[digits]

That's looking good project5k - I wish I could weld!

How are you going to mount your mill on that - you need to be very careful to ensure that no drips can run off the mill mount and outside the edges of the drip tray - I made that mistake on my first table design -it was very messy, very quickly!

At the moment I suspend my mill over my coolant tray on box-section - I consider the end of the box-section to be within the 'wet-area' and so I make sure that any coolant running off it can find its way back to the drain.

[project5k]

the plan is to have 4 feet comming up from the bottom of the pan, put a plate across the 4 legs, then bolt the mill to that plate.. the legs will have a drain hole in the bottom of them so that any coolant that finds it way into them can drain into the pan and so on.. this way the coolant wont have a pathway to the outside...

I'm still trying to decide if i want to just use elcheapo shower curtains for the walls for now, or if i want to go anead and invest in some polycarbonate... i'm thinking the shower curtains is the way to go cause untill i have the machine all up and running, i imagine i'll wanna be able to get all around it to work on this or that... plus with the curtains, if one gets messed up, $1 later, and i have new walls...

[project5k]

just got the email from paypal saying that the shipping info has been sent from cnc fusion.. i was really surprised to find out that they were so close to me.. just outside houstin... i cant wait.. it'll be the first time i get to hold a ballscrew and ballnut in my hand and feel how smooth everyone sais that they are.. cant wait!!! oh wait, when that gets here that means i have to completly dissamble my mill.. gee i hope i dont screw something up...

[tai42]

gee i hope i don't screw something up...

Well, if you do just turn the handle the other way and it should go down. :rainfro:

Also, remember that the CNC Fusion kit uses rolled and not ground ball screws. Ground ball screws feel like butter, but rolled are still pretty darned good. (Especially compared to acme screws and at a fraction of the cost of a ground ball screw!)

[project5k]

hehehe hadn't thought of it that way...

yea, i've read that too.. but the ground screws just werent in the budget.. i had to get a little creative with a paycheck or 2 just to pull off what i have so far...and i just checked the tracking, its already in san antonio... i doubt it'll get delievered today (saturday) so i figure it'll get here monday, my day off!!

OH, and i experiemented with my coolant pumps last night with some water, and i was quite dissapointed.. the 140 gal/hr and the 60 gal/hr just didnt have the UMPH to lift the water more than about 4 feet.. which just isnt high enough... so its back to the drawing board on thoes...

i was looking on homedepot and saw that they have some "pond pumps" that do something like 3-500 gal/hr and have a lift of something like 12 feet... maby that would do the job... they were around $50..

a couple other thoughts that i had were something like a windshield washer pump.. but i'm thinking that first off it wouldnt really like to run constantly, and 2 thats pretty small so any chips and or chunks might cause a problem... or maby something like a bilge pump.. i dunno...

so i've spent the last couple hours looking at ebay, and mcmaster, harbor freight, tractor supply.. i'm just not seeing anything that really jumps out at me....

anyone have some cheap suggestions what a guy could use for a flood coolant pump?

[project5k]

ok, so heres my latest and greatest thoughts on my coolant pump situation..

in the picture you can see a crude drawing of what i'm building, the mill and the coolant tanks and traughs.. heres how i'm thinking..

my little pumps wont lift but about 4 feet of water.. the mill base is just over 2 feet above the floor.. so.. using a 160 gal/hr pump, lift coolant up to a pvc traugh, probably 3" with a slice cut out...
inside the traugh is a 68 gal/hr pump that lifts the coolant from there up and to the cutter and work piece...

since the first stage pump lifts more than the final pump, the traugh will overflow.. have the pvc positioned so that the excess flow runs out and over the edge of the pvc along the full widgh of the main pan into the bottom coolant catch pan.. this will help flush chips toward the screens over the main drain lines.. the fluid that goes through the second pump hits the work and cutter, then falls to the main pan and back to the main tank.

the end of the tubing that goes from the pump in the main tank up to the traugh will be afixed to the inside bottom of the pvc, the purpose of which being that when the pumps are turned off, the fluid will siphon back down to the main tank.. i know that not all will go, but most of it will..

also, i plan to run a fish tank air pump into the main tank to help keep it stirred so it dosent go nasty....

the main pan will have window screen over the main drains to catch the big chips.. the traugh will have the same screen over it to keep chips out but still let the fluid overflow... and then at the bottom of the main drain lines, there will be a coffee pot filter to filter out any fine particles.. i like the coffee filter cause thier cheap, plentifull, and easy to change...

thoughts? ideas? suggestions? directions to a warmer place? anything?

