Re: MY DIY CNC PLASMA design stage
Here is a plasma primer that covers a lot of ground that will save a lot of mistakes.
Plasma Cutting Primer for LinuxCNC Users (full disclosure, I wrote it)
Pay attention to the short mention of ideal movement distance per rev. I got away with 30mm/rev but only just.
I'm not convinced a spring loaded pinion drive is a good idea. If you can build to accurate dimensions, its not necessary and can cause excessive wear.
Here is another thread where I asked bout spring loaded pinion drives and there were a couple of very experienced commercial plasma builders both said do not do it. So I didn't!
https://forum.linuxcnc.org/30-cnc-ma...d-pinion-drive
I have never regretted that decision. You will note that they saved me from making a mistake with direct drive pinions too!
I think that once you get into it, you will find the additional cost of a precision build is not that much more than a ghetto build (which was my initial plan)
Also make your table as solid as possible. I used 4" x 4" steel square section. Also pay attention to the rigidity of the gantry ends and the forces from inertia that will be applied to them.
Keep your gantry as light as possible.
You can build a high performance, accurate stepper driven machine with careful matching of motors, drivers and forces.
Mine accelerates at 0.5 g and rapid traverses at 36 m/min (1420 in/min) I did dial back the X axis from 0.8g which is up there with Tesla ludicrous mode!
Rod Webster
www.vehiclemods.net.au