[Gerald_D]

Hi All

From my 6 years of ShopBot experience, and moving it from a lightweight design to something more suitable for daily reliable production, a bigger brother has evolved. Since ShopBot won't do a gantry longer than 5 ft, and most of our boards in this country are 6 ft wide (9 ft long), we were practically obliged to build our own MechMate from the ground up. See www.mechmate.com for pics and more of the story in a forum over there.

Many people (mostly ShopBotters) have asked for plans, and I do intend to publish them once they are tidied up. These plans would be available to a wider audience.

What makes the MechMate different? Well, the Keep It Simple & Stupid principles are applied. It does not use the finest linear bearings and ballscrews - rather it uses affordable, reliable elements that need little maintenance, yet still produces a passable cut quality for the bulk of profitable jobs. The MechMate is geared towards maximising income for minimal outlay.

Anyway, this post was just to wet your appetite a bit - now I must go and clean up the plans!

All the best

Gerald Dorrington

[diarmaid]

Gerald that looks absolutely fantastic! It might be just what Im looking for as a build when I've done my small 2'x3' solsylva machine.

Do you have a guideline price for the plans?
Will the plans include step by step instructions and recommended parts like my solsylva plans, or just drawings?
When will they be available? (Sorry, no pressure! )
Do you have a guideline price for the finished article?

Bye for now.

[Jason Marsha]

oops, I got beaten to the question

[Gerald_D]

Hi Diarmaid

Thanks for the comments. The plans will be free - so that there can't be any complaints that someone got less than what they paid for! .

The finished article you see here (2,6m x 1,9m table) cost me less than $6000 in materials and sub-contractors. (includes 3.4kW (5HP) spindle)

The "plans" will consist of:
1. - drawing sheets (all size A4) in .dxf and .pdf format. Typical for use by small/mid-size engineering companies. Actually, there will be flood of drawing sheets - a bracket which is cut, bent and drilled will typically have 3 drawing sheets because there is a chance that 3 different people have to do those three processes.
2. - A WBS (work breakdown structure) in .xls format that lists tasks, components, prices, (my) suppliers, notes. (that 3-process bracket will have 3 lines in the WBS)
3. - the Forum at mechmate.com where detailed discussions and photos can/will be posted for the things that are not clear in the drawing sheets and WBS.

You must realise that I am in a metric 230V 50Hz environment and follow Euro practices, but am quite comfortable to talk in inches and "half"-voltage....

Also, if this is going to be only a one person project, with me having to do a lot more documenting work than what I've done so far, then I am probably going to get bored and walk away. Hopefully a whole bunch of guys will get stuck in and actually help to develop the "plans", and help each other via the Forum. This is the true price that I am hoping people will pay - giving back comments, photos and modified files. I am hoping to have the tricky job of deciding which feedback actually goes into the "official" Mechmate plans.

But, first I have to take my annual holiday over the next few weeks......

All the best
Gerald

[Jason Marsha]

That sounds great Gerald, thanks in advance as it sounds like a lot of work.


Jason

[diarmaid]

230V 50Hz....Woohoo...Im in Ireland...

I'd love to help but I haven't even started my first machine yet so not sure how much use I'll be, Im a total noob without any useful experience . Although SWMBO did give me permission to get moving on my 2' x 3' machine because she wants things carved, so I'm gonna get the finger out when I have time and start, gotta wait until next months pay check to order the parts. Thankyou for doing this, and please don't lose interest, it really does look like a fantastic machine. Relax and take your time with it so you dont get bored. And most importantly, enjoy your holiday. L8rs.

[Gerald_D]

Before I start doing detail content, I would appreciate some feedback on whether the format of the downloadable docs at www.mechmate.com would be suitable. There is a tiny sample at the downloads page.

Thanks

[diarmaid]

Im not at home at the moment, but when I am next I'll check some of those files for you. I imagine the .pdf should be fine, and when I get my full CAD program I figure I'd be able to try the .dxf but dont have any .dxf compatible program at the moment.

[Jason Marsha]

The format seems fine to me.

Jason

[Gerald_D]

The .dxf files as separate files are rather large and I have now additionally put a .zip right at the top of the downloads page that contains everything. Nothing else will change there in the next month, except to fix errors.

