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  1. #41
    Join Date
    Feb 2008
    Posts
    216

    Leveling and squaring the Y rails

    The process begun to get the rails square and parallel to one another.

    It started by getting one rail secured to the 5x5 tube in a straight line using a long straight edge to make sure there was no gaps. Once it was secured down, the second rail was secured down using cap screws and a hydraulic jack and long wood clam were used to push or pull the rails closer or farther apart to get them perfectly parallel. The final test for parallel involved installing on of the bearings on the rails and rigging up a dial indicator to run along the opposite rails edge and watch the indicator change as the bearing and indicator tweak the rail until the dial indicator didn’t move at all over the entire length of the rail.

    Now that the parallel was done, it was time to check for dips and humps along the length of the rail. We used a vision system (transit) to see the highest point on a rail and then shim under all of the other bolts to get them all perfectly level. Once the first rail was perfectly level, we used the dial indicator again, this time on the top surface of the rail to run it along and determine how much needed to be shimmed on the other rail. Once the amounts were know, corresponding shims were made up and the re alignment process was done with shims underneath. The end result was 2 rails, perfectly parallel and flat with in 5 thou over the entire span.

  2. #42
    Join Date
    Feb 2008
    Posts
    216

    Gantry Assembly

    We wanted the top Y rails to be able to be shimmed if they turned out to be tilted up/down over the length of the table, (also we needed to part the gantry up into smaller heavy pieces so that we could still manage to lift them all into place without heavy machinery assistance) so will be bolting the upper gantry to the gantry upright legs using ¾” steel plate and 4 bolts per side. The plate pads can be seen bolted to the side of the upper gantry pre assembly.

    When we initially assembled the whole Gantry we used large pieces of angle iron to get the pieces straight and help secure it all together, didn’t want any pieces falling on our toes; that would be the end of a work day!

    The next part would be to figure out what would be adequate bracing for this huge top heavy gantry, remember there is still a z-assemble to be out on here which will be 300+ lbs.

  3. #43
    Join Date
    Feb 2008
    Posts
    216
    The gantry needs to be rigid and strong, it’s going to be holding a lot more weight then a typical DIY CNC and it’s a lot taller than most so it needed additional support. We decided to add a 5x5 45deg support on the front to prevent it from tipping over and a 4x4 brace on the back to stiffen it up and take some of the load off the assembly bolts.

    The 45 pieces, like everything on this machine, took forever to machine and assemble. Everything seems to be too large for the mill we have. But we make it work. Once machined, ¼” plate was fitted into the sides that will mate to the gantry surfaces. Once welded, they were mocked up on the gantry and transferred the hole locations to the gantry, drilled the and tapped the gantry the final product looks pretty substantial.

    The 4x4 stiffener on the back side of the gantry (Seen in 7th pic in white during mockup) was cut to length, then 8 holes drilled through for securing to the gantry, 4 bolts into the upper gantry and 4 into the gantry upright legs. The last 2 pictures were taken after it was all assembled and painted. Can you see what else has been done in these pictures?

  4. #44
    Join Date
    Mar 2003
    Posts
    35538
    Until I saw the Sharpie in the picture, I didn't really realize that you were serious when you said Overkill.
    That is massive.
    Gerry

    UCCNC 2017 Screenset
    http://www.thecncwoodworker.com/2017.html

    Mach3 2010 Screenset
    http://www.thecncwoodworker.com/2010.html

    JointCAM - CNC Dovetails & Box Joints
    http://www.g-forcecnc.com/jointcam.html

    (Note: The opinions expressed in this post are my own and are not necessarily those of CNCzone and its management)

  5. #45
    Join Date
    Feb 2008
    Posts
    216
    Quote Originally Posted by ger21 View Post
    Until I saw the Sharpie in the picture, I didn't really realize that you were serious when you said Overkill.
    That is massive.
    Yeah it's hard to get the grand scale of everything. For example the rails on the gantry are 55mm wide. They make the 5" tube look more like 2".

  6. #46
    Join Date
    Feb 2008
    Posts
    216

    Gantry fine adjustment jacking screws

    As mentioned in a previous post, we need to be able to fine tune the gantry upright section if it isn’t completely square to the X-rails when initially assembled, the only real way to know if we put it together perfectly square is to wait until it is all assembled and test cut for square the entire length of the table.

