[Schuimpge]

Small update. Started with a new table for the router. Had enough extrusions at home to build it from with very little cutting necessary.
Later can add plexiglass cover and things easily.

Total uprights will be 5 on each long side and 2 middle uprights on the short sides of the table.
Instead of using diagonal supports, I'll use 5mm 150x150mm Aluminium plates on every connecting extrusion and all connections have been secured with steel angle-brackets as well.
6 Wheels and Adjustable feet to make it all stable and flat.

Might even put a thin steel sheet below the router and form that into a catch for coolant, but not sure on that yet.



This weekend should have the table finished, then take the router off the old stand and dismantle it before moving the new stand with router into place.

Cheers,
Luc

[Schuimpge]

Finished the new table (well, almost, I still need to add some more plates and 1 crossmember), tore down the old one, put the router on the new table and rolled it into place.
Much more space and very strong and stable. No vibrations and movement already, even without the end-plates I still need to add.
Cheers,
Luc






- - - Updated - - -

[Schuimpge]

Love those long weekends.. Made some real good progress. Did notice that with every step forward, the next step becomes increasingly more difficult and time-consuming. Basics are all done properly, but now most of the work has to be done very precisely or it will just make the machine exponentially more imprecise in the end. A half mm out of square will become 5mm or more over the course of 1000mm.

But ok, there's several ways to build in correction points, one of the most important being the Gantry plates that connect the X-rails carriages to the gantry itself.
My aim is of course to maximise the stiffness of the machine, for which I made the gantry and the bed as strong and heavy as possible. With minimum amount of precision tools available, I had to make sure the that the rails where parallel to each other, which took some time, but in the end worked out very well. 1st rail fixed to the table was easy. After that, I fixed the 2nd rail with only one bolt and temporary mounted the carriages with the gantry on top.
rolling that back and forth helped to drill and fix another bolt at the far end of the rails and slowly worked my way through the other 14 bolts

That took me all of Thursday and Friday! Lots of checking, drilling and tapping, mostly through the 5mm steel.


All still fitted loose with clamps to check on being square. I put the long plate on a double folded piece of paper first, clamped it and removed the paper.
Table to the gantry is perfectly straight front to back. Left to right there's about 1.5mm difference, but that can be sorted with a piece of sheet-metal as a shim.


Overview. Rail on the left and rail on top of the gantry still loose. Dreaded the next day drilling and tapping those 32 holes.
Lots of thinking went into those gantry-connections with the rails before I started with that.

So to connect the gantry, I had to come up with a solution that let me fix the gantry to the carriages without having to take the carriages off the rails itself.
It also had to allow me to make minor corrections if the gantry was not square to the table and of course once it's screwed down tightly, it should withstand very high torque-forces from the router, the motors and its own dead weight when it's up to speed.

Solution I came up with consists of 4 components.
- Carriages
- Carriage plate
- Gantry plate
- Gantry
The Carriage plate has 17 holes in it, 8 holes for the carriage bolts, 6 holes for bolts that screw into the Gantry plate and 3 through-holes access bolts that hold the Gantry down to the Gantry Plate.
The Gantry plate has 6 tapped pockets that hold the carriage plate screws and 6 holes for bolts that go into the gantry.
Of course I had to make 2 of each plate..lol...but the result is a very strong sandwiched connection that allowed for easy install and now that it's fitted, I only need to take out 6 screws to remove the carriage-plate (for example if one fails).. and don't need to take the gantry off the table...


First test-fittings to get ideas.


Carriage Plate drilled and fixed to the carriages. Even though it looks simple, each carriage takes quite some time to simply torque down the screws and ensure very smooth movement.


Gantry plate from the top. 6 blind, tapped holes in the bottom, 6 through-holes for bolts that hold the gantry.
(And yes, that small black spot on the lower left is where I did not notice my depth-stop had come loose, so it went through just that)


After having it all drilled and checked, mounting went quite easily.


Side-view. The gantry has been put slightly over/behind the carriage. This is to gain some table space, but also, with the Z-carriage mounted, the spindle and then the operating torque-forces, the weight should be nicely centred between the two carriages.


After playing a lot with the gantry..(just pushing it with a finger and here that weight rushing over the rails is fantastic...), it was time to check on the Y-axis rails. So after lots of checking and adjusting the table to get it as horizontal as possible, I started to first get a Z-axis carriage done.
Because I have the 1200mm rails on the gantry, I decided to maximise the space between the top-carriages to get more stability and strength.
With the 3 20mm Aluminium plates I'm sure to have a very strong base for the Z-axis to work from.
Likely will use 2 square rails that I have or some slightly longer ones that are still in the factory.
The other option I have is using round rails with 4 linear bearings. Less precise and stable I think from playing a bit with them.

