[fr0st]

The Rainnea gantry router inspired my thinking on this one.
Sofare I only have some small steppers I've ordered for the project. For the 3 stardard axis I have the following -
107.8 mN.m Holding torque
24.5 mN.m pull out torque
16.7 mN.m Pull in torque

And for the two rotational axis -
The holding torque is 78.4mN.m
pull-out torque 27.6mN.m/200pps
pull-in torque 26.5mN.m/200pps

Both motors are 4 phase, 7.5 deg stepping.
Speed is not an issue for this so I figured they can be geared down for more torque. Also, after taking apart a bipolar motor, I'm fairly confident that can be rewound for a lower resistance, greater torque/speed at the cost of heat.

I'm still unsure on the size of the spindle motor (wattage and RPM) for say a 1mm endmill?
Also and comments about the practicality of such a project would be greatly appreciated.

[ynneb]

Welcome frOst, thats a full on post for a first timer here.
I did a quick search on the Rainnea router you mentioned. It looks cool.
For those who are wondering about it see here. http://www.rainnea.com/cnc_support.htm
That looks like a very complicated project to make. Have you made anything like this b4?

[fr0st]

I've done a far bit of brazing and worked with stepper motors, basic robotics stuff but not a cnc.
Electronics is no problem as I'm fairly proficient with Pics (turbo cnc have a PIC project already). I'm still undecided on software to take advantage of the 5 axis design.

For machine design I figured a Gantry type would be the best since i'm building from scratch but have C axis as a rotary table instead of rotating the motor. It would leave more room to accomodate gearing and I'd imagine it would leave a better finish when doing spherical objects.

Thanks
Matt

[vacpress]

frost - consider mastercam, gibbs pro, visualmill, or, for an "experimental" approach, try the "cnc toolkit"

.

[calkai1]

Besides the mechanical works!!

Can I use Rhino 3d to design the 3D surface, imported to Mastercam, post to Mach 2. Output to 5 Gecko
and then 5 Stepper motors to operate the 5 axis mini mill?

Is it correct concept?? or actually Mach2 could not handle the G-code for 5 axis from Mastercam??
Maybe I should start to try it!
Why the price of CNC controller is dramatically different???