[David Da Costa]

Well while I am waiting for Joe to cut all the pieces for me I have been busy ordering all the hardware and electronics I will need.

Pretty much everything has arrived and is laying on the floor of my office. I still need to get the 4x60" gas pipes from home depot which may take a couple of trips, due to car constraints

I also have my Xylotex 3 axis board and 260 oz.in steppers which I have hooked up to Mach 3 and work great. I also have the CNC4PC multifunction card which I will hook into the circuit and test next and then I will install it all in the case I got from Mouser.

Yesterday I made the dust extraction bracket that Joe designed on my IMService CNC Router and I have to say I am very pleased with the results. I have attached two pictures of it.

I looked around for a suitable desk/workbench for the router once it is built but after a lot of research and pricing I was pleased to find this on overstock.com http://www.overstock.com/?page=profr...rod_id=1088779
which I think will work fine and they only charge $3 for shipping!!!

More to come soon, (bearing brackets to be made and the electronics to be completed).

David

Visit my websites:

www.scalereplica.com

www.digitaloceans.net

[bp092]

awesome, I'm in the same boat.. I'm not a metal worker so I find the bearing brackets and the other metal parts interesting to cut.. as a woodworker tonight I scrambled my shop thinking of how I could cut it.. first I started with a jig saw and metal blades (not accurate even on a good line) then I just ended up using my bandsaw with a miter guage and that worked well.. is it just me (not complaining) but the bearing angle brackets/milling procedure/size isn't really listed in joe's manual/plan? Is appears to just be the same as the JGRO which I've been using as reference. Is that safe to assume? If so, how do you plan to grind down the two parts on each where it has to be flat for a washer and bolt to sit in and hold it to the MDF? Just got me in a headache. Wood is no problem, but aluminum changes everything..

[David Da Costa]

Yes, I have the same questions as the depth of the 2 flats on the angle and the distance from the apex for the holes for the bearing bolts are not shown on Joe's drawings, although I think I saw on one of the many re-reads of his thread that they are .433 and I don't think the flats are critical in terms of depth so I will probably guess - unless of course anyone knows better?

David

[bp092]

Yes, I have the same questions as the depth of the 2 flats on the angle and the distance from the apex for the holes for the bearing bolts are not shown on Joe's drawings, although I think I saw on one of the many re-reads of his thread that they are .433 and I don't think the flats are critical in terms of depth so I will probably guess - unless of course anyone knows better?

David

If it's the same as JGRO then check out JGRO's plans. They are the same length, look the same but I'm wondering if it's mildly different. How do you plan to make the flats?

[DayneInfo]

I am looking forward to seeing this come together. I also bought the Xylotex 3 axis setup but am doing a different set of plans. The first posts I read here was about Joe's machine. I think it will be the one I build next.

Dwayne

[gtschance]

If it's the same as JGRO then check out JGRO's plans. They are the same length, look the same but I'm wondering if it's mildly different. How do you plan to make the flats?

Hello all, I am now waiting for Joe to ship my kit.....(another week or two). I have everything else ready for the assembly.

In looking at Joes R2 plans in the eDrawings viewer and conducting measurements there, I found the following.

The depth of cut on all of the slides for the 1/4 bolt hole to mount is 0.125 Z and 0.75 wide. Same as JGRO.

Joe's X slide apex to hole center is 0.433.
Joe's X slide dimensions are the same as the Y slide for JGRO.

Joe's Y slide apex to hole center is 0.433
While Joe's Y slide is similar to the JGRO X slide - they are NOT the same dimensions.

Joe's Z slide apex to hole center is 0.465 [Note the difference from above].
This is the same dimension set as the JGRO.

I did not dive into the ACAD drawings in Joe's package yet - just the eDrawings view of the SolidWorks files. Joe will have to tell us if the observations I have listed above are by specification.

Regards,
George

[esmiller]

If it's the same as JGRO then check out JGRO's plans. They are the same length, look the same but I'm wondering if it's mildly different. How do you plan to make the flats?