[diarmaid]

Hi. I went through those files this morning before work, dxf's and all! They all seem great thus far except for two problems:

1) 20 X-Gantry:
10 20 450 W.pdf links to a '.dxf' file instead of the '.pdf'.

2) Common Ass & Parts:
M1 20 121 T.pdf links to a '.dxf' file instead of the '.pdf'.

However those two files work fine in the '.zip'.

Two other points I noticed which Im sure you know about but just to be concise.
1) A lot of the files didn't have any measurements shown in them.
2) The majority of files shown on screen didn't have any hyperlinks activated yet. (Just so you know in case they are not working but I figure they are not up yet.)

Great job!

PS: Something worries me that you might be able to clear up. I couldn't find a 'Log Out' button on your site?

[Gerald_D]

Hi Diarmaid

Thanks for the comments and corrections.

The 2 incorrect links have been fixed. Those without links are still to be created. The logout button is more obvious now.

Regarding "missing" dimensions: Those drawings won't get much more dimensions because then there will be too many!

For parts intending to be laser-cut, the scale .dxf is available to the laser cutting company (all the lasercut parts already have their .dxf drawings in the download area). These are the file names with the second last character being a P.

Assembly drawings seldom need any dimensions. (second last character A)

A "cut-to-length" drawing only needs one dimension (second last character S (for Saw))

A "recatangle-cut-from-sheet" needs two dimensions (second last character G (for Guillotine))

Etc.

In the "T" drawing for the V-Tyre, you might say there are too many dimensions, but again I think that is the minimum required.

The logic will become clearer with time - have a look at the bottom of the .xls file, the "WBS" for a key.

There will be an area of variable dimensions where folk are going to customise the table bed sizes, and this affects a lot of the drawings still to be posted. A discussion on that will be linked into the Forum.

Hope I've answered you okay - please feel free to ask more. Thanks again for spotting the errors.

[Gerald_D]

Oh well, the month's break was all too short, and I need to get back to the treadmill again.....

Some folk seem to be having problems with accessing the data in the password controlled area, and I don't know if I am really producing a friendly format of info. As a trial sample, there is a non-password-needed zip file over here: www.mechmate.com/MechMate.zip 672 kB

Before I waste time producing more data that might not be readable, comments on the data in the referenced .zip file would be appreciated.

Thanks

[Kipper]

Dont know about the files but what a beast!! I like it (dont have room for it )

[Switcher]

Gerald_D,

I've been looking at your website, VERY COOL! That control box and the "Y-axis carrier" are so professional looking. I downloaded and opened the zip file you posted here with no problems at all. Thanks for the PDF support.


Jerry


.

[diarmaid]

What ever happened to the MechMate router project????

I checked the forum on the website and no recent activity.....

[Gerald_D]

....which I read to be low public interest, and so I wonder if it is worth pursuing.

[Drawdog]

Gerald_D,

Very Impressive! I can't speak for everyone, but i am impressed and interested and feel it is still worth pursuing. Keep Up the good work!

[Gerald_D]

I havn't given up, but it is a lonely job.

At this size of machine I was expecting folk to be less "hobbyist" and more "industrial" and that they would know something about CNC in general. But I get flooded by e-mails from people saying things like "I am new to CNC, but I have some old stepper motors from a big printer - can I use them in the MechMate?"

The primary application for a MechMate is cutting sheets of MDF and plywood into shapes. With this in mind, one needs to know what size of MDF and ply boards are supplied in your area, and then size the machine accordingly. Folk are not very forthcoming on what size machine they want. (See this thread) This is the type of thing that makes me deduce that serious interest is very low.

However, there are a handful of non-English speakers (shy in public) who are very seriously interested and correspond with me via mail only. When the plans do get more fully released, you could thank a gent in Iceland in particular

[zoltan]

Gerald,

I am sure that a lot of people are waiting for your plans as I am. I think that people would rather avoid pushing you asking about status. At least this is my feeling after private conversations with people from different forums. Regarding the size of table and correlation with the size of MDF sheet I do not think people consider as an issue as long as the table is big enough in the respect of biggest MDF sheet available.

Please, keep the good working and share your plans. Anyway, I think that some more details - instructions would be greatly appreciated.

Thank you,

Zoltan