    The black plate bar was machined and mounted securely to the bottom of the two plates, the bottom plate is fixed to the gantry cart, and the top plate which is welded to the gantry upright portion is able to slide freely when not bolted down tight. There are 4 sets of these jacking screw installed at all 4 corners of the gantry, this way we can loosen up the gantry bolts, use the jacking screws to fine tune the alignment a few thou at a time, then sinch all jacking screws up to prevent further motion and retighten the gantry bolts and everything will be solid and unable to move, as if it were all welded together.

    (Pic 4 is a shot of the plates awaiting the black alignment parts)

    This was the only way we could think of fine tuning the gantry without taking a sledge hammer to critically aligned surfaces.

  7. #47
    Join Date
    Mar 2004
    Posts
    392
    Quote Originally Posted by slimneill View Post
    Yeah it's hard to get the grand scale of everything. For example the rails on the gantry are 55mm wide. They make the 5" tube look more like 2".
    This made me go back and look, the impact driver sat on the rail in post 41 does it for me. Geez this thing is massive. What kind of cuts are you planning?
    Very impressive build so far guys.

  8. #48
    Join Date
    Feb 2008
    Posts
    216
    Thanks matth,

    We have shown people photos before but unless they see it for real they don't really get it.

    Not sure what it will be used for, but we designed it big and heavy duty to be versatile and able to handle almost anything we can think of. There was no job or specific purpose for it when we decided to build it.

    We first need to finish the build before we can tell what it will cut though, but I'm pretty sure it will handle 3/4" plywood no problem.

  9. #49
    Join Date
    Feb 2005
    Posts
    829
    I would not be surprised if you are able to cut steel on this machine. It is massive and AWESOME!

  10. #50
    Join Date
    Feb 2008
    Posts
    216
    Quote Originally Posted by nlancaster View Post
    I would not be surprised if you are able to cut steel on this machine. It is massive and AWESOME!
    Actually our original plan was to use a Bridgeport mill head, they have ones geared faster for aluminum which could have worked for wood, but we were not sure how they would hold up to all the dust. So we are now going with a HSD ATC spindle instead. It will work for wood and aluminum.

    There will be 1 Z drive but two linear pneumatic slides on either side of the spindle. So 3 potential z drives if we need them or can even get them working. But we will just start with a wood router until all the bugs are worked out then drop the serious coin on the ATC spindle. Who knows maybe we can get a Bridgeport head to work as a upgrade down the road.

    Sky's the limit when you put your mind to it.

  11. #51
    Join Date
    Feb 2008
    Posts
    216

    Z Axis

    We were going to design and build a completely new Z axis using the metal plate material from the machine’s Z we tore apart. Initially we never planned or thought that we would be building a machine large enough to support the original design, but as the gantry grew is size and the supports started to take shape, we decided to mock up the original design in CAD and see if it was doable. Another driving factor in rethinking the recycling of the old Z was the fact that we were pushing the limits of the mill we have building the Y ball screw parts, trying to machine a ¾” plate weighing hundreds of pounds would be a huge challenge, getting the Z rails machined parallel to each other and perpendicular to the mounting holes for the Y bearing blocks would be extremely difficult seeing as the plate would need to be reoriented numerous times on the machining bed and we wouldn’t know how accurate everything stayed until it was read to be assembled and too late to fix. After all, we don’t want to spend the rest of our lives building the machine, we want to actually be able to use it someday!

    So we modeled the old Z beast and it actually didn’t look like overkill for the rest of the machine, we didn’t want to re-invent the wheel when we knew it was already done and working for us so we decided to use the existing Z instead of fabricating a smaller new one.

    The plate that mounts to the Y bearings and travels in the Y direction is 33” wide by 32.25” tall, we set up the Y bearings by drilling new holes into this plate. After determining how much travel we needed in the Y direction, given the length of the Y rail we came up with a separation of the Y bearings so that they are 18” apart on center. The Y rails are 16.75” apart this gives us a large 16.75”x 18” box that will prevent the Z from twisting anytime soon. The plate is 3/4” steel and weighs about 230 pounds alone.

    The Z rails that are mounted to it are 45mm wide (1.72”) and 27.5” long. There was a 2.5”x 1.5”x 27.5” long aluminum block that was mounted to the plate then machined square and flat on an even larger mill. The rail holes were also machined into it on a mill. The plate + aluminum blocks + rail are 300+ pounds.