I built the JGRO machine, and I just used a hand file and a few buckets of elbow grease *Grin*

Eddie

[bp092]

this might sound like a stupid question, maybe you guys are using mills for everything though, for me by hand with steel rules, a band saw and a drill press I found decimal measurements to be a pain so I converted all the liner dimensions in autocad to architechtural and fractional.. not sure exactly why some were within 32/s on the JGRO where they look as though they should be exactly the same, not to mention that I can't get accuracy by hand with a vice and I don't have a mill.. I ended up just following JGROS and checking Joe's edrawings to make sure I had enough of both.. seems to be working out well though.. David are you hooking that up to a shop vac? I have a full dust collection setup, wondered if I could use that eventually to tie it in

[gtschance]

I used a bandsaw to cut the angle aluminum to length.

I used a drill press with a small straight cutting carbide router bit and a machinists vice to do the flats on the apex of the slide. I had been dying to try to do very limited aluminum work that way. I carefully worked about 1/3 of the depth on each pass. Worked OK. I did make sure to clamp down all travel on the drill press very tight before I started. Drill presses bearings are not really meant to carry the side load on their bearings I'm told but I got away with it this time.

I too converted to fractions for my measures.

George

[bp092]

I hear yah. I know what I was doing was against all rules of metal working but my shop is all woodworking lol. Only accurate way to do the flats with what I had was to use some old 3/4 forstner bits, I still have a bit to finish up. They are meant for wood, but what the hay, I just adjusted the speed on my drill press, put on my safety glasses and went with the flow. Cutting the rods and pipes should be interesting. Was going to buy a metal saw but said screw it, might just use the one at work after punching out.

[David Da Costa]

bp092:
Yes I will be hooking it up to a shopvac Yet to be purchased, but it could be adapted to any size opening.

David

[David Da Costa]

Well, while waiting for Joe to complete my kit I have been busy making the bearing slides.

You can see in the attached pictures some of the completed slides and also a shot my my Sherline CNC mill busy cutting.

My next project is to build a PC for the Router. I had debated putting a second parallel port in the PC that I use for Mach 3 with my Sherline Mill and Lathe as well as DeskCNC with my IMService CNC Router, but as my new Router will be across the other side of the room I decided that I did not want to run a long cable.

I had a PC hanging around that I built as an music player some while ago and decided to cannibalize that. It has a mini flex motherboard so I ordered a new small case for it - the original one was significantly customized and I may decide to also but the Xylotex controller board and CNC4PC multifunction board in the same case - yet to be decided.

David

[bp092]

David,

Looking good, about where I'm at as well! Just waiting on the parts from joe, got all the rest of the stuff from enco today. Howd you end up milling the flats on the angle? Looks like you may have done it on your mill. I'm planning on running mach 3 on a mini itx computer with a 17" flat panel monitor .. will post results soon like you.

[ger21]

Have you guys tried Mach3 on those mini PC's? I know that people have had problems running Mach on them in the past, but maybe the newer ones are better.

[bp092]

Well the only thing I could think of is over heating, but the one I'm going to build is going to have two fans, one for the CPU/heatsink and one for exhaust.. going to keep it small so I can case it from the dust and put a filter by the fan ports.. other than that it's going to be fast, atleast 1 ghz ram, maybe a 40 gig HD (no need for more than that).. almost all the parts are coming from either newegg or ebay. I will have to see though, never seen how mach 3 works the CPU and if it does work it hard which it really in essence shouldn't then it will be a problem for long run times.

[David Da Costa]

bp092, Yes I did all the work on the mill (CNC) including drilling the holes. Saved a lot of time in having to mark up each one.

ger21, the PC I am building using a mini flex atx motherboard runs a 1.6Ghz Pentium 4 so it should be powerful enough to run Mach 3.

I got the new case for it this afternoon and I think there is plenty of space for the Xylotex card and the CNC4PC multifunction card along with fans.

Next step is to modify case.

David

[David Da Costa]

bp092, yes the were cut on my CNC Sherline Mill including drilling holes whch saved a lot of time in not having to mark up each one.

ger21, the mini flex atx motherboard that I am using runs a 1.6Ghz P4 which should be powerfull enough.

I got the case this afternoon for it and there should be plenty of room for the Xylotex board and the CNC4PC multifunction card along with some extra fans.

Next job - modify case.

David

[ger21]

It's not that they are too slow. Some PC's just aren't able to run Mach. VIA chipset motherboards have been trouble in the past, although lately I haven't heard of many (any?) problems.

[David Da Costa]

Got you. Well I have Mach 3 up and running and it looks fine but I guess the real proof is when I go to run the router.

[ger21]

The driver test is a good indicator of whether or not it will work. Run drivertest.exe in the Mach folder.