[project5k]

well i got some more work done on the drain pan today.. and the rest of the workbench... i drilled and tapped the drains, hooked up a couple pumps just to try them out and it works wonderfully.. i was worried that not all the liquid would drain out, but it works quite well...

also got my cncfusion kit this afternoon.. really pretty parts, and looks to be well made and well thought out... the ball nuts were already on the screws so i didnt have to deal with the little cardboard tube part, tho he did send one just incase i needed it.. and i had asked to have my z axis be a nema 23 rather than a 34 like normal, well done, and we even talked about me having to ream out the pulley for the z axis motor(normally 1/4" and my motors are all 3/8.. he did it for me!!! i havent started putting it in yet, as i dont have the rest of the computer and electronics finished, and i would like to be able to use the mill manually for a little bit longer... but from what i can see so far, its a super slick kit...

now i do have one concern.. my x and z axis ballnuts are slick as glass in thier movement.. but my y feels like the balls slide sometimes rather than circulate.. but if i put a load on them then it feels ok.. should this be something that i worrie about?

[Bajaman]

Have you looked into the Little Giant pumps? We use these pumps
on our large radial drill presses at work.
You should also have a baffled divider in your tank to seperate the return
coolant frome the pump side.Placeing a good magnet in the pump side of
tank will help keep most of the iron fines from going through the pump.
I hope this makes sence!

[project5k]

yea it makes sence, and i really like the baffle and magnet ideas.. i'll probably do something like that in addition to my coffee filter idea, just as a backup incase the coffee filter overflows, or tears or something...

[dneisler]

I am finishing up my X3 enclosure as well, 5'x3'. This is the coolant pump I was looking at. It will have to lift the coolant 4-5'. Will it get the job done?

http://www.grizzly.com/products/h8140

[project5k]

i think that will do the job nicely, i had looked at that one as well, but need to save my money for other things for now, thats why i'm playing with the tiny pond pumps..

[ViperTX]

Any new updates on installing the CNC kit?

Thanks,
Paul

[project5k]

oh yea, i've been updating in other threads, sorry, i forgot about this one, i have the kit installed, bought a computer, got some software (cam), got my geckos (203v's), and powersupply parts, and i've made a couple parts... this thing is awesome, so much more than i had hoped it could ever be. I'm actually cruzn' through sdp-si online now looking for some timing pulleys and belts to make a 4th axis,

less than .0005 backlash on any single axis(best i can measure with my $20 dial indicator), mid table rapids at mach3's max of 270IPM, reliable full travel rapids at 200IPM, no spring or counterweight z rapids at 160 reliable full travel, and all on a $30 powersupply i got off ebay. supposed to be 27V ac at the transformer, i measure 46Vdc after rectifiers and caps.

ordered a matching computer case to put all my drivers, power supplies, controlls, and stuff in.

found a 56K rpm air spindle for $10, got 2, made a mounting bracket on the machine, bolted it up and tried it out for about 20 min(then dinner was ready, and a man's gotta have his priorities, dont he )

here's the 1 of the parts i've made so far (before air spindle).. just need to media blast it and then powder coat it.... it measures 8" x 3" on 1/4 thick t6061-t65 cut at 10-15 ipm( i was playing with overiding the feed speed), .025" per pass. using 1/8" 2 flute carbide and a 1/16" 4 flute carbide

you can just barely feel the background patern with a fingernail, so i'm happy.(thats a 25% overlap pattern with the 1/8" endmill turning 2k rpm, and moving at 10 ipm.) and then faced the letters with a 3/4 4 flute HSS endmill, turning 2k rpm and moving at 5 IPM.

