[joemosfet]

Also known as, "How a small want to cut metal turned into an entire basement shop build."

(By the way, more higher quality photos with descriptions can be viewed directly at the album: https://imgur.com/a/xoiCk/)

t all started with wanting to cut a bit of metal, and, since I I have a 3D printing background, I have no fear of doing it CNC style.

I did my research, and due to the large community support, and the large amount of work done by Hoss, I decided to order one of these. Without his help, I'd be lost in where to start in the CNC conversion, so hats off to him. (Go buy his DVD if you're interested in doing a CNC conversion on one of these mills.)

So, while waiting for the order, I decide to get started on the base. After seeing Hoss' videos on his DVDs, and deciding I don't really want to bolt the small stand to the ground, I start looking for wide base stand ideas.

I'm quite familiar with design and 3D modeling, so after checking out russtuff's youtube channel, and seeing his, I took his design and modified it a bit in Solidworks.

The stand plans (this is a render)



This is where things start to vary a bit from russtuff's design. I'm using another set of 2x4 blocks to lift the mill up another few inches so that coolant and chips can clear from the sides and under the mill. I'm using a few pieces to get a niec angle to keep the pool-up in the bottom minimized.



Solidworks makes it super easy to generate a cut list for wood to figure out what lengths / sizes to cut from.


Assembled! I normally clamp everything, but how exactly would I clamp the wood feet down with everything else assembled... Weight, I know!


Also, you might notice I'm in my basement - originally I had planned on doing this in the shop-side of my two car garage. But, the lack of room, seeing the videos of chips flying, and already worried about shop stuff damaging my car, I decided to move my shop to the basement. Plus, my new truck won't have to live outside!

I used some bondo to fil in some gaps, and then it was ready for epoxy and paint.


https://youtu.be/4tvlL8a7w94

Shortly after, I picked up a delivery. Because I didn't want to pay for a lift gate, I went and had them fork it into the back of my new pickup truck. Seriously, like a few days old, and now I have hellascratches in my bed. Ah well, that's a truck.Perhaps I'll get a spray-in bed liner.


Since I don't have a fork lift at home (wha? doesn't everybody?), and this thing weighs a bunch, I had to disassemble the mill in the bed of my truck in order to move it into my basement shop.

Here is where I realized that my allen key set was not sturdy enough to break the column bolts. So, I lifted the base, table, and column out of my truck and down onto the ground. Ended up with a huge bruise on my arm, but I was successful. I then went to HF and picked up a set of capable allen keys.


I strapped the table and base to a hand truck and hauled it down stairs, then the same with the column. The head I could carry, fortunately. It fits on the base correctly, and looks pretty good. This is about the time I'm realizing I need walls. The vapor barrier rips easily, and dust sticks to it.


My HF mini-lathe fits on the stand quite nicely, at least with the short bed.


Walls! Instead of using drywall, I used OSB so that I could hang whatever I wanted from wherever. (This wanting to cut some metal project sure is ballooning into something huge)

I ran a new circuit to the breaker box for the wall outlets, since the basement circuit isn't big enough to run the shop. Heck just running the table saw for the OSB at the same time as the vacuum required me unplugging the kegerator I keep in the other basement room (my brewery).

I put the lights on the existing basement circuit, as I didn't want to be left in the dark should I pop the shop breaker. Click for a quick panoramic of the shop after I moved all my tools from the garage in.


My grinding and drilling station. I figure this is nice and compact and will suffice for grinding lathe tools or small bits.


In the mean time, my motors and drivers arrived. These things are huge. They're not steppers, but rather closed loop servo motors whose drivers can utilize step pulse and dir signals from the controller. They're great because they'll never miss a step, they know if they've crashed and can alert the controller, they're much quieter than steppers, and they can even be used to sense end-of-travel for soft-endstop capabilities! Compared to the NEMA17 motors I use, these things are obscene. (86HB250-118B+HB860D)


I got a killer deal on a 48V 10A unregulated linear power supply from ebay. It goes along with some level shifters, a relay board, and a Beaglebone Black for control.


I used an old ATX desktop computer case which is great since the sides come off making access to the wiring easy. There is room for another motor controllers, and a smaller spindle controller if I rearrange some things. I printed some mounts for the beaglebone and the relay board. For now I'm using a solderless breadboard for the level shifters. At some point, I'll carve a BB cape that has all those on there with proper connectors.


Since I had the motors, I could start working on the mounts. Hoss' plans were invaluable here. Using them I was able to model scaled up versions of his mounts for my NEMA34 motors and lovejoy couplers. Using the G0704.com DVD plans, I was confident that my model would line up and work on the first try. And it does.


I like using PETG because of it's superior layer adhesion, strength, and hardness. It prints a bit messy, and this brand's filament was so varying in width the print wasn't the best looking thing. Still works fine though.


Using a new brand of PETG, this time in clear, I printed the Y bearing block which came out great, much better than the blue.


I printed the Y motor mount as well. Gorgeous. I love the way PETG sparkles. And these things are strong, I could use them as jack lifts for my truck. I wouldn't, but i could.


Some things don't always go quite right. Ace hardware, while having an excellent selection of bolts, did not have any in the length I needed. So i got to make my own. Some all-thread, red thread lock, a nut and voila! I should have made the captive nut holes deeper.