    We machined the 12 holes for the four Y bearings and mounted it onto the machine. We had to use an ATV jack with wheels on top to support the weight as the plate dwarfed the Mill.

    Now that it is installed, it’s starting to look like a CNC now.

  12. #52
    Join Date
    Mar 2004
    Posts
    392
    Any progress chaps? Loving the build so far,

  13. #53
    Join Date
    Feb 2008
    Posts
    216
    Quote Originally Posted by matth View Post
    Any progress chaps? Loving the build so far,
    Yeah have had a busy month, plus my camera died so had to wait to replace it

    I left off with the stationary part of the Z axis, the portion of the X that actually goes up and down is just as substantial. It made of a ¾” plate that is 26” wide by 17.75” tall. And just to make sure it isn’t going to flex, it has two strips on either side that are 0.5” thick, 2” tall steel. It’s 140 pound!

    On the back side there are 2 large blocks with 4 bumpers , one on each side of the blocks0. The stationary plate from the last post has 2 stoppers, 2 at the top of the plate and 2 at the bottom to prevent the moving Z plate from sliding off of the Z rails (Z hard stops).

    Then it all got painted Grey and then the Z ball screw was mounted, the Z motor will be mounted directly to the ballscrew vertically….

    The Z Ball screw has a pneumatic cylinder mounted on the back of the Z stationary plate. When the cylinder is activated it lifts a finger hat protrudes to the front. The ball screw has 4 fingers that are fixed to the ball screw rod and rotate with the ball screw, when the power is cut to the cylinder, a spring automatically pushed the finger down and meshed with the rotating fingers on the ball screw locking the Z axis in place to prevent it from dropping if the power to the Z axis were to cut out unexpectedly.

  14. #54
    Join Date
    Mar 2004
    Posts
    392
    I'm interested to see what your acceleration figures are going to be like.

  15. #55
    Join Date
    Feb 2008
    Posts
    216
    Quote Originally Posted by matth View Post
    I'm interested to see what your acceleration figures are going to be like.
    I'm not sure what the acceleration settings are right now. We have smooth accurate motion of the X axis. We did some preliminary tuning of the X motor with the Viper drive, the next step would be to fine tune it using Kmotion graph plotting. Once its truly tuned in, we can see how it really moves.

    Right now, whatever i have as the acceleration/deceleration rate makes the gantry start and stop in the x direction with out any oscillation at the top of the gantry. (when cutting a 4x8 rectangle at 200ipm feed rate.) It use to have a slight jerk, but we tweaked the settings slightly and now its very smooth.

  16. #56
    Join Date
    Feb 2008
    Posts
    216

    Y Ball Screw

    We want to keep the Y motor/ball screw fully enclosed within the Gantry to give it a clean look, but also to keep it dust free. To do this we will be covering the front and back of the gantry with 1/2” thick aluminum plate. There will be a long slot cut into the front aluminum plate to allow the ball screw to connect to the cart that travels in the Y direction. We were thinking about using some sort of a skirt or brush setup to fill in the slot gap and keep the dust out of the gantry. We decided to use a rubber sleeve tube on either side of the slot that would separate as the plate that connects the ball screw to the Y cart travels past. It’s basically the rubber skirt found on the bottom of garage doors used for weather stripping. To ease with the motion past the weather stripping, we machines the bar to have large chamfers on either end. (2 wedges)

    Coming up with a strong rigid way to secure the Y ball screw to the Y cart plate wasn’t going to be easy. The ball screw was from automationoverstock, so it was already fabricated, and like the rest of this machine, needed to be reverse engineered to work. We came up with an idea to machine a large diameter steel pipe to the correct OD & ID to fit right over the ball nut and fit the ball nut’s flange.

    Then a piece of steel was machined into a circle to fit inside this machined pipe and have enough of a hole machined in the center of it to slide over the ball nut and the ball races. Once it was all machined and fitted square, it was welded as one unit and then machined flush again.

    Then a flat surface was machined into the outside of the pipe so that the wedge shaped bar could be bolted and then welded onto the assembly making one large substantial fixture.

    It was then mounted onto the ball screw, the ball screw was lined up parallel to the Y rails, and then holes marked on the back of the Y cart. Once the holes were drilled the fixture was shimmed and fastened to the plate.
    The Y ball screw is now complete!