[cjdavis618]

What Cad and cam are you using? I'm having a terrible time coming up with something that makes sense to use. I have never dealt with cad or cam before and it is like trying to learn a new language.

[project5k]

well to make that part, i drew up plain basic 2d black and white letters in paint shop pro, then imported it into mastercam as art...

i'm still trying to figure out how to make mastercam properly use my rhino drawings.. rhino is my cad of choice.

[project5k]

so i got to digging around in the shop last night, and i came across an old electric pressure washer that was given to me cause it was "broken again" and had the cord cut off. so i got to thinking about a coolant pump.. well, i pulled the plastic case off and all i could see that was broken was the vibration mounts in the plastic case. I proceded to pulling the pump head apart to check out what inside, come to find out its a 3 piston wabble plate design. 1100 psi and 1.98 gal/min. I'm thinking that if i take the 110 motor off this, maby i can drive it with a variable speed dc motor, or maby a stepper and just control the speed to control the flow... maby one of thoes tredmill 90v dc units... hmmmm

a couple things that have occoured to me since pulling it apart to see what makes it work, one, the input is gonna have to be well screeed and filtered, i dont think that it would like having little bits of metal in there, two, i'm not yet sure if it will suck up the coolant or if i will have to arrange it so that the coolant is gravity fed into the intake port.

also, in taking it apart, and much to my inital surprise, the body of the pump was full of oil... well i didnt know this till it was already pouring out on the floor... so, my question is this, what oil should i put back inside there.. its the backside of the pistons, the thrust bearing and wobble plate lube... i would think that most anything would be ok, but i was thinking either synthetic or maby even vegetable oil just due to the possibility of contaminating the coolant if a piston seal were to leak a little... i'm not really worried about it too much cause i'm gonna use it at much lower speeds, and basically no pressure other than just lifting the head of coolant up to the mill...

another thing i was thinking about was to use some sort of an accumulator, or water hammer type setup and a small restriction to help even out the pulsations of the pump. i cant really see the pulsing being that big of a problem, but just wondering if anyone had thought about any of this...

I'm also wondering how much motor its gonna take to run this at a low speed and no presure.. i would like to direct drive it, but the original setup was gear driven, i'm thinking i can get a lovejoy on the shaft and then drive it that way.. just make up a motor mount of some sort..

thoughts, ideas, suggestions?

[BobF]

Stepper motors generate more torque at low speeds than at high. I would bet you could direct drive with a stepper. You probably get Mach to drive it as a fourth axis and just add a line of Gcode to run at a constant speed.

[balsaman]

I would say forget the pressure washer and get a fish pond pump.

If you must use this pump, vegetable oil may not be good, it will go rancid. I would try motor oil.

E

[project5k]

i would probably just use the coolant control in mach to turn an enable on and off, and save the axis drives for actual axis, then use an external freq gen to generate the step pulses.. how to control it isnt the real issue, i'm trying to get the fluid to move first...

i did some more thinking and got to thinking hey, what about a gear pump, like a small block chevy oil pump.. thier like 15 bucks, and live in a pretty harsh environment.. now i know that they just use bushings, and use thier own oil pressure to lubricate that bushing, but the coolant is a lubricant, so hmmm 15 bucks i can afford to try it if the pressure washer pump dosent work out... i'm just wondering how fast i'm gonna have to turn it to get any real lift outta it, cause in an engine the oil is lots thicker, so theres less internal fluid slippage around the gears...

[Glennza]

Or just visit Harbor Freight and pick up a 45305 (on sale now for $5.99) or a 45303 ($9.99 regular price) pump. When the built-in coolant pump went out on the Cinninatti horizontal mill at school, we put one of these in a 5 gallon bucket, added some vinyl hose and kept on milling. If you want to go high tech, add some line-loc and a flow valve.

Building your own out of junk parts might be more fun, but this will quick and cheap.

Glenn