[Gerald V.B.]

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

[Gerald V.B.]

Just a couple more pictures of the holes for the leveling mounts and a quick mock up of the base.

[FannBlade]

Great job on the stand! Looking forward to completion.

[Gerald V.B.]

Ok, on to paint and assembly! In these pictures I've finished painting and begun structural assembly of the machine frame. You'll notice that I'm laying the cross supports flat and using angle brackets on top and plates on bottom to join the frame together. I've done this to give myself the extra vertical clearance I will need for the vacuum plenum and the 1030 aluminum extrusion t-slot table (a page from the book of Kronos- and a huge improvement over the MDF blind nut table I had previously). I also picked up some heavy duty leveling mounts with non-slip pads for the base from McMaster Carr, not cheap, but more then slightly better than wood shims


This frame feels SO much more solid than my previous 1.5" wood table top I had the machine bolted to. I'm anticipating some faster accelerations and rapid speeds - but testing is yet to come. Comments and constructive criticism are always welcome!

[painter]

GREAT job Looks pretty sweet!!!

Tom

[Gerald V.B.]

Thanks for the positive feedback! I’m pretty much done with the mechanical re-assembly and already working on getting all of the electronics crammed into some sweet 2U rackmount PC cases I picked up off of Amazon. More to come on that soon.

I thought I’d upload a few pictures of some neat modifications I made previous to the rebuild while I’m busy getting the electronics together. The first couple of pics are of one of my all-time favorite modifications, second only to the auto tool zero (if you haven’t set up one of these yet, do it now!). I made a custom mount for a Logitech webcam out of some poplar I had laying around. It bolts directly to the bearing block… or at least it used to I had to replace it fairly quickly after about 5 months of heavy use the machine basically vibrated the internal focusing components apart. After that I threw in some rubber bushings to help isolate the camera from the vibrations – I’m not entirely sure this has done anything other than make me feel better, but so far camera #2 is running strong. I’m probably going to do a more detailed write-up on this in another thread, as I made some neat modifications to Mach3 blue screen to zero and offset to the camera. Combined with the auto tool zero plate, getting aligned to my templates and zero’d literally takes seconds - and I can consistently align a template to a few thousands of an inch to run various production pieces I make.

The next few pictures are the inductive proximity sensors I picked up for a few bucks a piece off of Ebay. I use these for all my limit switches including the z-axis, and they work great! By making a small spacer and mounting them to the underside of the rack and pinion motor plates I can actually trigger them by placing a taller nut on the gear rack clamps! Super simple and works like a charm.

More to come soon!

-Gerald

[Gerald V.B.]

Here's a picture of the z-axis proximity sensor as well.

[Gerald V.B.]

Here’s the new electronics enclosure! I picked up a couple of 2U rack-mount PC cases off of Amazon for my computer and CNC electronics and I’m quite pleased with how they turned out. The first picture is one of the 2U cases with a custom back panel I cut on the CNC before gutting it for the rebuild. I used .08” T6 Al to replace the standard PC back panel – this is mounted using a couple small pieces of angle Al and some #6 machine screws. When all was said and done, I had just enough surface area to get everything I needed on the plate. You can see the old electronics case to the right; this beast was mounted underneath the wood tabletop my machine was previously mounted to. I had to move all of the electronics to a separate cabinet to accommodate plans for a vacuum system and the requisite plumbing.

I was able to cram my two SSR’s into one of the hard drive towers, mounted to an extra 3.5” adapter for a solid state drive I happened to have lying around. This worked out nicely because it places them in line with one of the PC fans and leaves the other fan open to hit the G540. The power supply fan actually exhausts well out of the front of the case where the CD drive would normally go, there is a grill/mesh that came with the case and allows for good airflow. Overall I was quite impressed with the circulation of the case, as it was a serious concern in the beginning. When running the machine for 4-6 hours the G540 can get plenty hot, and I wanted to make sure I did everything to help keep the case cool (the Al plate it’s mounted to helps a bit with this as well).

In the last picture you can see the assembled machine and rack mount cabinet I’m currently using. I will eventually try to encase the electronics in a secondary cabinet which is sealed and filtered to prevent massive amounts of dust from entering the cases over time. I also finished attaching the 1030 extrusion table top and man is it sweet! Previously I was using an MDF spoilboard with blind nuts for a hold down system, and this is a vast improvement. The cost for a T-slot table is a substantial sum when you compare the two set-ups, but the improvement is leaps and bounds better. The 1030 extrusion is bolted to the frame using .125” steel angle attached to the cross supports and seems pretty darn solid.

Now that everything is up and running I'm going to try and get some videos together within the next week or so. More to come soon!

-Gerald