[tommylight]

Hi,
Today i had some spare time so i started a new build from 45x90mm aluminum profiles. Table size is going to be 75x54cm and envelope 55x34x15cm if i use two pairs of carriages per rail, but since i am low on carriages i am thinking of starting it with a single carriage per rail, so the envelope would be 66x45x18cm. I have just cut to length so far and i have attached some pictures of how it should look like when assembled, but if anyone has any ideas on how to use all those profiles, please do comment, i would greatly appreciate it. I intend on cutting plastic and aluminum with it, i have a lot of electronic for it, ball screws and ball bearings, rails, an ELTE 0.8KW spindle with ER20 Colet, etc but i have no more carriages and the soonest i expect them is in August. That sucks, but i have 7 of them on the "metal monster" that is posted here on this forum so i can build and test most of till then.
Regards,
Tom

[Bear5k]

How are you planning to link the table pieces together?

[tommylight]

Frankly i just got to that point, and it aint gona be easy. I have some 3mm thick 40x40mm alu "L" profile that i am going to try to use and see how that holds. Will report back with results as soon as i get to doing that.

[tommylight]

I had some time tonight to work on this machine and here is what i have done so far: drilled 2 through and through holes on all profiles and 2 holes on end profiles( the ones mounted vertically) and tightened them with M8 all-thread, drilled the "L" profiles and tightened 48 M8 screws so here are some pictures of how it looks. Now the hard part: cutting a 4 meter long 25mm HiWin rail ! damn that is hard. I thought of cutting the rails a bit longer than the table base ( base is 75x54cm) so i can have a bit more room for the tool changer by leaving the rails longer for 10-15cm on one end that would make it possible for the gantry to move to the back end of the table where the tool rack would be mounted and still have over 50 cm of usable space on the table. More on that later.
On side note, i have 2 ELTE 0.8KW spindles and after some testing i found out that they are both messed up since some dumb ( insert obscene comments here) found it very interesting to connect them to 380V AC ( by the way that is standard 3 phase electricity here) and run them till they get red hot and DEMAGNETIZE! Damn i paid some hard cash for them and they are useless ( 700 Euros for both) . They are meant to be run on 3 phase 220V not 380V. So, if by any chance anybody around here knows where can they be magnetized in Europe, please let me know.

[Bear5k]

cutting a 4 meter long 25mm HiWin rail ! damn that is hard.

Did you do it by hand? I had a guy give me a quote on cutting down some 2m THK rails, and he was worried about the heat warping the ends. He strongly recommended using a waterjet. In the end, I changed my design, and used the full length.

I'm not sure of the spacing on the Hi-Win rails, but the 1m anchor strips from Rexroth are drilled to match the THK rails I have perfectly (M8 screws on 80mm centers).

[tommylight]

I did not mean it is hard to cut, it is hard to cut something you paid nearly 500 euros for.
The rails i have have M6 holes at 60mm center spacing.
I have cut 2 rails for another machine with an angle grinder (and a small one at that) using INOX cutting blades with no problems at all. They get hot but but still far from being red hot, some 5 minutes after the cut they are cold. Those are very thin cutting blades and they do the job perfectly.

[tommylight]

The rails are cut and mounted on the X and Y axis, and the carriages on the X and gantry so now i have a moving gantry. Today i used a different cutting disk for the angle grinder and it is a huge difference from the METABO ones i normally use. They are both made for cutting INOX or stainless steel, but the metabo ones cut through anything like through butter. In numbers: cutting a HG25 rail with metabo 40 seconds, the crappy ones i used today a minute and a half. I am used to cutting everything with that small angle grinder and when cutting rails and ball screws all there is to it is to keep it nice and steady and perpendicular to the cut so it doesn't start grinding the sides and the rail stay cool. After just a minute of cooling i can hold them in my hands at the seems and they are cold.
Also you can see in the pictures what i meant by leaving the rails 10cm longer at the back side of the table so now the gantry can move all the way to the back of the table where i plan on having a tool rack mounted.
stay tunned
Tom