Turns out there's still some adjustment to do on the rails. There's a slight dip in the centre if I move the carriage from left to right. So drawing a straight line would be impossible to do. That will be quite some fiddling with spacers, but got it reduced from 1.5-2mm down to about 0.5mm already.
For woodworking that should be acceptable, but better to iron that out completely and be done with it.

Overall very good progress, and my original aim to get 150mm clearance between gantry and table: 155mm.. not bad an estimate..lol.
Total weight of the gantry when its all done should be around 60kg. Its really amazing that you can move that so lightly with those rails.
Did put 4 hard-stops in, or that gantry would be on the floor very fast.. (or worse, on my toes..)

Nothing much will be done for coming 2 weeks I guess. Next weekend friends over for a barbecue...
But time to order the screws and motors..



cheers,
Luc

[Schuimpge]

Page 5 and I hardly see any comments?!

Was hoping to get comments, if only to know if I'm still doing ok.
I'm using a very different approach from the norm (drawings and order to measure), but really hoped for a bit more discussion.

Looking at the bright side, might be doing good, but don't know for sure..

Figured out the alignment issue on the Y-axis. Almost fixed with that.

Cheers
Luc

[fretman_2]

I'm not getting many comments on my build now that I'm getting along with it. I take that to mean carry on...you're doing just fine. I think this bunch has pretty much seen it all. I will add a comment however...you're build is looking great!

[pirate323i]

Page 5 and I hardly see any comments?!

Was hoping to get comments, if only to know if I'm still doing ok.
I'm using a very different approach from the norm (drawings and order to measure), but really hoped for a bit more discussion.

Looking at the bright side, might be doing good, but don't know for sure..

Figured out the alignment issue on the Y-axis. Almost fixed with that.

Cheers
Luc

Makes for great reading!
(I'm a little jealous of your access to material!!) Keep up the good work!

[Schuimpge]

I'm not getting many comments on my build now that I'm getting along with it. I take that to mean carry on...you're doing just fine. I think this bunch has pretty much seen it all. I will add a comment however...you're build is looking great!

Hello Fretman, thanks for the comment.. appreciated. At least I know someone is following it.
Checked your latest progress just now, you're making good progress, looks fantastic.
Really like the flat table mount, makes for a very clean and uncluttered look.

Way behind where you are right now, but hope to catch up to that point somewhere end October...lol.

Cheers,
Luc

[Schuimpge]

Thanks Pirate.
I see you have comments dating back a few years already.. Did you start your own build thread over the years? Don't seem to find any over here.
Cheers,
Luc

[pirate323i]

Thanks Pirate.
I see you have comments dating back a few years already.. Did you start your own build thread over the years? Don't seem to find any over here.
Cheers,
Luc

No i havent put together a thread... my plans halted for many years! But i am back to building when i get the time. Perhaps be running by the end of the year!?

[Schuimpge]

No i havent put together a thread... my plans halted for many years! But i am back to building when i get the time. Perhaps be running by the end of the year!?

Look forward to see it taking shape.. Running by end of the year? For my machine would be doable, but you'd be very fast I think if you're starting your build from scratch.

Cheers,
Luc

[gregoose]

Looks like an awesome build so far! Keep up the good work.

Sent from my SCH-I545 using Tapatalk

[Schuimpge]

Small update only...

Spent the last 2 evenings with spacers to get the Y-axis moving in a straight line.
Still some work to do, but it's hardly measurable anymore with the limited tools I can currently use for that.
There's other factors that might play a role as well, but as it stands there's about 0.25 - 0.3 mm play, or 0.01"
I will need to finish the Z-axis first for getting that correctly measured as it's still a very rudimentary build of 3 aluminium plates and 4 rail carriages, so I'll leave it for now and start concentrating on other parts of the machine.

Ordered my motors and screws. That finished my purchases pretty much for now, not cheap but got a good deal I think.
Of course have to see them arriving first to really know if the quality is ok.
RM1605--1200mm ballscrew $36.00 3x $108.00
RM1605--300mm ballscrew $9.00 1x $9.00
RM1605 ball nut $9.00 4x $36.00
RM1605 ball nut housing $5.00 4x $20.00
BF12/BK12 end support $18.00 4x $72.00
8*10mm coupling $5.00 4x $20.00
NEMA 23 Motors $ 172 (of which $58 is shipping)
That's USD 437 including shipping.
Add the rails I bought earlier...USD 206 including shipping
Drivers and boards and odds and ends, then I'll end up spending about USD 1,000 for the machine but of course keeping in mind that the structure itself is pretty much free.