A bit of grinding, and they're the worlds most expensive caphead bolt, but dangit they work.


I mounted the motors up, and they look great!


Lines up nicely, and is plenty sturdy. I was worried that the heavy heavy motors would cause flex in the printed block, but, nah. I could set some pretty heavy stuff on that motor before they started sagging.


The underside of the mounts are open to aid in lining up and linking the lovejoy couplers:


Lookin' good so far!


Up next is modeling Z. Again, Hoss' plans saved the day, everything lined up perfectly, and my motor standoff heights and captive nut holes made it so I could actually use off-the-shelf metric caphead screws.



A quick zoom-out of the base of my printer. I use a webcam and broadcast my printer so friends can watch and I can monitor progress while I'm away from it.


Since my Z mount was done printing, it was time to reassemble the column. I drilled and tapped 4 holes based on Hoss' tramming video, though I should have measured better, one of the set screws doesn't even hit the base. Oh well.


I turned some brass grubs from a brass screw i had so that i wasn't marring the base with the set screws. Necessary? Maybe not.


Z-Mount! I'll need to modify the plan if I do a Z-flip mod, but I think i'll likely be on metal mounts by then.


Assembled. I got everything back together, but not trammed yet, as the electronics still needed a bit of work.


So I wired it up. bigger mess once the wires are in there.. I'll probably print some wire channel and clean it up once I get some plugs and jacks so I don't have to have the motor cables and power cable screwed directly into their respective devices.


Here's a quick vid of the shop progress.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mVgZIh2HHUA

The first cut! Technically this is the 2nd cut, but the first one was aborted because it was obvious something was out of tram. I re-trammed correctly using Hoss' method, and had much more success. Using a Chinese face mill I found on ebay, I made my first rough cut, and did a finishing pass. The bottom half of this piece shows my rough cut (0.005doc, 25in/min), and the top half shows the finishing cut (0.002doc, 7in/min). I'm really pleased with these results. The hatch-mark on the rouging side shows that i really have the spindle axis perpendicular to the table plane, and the lack of machine marks on the finish side is just... pretty.



So that's pretty much it, up to this point. I've got the Hoss phase-3 parts remixed for Nema34 on the X&Y, and now I'm working on making those parts.



Cat tax!


You wouldn't download a cat!

But you would go and buy Hoss' DVD! g0704.com. I recommend him not just for CNC conversion, but I plan on using his plans for a belt-drive conversion as well as extending the y-travel by a few inches.

I plan on continuing to add to the album as I improve the machine, but I figured now was a good time to post it here.

[CFLBob]

Wow! I'm extremely impressed. Did you use Rustoleum "NeverWet" on your wood base? I've never seen anything else bead up water like that stuff does.

At the moment, I'm working on the conversion, too, but making the motor mounts and such out of aluminum. I had started out to do phase 1, then got convinced I needed to switch to ballscrews and I'm in the midst of changing over to the phase 3 mounts. In place of your 3D printer, I'm using a CNC'ed Sherline mill. It's light duty, but the parts are easily in its envelope and light duty just means I let it take its time making the cuts.

If those motor mounts are strong enough to use when made of plastic, though, that's a game changer. There seem to be lots of sub-$1000 printers on the market. If they could do this, it could be worthwhile to get one of those.

I'm getting lots of ideas from your post, so thanks a billion.


Bob

[joemosfet]

Thanks Bob!

Yeah, NeverWet. I don't expect it to last very long, and it's not as oleophobic as they'd like you to believe, so way oils, and tapping oils could potentially break the coating down prematurely. That being said, it's stupid easy to apply.

While these mounts are strong enough to drive the machine at full speed, I was at the edge of travel, and made a slow move the wrong direction, and horrendous cracking noises were heard from the mount. Fortunately, the servo motors were smart enough to know that a fault had happened and they shut down before damage occurred, but my guess is that if I was using 8.4Nm steppers, I'd be printing a new motor mount right now. The only damage I saw was a crack along the side of one of the captive nut holes. The crack didn't seem to affect anything, but I still superglued and clamped it while it dried.

PETG is super strong, and has great layer adhesion. My parts were only printed with 60% infill, i think, so if I had increased that to even 80%, it would be a lot stronger. I bet milled Delrin would work even better.

Joe

[jalessi]

Joe,

What drivers are you using?

Very nice work so far!

Jeff...

[Fastest1]

Nice work.

[joemosfet]

Thanks guys!

Jeff, the driver came with the servo motor, as they're a tuned matched pair, 86HB250-118B+HB860D.


Joe

[travis_cnc]

Joe,

Thanks for posting your stand / pan plans before. I used your ideas along with Russ' as well to build mine and I am now to the point where I am ready to epoxy / fiberglass my pan but was wanting to coat the top of the epoxy with something to avoid the dreaded yellowing.

I was curious as to the long term durability of the NeverWet product you applied to your mill pan.
Did you ever re-coat it or are you still using the original application?

[joemosfet]

So far the initial application is holding up fine, save for a few spots where i've dropped 123 blocks and dented the epoxy. The epoxy is nice and thick, though, so even with the knocks and bumps from tools, it's still waterproof.

[travis_cnc]

What kind of coolant are you running? Did you say somewhere I didn't see?