[CaptainVee]

About a month ago I started a new build to replace my current router which is about 950x550x250 mm.

The design concept is by a gentleman who offered to do the milling of my gantry after he disapproved my plans for an epoxy concrete design.
He built a similar model for himself in steel, with hand scraped contact surfaces where that would help precision.

Mine will be an all aluminium build, partially bonded with epoxy and bolted everywhere.
Structure is of 100x100x4 mm extrusion, with some tooling plate added where precision is needed so surfaces can be milled flat.
Bed is 30 mm tooling plate fitted to a precision milled support frame.

The thing will be powered by 4 2 Nm closed loop steppers and Chinese 1610 ballscrews and 20 mm hiwin rails.

Here are some pics:


Frame is standing freely for the first time


First beam bonding session


Legs ready for bonding


Support frame (150x20 mm tooling plate) mounted


Bed placed on frame


Checking flatness of the setup with tin foil (Hans made me a straight edge too!)


Second bonding session of the beam


Preparing the beam-legg connector plate for bonding


Beam after bonding

[awerby]

That's an interesting idea; I didn't know you could glue aluminum. What kind of glue did you use? Was any particular surface treatment recommended prior to bonding?

[Fluxion]

Very interesting build! I'm waiting to see more and that table surface is Beautiful!

[CaptainVee]

Just plain epoxy with some cotton fibers mixed in.
Surfaces sanded just before glueing so there is bare aluminium to adhere to.

[CaptainVee]

Attachment 337924

Last Thursday I was at Hans's again to surface the face of the gantry.

It was a great introduction to precise aluminium milling.
We used a 50 mm mill head for the 100 mm faces.

Going one way made the surface expand so much that the gantry curved up so that the next pass would take away slightly more material.
We then had to wait for the thing to cool before the next pass would be done.

We made about 6 passes in total, the first taking off 3 tenth of a mm, the last taking off 1/100 of a mm. That still gave a visible difference between passes but when checking with a 1/00 straight edge we (well Hans) concluded that straightness was better than 0.03 mm

[CaptainVee]

After a lot of small steps I could suddenly take a big one:



Still a lot of work before I can attach the stuff definitively but still, a nice step to take.

[pirate323i]

After a lot of small steps I could suddenly take a big one:



Still a lot of work before I can attach the stuff definitively but still, a nice step to take.

Looks great! Certainly a novel way of construction. Should be very stiff!

[asuratman]

Good construction/. This is the lego way...

[CaptainVee]

After doing some work for customers I could again do a bit of work on the machine. I now have a drive on the gantry:

[CaptainVee]

After a lot of work that will end up invisible, there is something nice to see again:




The 4th rail has been attached and the mdf samples of the YZ plate and z-axis have been fitted.
No real problems with the positions of the holes, bring on some aluminium!

[CaptainVee]

The YZ plate and Zaxis have been made and the gantry is nearing completion.
The "feet" and "shoes" have been bonded to the legs:





Bonded stiffeners and the spindle mount is also fitted

[CaptainVee]

Between build images, here are some of the first movements:

[CaptainVee]

And here a test for acceleration, after some tweaking at 4000 mm/s/s:

[CaptainVee]

With help from Dabit, I have added the 4th axis:



12 Nm closed loop stepper at 230 volt, running as lathe as well as for indexing

[80gus]

nice build, glue is interesting. like the idea of full aluminum