  17. #57
    Join Date
    Feb 2008
    Posts
    216

    Month of Progress

    It’s been a busy month since the last post, most of it has been dealing with all the electrical, wiring and programming to get this thing to move. Sorting out electrical interference and power supply issues. You know the fun stuff!

    This is our first CNC build so we don’t have any real experience with Mach, or Servo systems or setting up and tuning everything, basically we are learning as we go with a lot of trial and error and a lot of reading here on CNCzone with the occasional question asked to the pros. Luckily we haven’t fried anything or electrocuted anyone yet.

    Since the last post,
    -We assembled the Z axis onto the gantry
    -Added the X & Y cable tracks,
    -Started wiring up the Power cabinet
    -Set up the Z-axis counter balance system,
    -Tuned X, Y, Z Servo drives. We are using Kflop to send the step/direction to Viper200 servo drives.
    -Set up & fabricated limit switches and home switches for all 3 axis.
    -Got the Homing program to work with the encoder index signal to get very accurate & consistent homing.
    -Installed the 2 additional Z-axis slides
    -Installed the Sugino Drill & got it working with it’s Hitachi VFD

  18. #58
    Join Date
    Feb 2008
    Posts
    216

    X Axis Cable Track

    We didn’t know how much cable we would need to get up to the top of the machine so we kept our options as open as much as possible.

    The X cable track is about 12” wide. Inside it is 8 rubber tubes which are over 1” ID, to carry all of the various encoder, limits, and power cables up the machine. The grey tube is an Airline which will eventually make its way up to an Air Pig that will be mounted on the backside of the gantry and provide air for the air balancers and Automatic tool change Spindle we plan to purchase. Once of these hoses will eventually be removed when we order the $$$ 10 awg 4 conductor shielded VFD cable that’s required for the ATC spindle.

    We started with the track laying on the floor but decided it would be wiser to have it elevated up off the floor, so we built a track out of C-channel for it to lay on top of to keep it off the floor. The 3 rubber hoses that go up to the bottom of the 6x6 table frame from the electrical box on the floor carry the wires for the X motor drive, X limits and X e-stops they don’t travel through X cable track.

    We needed a way to get all of the wires from the X cable track into the upright electrical box on the wide of the gantry, we came up with using a piece of 4”x4” square tube and drill the required holes to fasten the hose lengths to it. It has a large access hole on the back side which lines up with an access whole in the electrical box on the gantry. All of the wires then feed right into the box through the 4x4 header. This way the force of the cable track is taken by the rigidly mounted 4x4 header and not the flimsy (by comparison) electrical box. There is a large access hole in the top which isn’t machined yet in the unpainted picture.
    Attached Thumbnails Attached Thumbnails _9 (Large).jpg   _10 (Large).jpg   _11 (Large).jpg   _12 (Large).jpg  

    _13 (Large).jpg   _14 (Large).jpg   _15 (Large).jpg   _16 (Large).jpg  

    _17 (Large).jpg   _18 (Large).jpg  

  19. #59
    Join Date
    Feb 2008
    Posts
    216

    Built a shelf for the back of the Z moving part and on top of the gantry

    We wanted to put an electrical box on the Z so that all the connections could be handled relatively easy and easy to get to. So we built a shelf to hang backwards over the top of the gantry and out of the way of the business and of the machine. It also comes in handy for mounting the air regulators that are used for the air balancers on the Z and more than likely we will be mounting the air regulators and air purification system that the ATC spindle will need once we get that far. Once again, it was built heavy duty like everything else and took a fair bit of time, but it turned out great.

    In addition to the shelf we installed a shelf made of aluminum on top of the gantry so that the wide cable track for the Y can rest on it without any concerns of it falling off or not supporting its own weight if it relied solely on the 5x5 tube. It’s made of ¼” aluminum and it’s about 18” wide and runs the entire length of the gantry, all 96”. The corners were rounded because it’s at forehead height.

    All of the electrical boxes and parts are being painted black, the machine is dark grey.

  20. #60
    Join Date
    Feb 2008
    Posts
    216

    Y- Cable Track

    The Y cable track was built the same way as the X cable track, a 4x4 tube was used to secure all of the rubber plastic conduit to and the ran through a track where it was secured directly to the upper most electrical box. We were originally going to mount the start of the cable track at the end of the Gantry but had to move it in based on the shortest length of black tube that we had.

    You can see in the later pics where the track sits when at both extreme Y positions.

    Can you spot the Z Axis Counter balance?

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