control spindle speed via the computer rather than adjusting it manually for different tools. I will also make Mach 3 turn it off and on, but I am waiting for relays. Another advantage besides convenience is E stops will also kill the spindle.

For now I only have the speed control working. It was kinda a pain to figure out, but once I did it wasn't too bad to get it tuned in.

I am using PWM directly from the breaker board. My breaker board doesn't have an analog 0 to 10V out, so I needed to get one of these:



It was $6 on eBay. Search for "Analog Digital 0-10V PWM" and you will find it.

Mine was a bit more complicated since I am using the Smooth Stepper. Keep in mind that some of the Mach 3 options get bypassed when you use the SS, and you need to go find those settings in the SS config screens, and not in the Mach options.

I set up spindle in "Pulleys" to range between 7500 and 18500 (500 buffer on each side), and used a base frequency of 1000Hz in the Smooth Stepper settings. In Mach I set it up for PWM and then cranked up the ramp up speed in "Motor Tuning."

As far as wiring, it wasn't too bad once I figured it out. Supply with +24V, hook common and your breakout board port to DIN- and DIN+, GND goes to L on the X200 and AO to O. And thats it. I think my voltages actually ranged from .92V to 8.4V, but it worked. Sure enough, the S command in the Gcode changes spindle speed.

[SixOfOne]

What is the height of your table? It looks low in the pictures. Is it comfortable? How tall are you?

[hondaman900]

Been working on my design a bit, and so far what I have come up with is bullet proof.



Anyways, I think I'm off to a good start.

Previous build here:
http://www.cnczone.com/forums/diy-cn...a_build_w.html

What about adding augmented reality positioning like this one ? Not sure if it requires their software or if it can be done as an add-on to existing CNC software.

[Azalin]

Very impressive build and nice seeing you cut guitar bodies. I'll try yo cut an Ibanez S series body some time in the future. I need to finish the 3d design first

[LS120]

Hey Crane, what did you do for limit and home switches??

just asking as i need to think on that with my new build.

thanks

[eloid]

[QUOTE=crane550;916783]All right, in all seriousness here is the plan:

This is the start of a 5x10 table. It will be powered by rack and pinion, ride on 20mm THK SHS and HSR rails, and be built to be solid.

Much of the credit has to go to a guy named Ron, who lives here in Boise, ID. After showing me his machine it became clear that this was a better option then the Shop Bot, Mech Mate, and where Ahrens stuff is awesome this was better suited for my needs.

Rons machine can cut a 4x8 sheet, and move down to the end completely out of the way. That was something I really liked. My favorite aspect of it was there was no "crib" to reach into. Send the machine to 0, and slide a sheet right on. Done.

That, coupled with the stiffness and weight seemed like a good idea.

The rail blocks, 4:1 reduction transmission, motor mounts, and such are already made for the X and Y. It is an identical unit that was made by Ron for another machine, which he lost interest in. A lot of those parts are bought from him.

Once again: I cannot take all credit for this design! Ron, here in Boise was the mastermind in the power transmissions, rack and pinion design, and use of rails. Thanks Ron!


Here is HIS machine:







Looking for the build thread build log of Ron and Ahrens cnc are?
Does anyone have a Link?

[ger21]

Ahren is CNC Router Parts.
I've never seen the machine in the pics,so I don't think there's a build log here....

[eloid]

Ahren is CNC Router Parts.
I've never seen the machine in the pics,so I don't think there's a build log here....

in post post 189 in the pictures

who's router build is this? anyone know where I can find a link of the build log.

[ger21]

Yes, I see the pics in the previous post.
What I meant is that I've never seen that machine before.

[eloid]

Ahren is CNC Router Parts.
I've never seen the machine in the pics,so I don't think there's a build log here....

I found the build link here in the zone if anyone is interested

http://www.cnczone.com/forums/cnc-wo...x8-router.html

also the original thread at mechmate here

MechMate CNC Router Forum