[wentyfalls]

Hi all,

After a long time I finally finished my machine, well version 1 anyway!

At this stage I have been managing to cut wood to a satisfactory level and have been learning heaps.

I have been focusing on Vcarved signs, some acrylic and vcarve inlay

Attachment 212342

The silver duct is for the dust collector, i still have to make a decent dust shoe

Attachment 212344

At this stage I am holding work down with screwed on holds, but this is not ideal, so I plan to surface plane the MDF spoil board and do some T-slot and a small vacuum hold down grid that will connect to a shop vac. There is enough room on the table for both.

I have really been enjoying V carve inlay and this is the one that I have had the most success with. It is a 250mm by 100mm box made of Tasmanian Oak with an Australian Cedar inlay. According to Google the symbol is Japanese for Mother. A christmas present for mum (always the mummy's boy)

Attachment 212346

Attachment 212348

Also having fun doing Vcarved signs with painted letters in natural timber

i'd encourage anyone who may be stalled in thier build, keep plugging away at it because the satisfaction of seeing a machine you made make something is awesome.

WentyFalls

[Rees Guitars]

No replies? I really like this design, simple and rugged! Gonna have to incorporate some of your ideas into my next router.

Can we see the back of your gantry?

[wentyfalls]

No replies? I really like this design, simple and rugged! Gonna have to incorporate some of your ideas into my next router.

Can we see the back of your gantry?

Hi Rees,

pictures of the back of gantry

Attachment 213836

I strengthened it with a piece of 75mm x 75mm x 10mm lintel. It was what I had laying around and has the bonus of a nice spot to put the e-chain.

Attachment 213838

this pic shows where I had to cut the welds to re-square up the gantry. When I was doing it I slipped with the grinder and cut a nice groove in my finger that required three stitches. I think there is still blood on the garage floor! .

At this stage the weld is only tacked to see how it goes, but it seems to be going ok without full welds. I think i'll only tack it a bit more to reduce the chance of movement/distortion.

I originally put the Lintel on because I had too much flex in the gantry. Adding the lintel helped, but in the end I think that the main cause is the rails and bearings combined with the lever effect of the Z axis. cutting timber and acrylic is no problems and I have only tried Ally once which snapped cheap bits due to my inexperience.

On completion, if I ever do another machine, or modify this one I will consider:

1. Rack and pinion on the X and Y axis instead of ball screws. Max speed is not huge with the long ball screws as they can whip. But I am not in too much of a rush anyway.

2. Dual steppers on the X axis is good, it is nice and strong and eliminates racking. Downside is that I have a Gecko G540 with the 4th axis slaved to the X axis, this means I have no option for a 4th axis without upgrading my driver board. The Gecko is awesome.


3. Steel frame - cheaper than ally, but more work. I would consider using a combination of a welded table for weight and strength with T-slot alluminium to mount the X and Y rails which would provide some flexibility for minor adjustments/shimming etc.

4. Supported rails - since I bought my rails, the price of HWIN specked (chinese) rails and bearing blocks has come down, I would use them to reduce flex.

5. spread the X axis/gantry bearing mounts out a bit to reduce flex. It would be worth losing a 100mm or so of travel to get less flex.


6. Huanyang VFD - fantastic for the price. It took a bit to get set up but now it is great with spindle control via Mach3

7. Water cooled chinese spindle - also fantastic.


The next job will be to make a better monitor mount, t slots on the table and I am also working on an Arduino piezo digitising probe

So all told, for my first working build, it's by no means perfect but I am really happy with the results.

[pippin88]

wenty,

You can actually use two digital outputs on the G540 to output to another stepper driver. (This means the G540 is acting as a 5 axis breakout board in effect). Still requires a separate driver, but avoids another breakout board and parallel port.

[wentyfalls]

Thanks if I do a fourth axis I'll do that

Sent from my Nexus 7 using Tapatalk