And then still have to wait and see if it all works or I'll end up with an expensive lump of steel and aluminium...lol.
But if it all works, then I guess I've scored a pretty good deal for a machine that size.
That's not the motivator of course, as the whole building process has been tremendous fun so far.

Cheers,
Luc

[Schuimpge]

Looks like an awesome build so far! Keep up the good work.

Sent from my SCH-I545 using Tapatalk

thanks Gregoose. It has the looks to me...sure.. now only to check if it has the brains to do what I want it to do...lol..

Cheers,
Luc

[Schuimpge]

Another weekend passed.. Time for an update. Had limited time in the shop only with friends coming over for a barbecue. That of course also limited the Sunday by sleeping off the hang-over but still got some stuff done, even though my brains where only working at half speed on Sunday.

The Z-axis carriage was not making me happy. Found that the aluminium blocks used where all of slightly different heights. That in turn leads to misalignments for the router lift when fitted.
So I decided to start over with another 1 piece aluminium plate and a new top-plate as well. The carriage is much wider and larger now which makes for a very stable platform to fit the rails.

Next I started with drilling the blocks to mount on the z-axis carriages. I'm using linear tracks that I had cleaned some time ago and they are very low profile, so I needed to create more space for the ballscrew to fit. So I've used 2 aluminium blocks and then fitted a large plate on top where the router will be fitted on.
All runs very smooth and I can start measuring out the position for the rails this week.

My orders are expected to arrive this week..very fast delivery..getting excited about it. Next weekend will be lots of shop-time I guess.


New block for the Z-axis. Much cleaner and better.


Large front plate...


Backside.. Not sure yet on the top, if I will cut that off or not.. depends on the motor fitting, will see that later.


Rails and front for the Router plate...Rails will be screwed onto the Carriage in the previous 2 pictures.

Cheers,
Luc

[Schuimpge]

Got some more work done yesterday evening. Started measuring out the rails and fixed them to the back-plate. All nicely aligned, not too much of problems.
still need to drill and tap 20 more screws to secure the rails. When all is done and working, I guess the Z-axis construction will have about 80 screws in total.
Also once more took off the lower rail and finalised for now on the spacers, it's as straight as I could wish for I think.. Let's see if that holds true when the motors are driving it all.


Rails done with 4 screws for now.


Front plate on.. It's heavy, but moves as smooth as you can imagine..


Side-view. Blocks used as spacers to create space for the ball-screw.

Now it's waiting for the screws and drilling many more holes and tapping them.

Cheers,
Luc

[pirate323i]

Got some more work done yesterday evening. Started measuring out the rails and fixed them to the back-plate. All nicely aligned, not too much of problems.
still need to drill and tap 20 more screws to secure the rails. When all is done and working, I guess the Z-axis construction will have about 80 screws in total.
Also once more took off the lower rail and finalised for now on the spacers, it's as straight as I could wish for I think.. Let's see if that holds true when the motors are driving it all.


Rails done with 4 screws for now.


Front plate on.. It's heavy, but moves as smooth as you can imagine..


Side-view. Blocks used as spacers to create space for the ball-screw.

Now it's waiting for the screws and drilling many more holes and tapping them.

Cheers,
Luc

Looking good!

[fretman_2]

Nice looking machine!!!!

[Schuimpge]

Packaged very well, took some work to unpack it, but all well and complete.
Put a screw together with ball-nut, housing, bearing blocks and coupling, very tight fit, can't feel any play and moves silky smooth..











Now waiting for the Motors. Should be today.
After that, start working on fitting everything and test the motors with the drivers and Arduino.

Cheers,
Luc

[Schuimpge]

Nice looking machine!!!!

Thanks Fretman, I just can't wait to catch up with your machine.
Will still take 2 months I guess to get everything running, but with motors coming in today, I finally get a moving machine in my sights.

Cheers,
Luc

- - - Updated - - -

Thanks Pirate, hope you'll be able to start with yours soon.
Cheers,
Luc

[Schuimpge]

Motors arrived..
Nicely packed.. Now start working on brackets to fit them..
Heavy little things..





I'm going to order pulleys for the X-axis motors so I can connect them in case there's missing steps or other problems happening.

Cheers,
Luc