[peteeng]

Hi All - I have kicked off the design of a full sheet router. It will be mainly aluminium/plywood laminates. I'd like to get a grout or carbon fibre part in there as well maybe the saddle. Its a collaborative build. I'll be sending cad files to the Maker and making/supplying some of the parts myself such as the standard Z axis assembly from Scoot. He has a medium size router and wants to upscale. I'm up to the 4th round of Lankies design, will sort round 5 soon. My current push is into the gantry. I want to do it in laminated ply/al which I'm calling Lamio. So I've modelled the Lamio vs Scoots steel gantry to see how it goes. The Lamio is far stiffer all round & I expect damper. So its 10mm al / 70mm ply / 10mm al. Lamio is slightly heavier then the steel version at the moment but it can be made from hollowed parts to get rid of the 4kg.... Scoots steel version is approx 100m wide, 80mm deep and 3mm thick... As usual the lozenging of the section is the issue. The Lamio gantry is 150mm wide and 90mm deep. Since Scoots gantry is tried and trusted I expect the Lamio gantry to be even better. I've come back to aluminium laminates with wood or foam core a few times. It always stacks up well. Peter

The current thrust with Lanky us to use belts for the long axis, a 3D printer board for the electronics and as many composite parts as possible.

[peteeng]

Hi All - I'm up to version 5. Things are settling down. Still having trouble with assemblies and joints but I think that's because of the distinction with components and bodies. Plus preselection seems to help... Its footprint is getting bigger 3mx1.6m but I may squeeze that down once I get a few more things settled. Happy with the column will do some FE on that soon. Z axis is now important to add. I have a brush along the sides if you can those spikes.... Peter

[peteeng]

Evening all - I have been contemplating using two motors on one belt for Lanky. This will reduce the belt length and may improve its stiffness. But I have a couple of mental issues with it so I set up a small test today on one of my small machines being rebuilt. I tied some weights to the gantry and found that the two motors lifted more weight then a single so that was good. The small N17 motors are rated at 0.9Nm at stall and they lifted 5kg which works out at ~0.87Nm on the move. But I noticed one of the belt runs tended to be slack. I figured that a continuous belt or a U drive belt is one run. The twin motor system is 3 runs and one of these runs will always be "slack". The object of correct preload is that the "slack" side never goes slack as the preload takes that up. But this is not possible as the driven pulleys do not allow load to pass by them. Since lanky is potentially going to a customer I don't want to do something experimental so it seems going my usual continuous design or going U drive is the go. So as stiffer is best U Drive wins by a length of belt.... So with that settled onward and upward...

[peteeng]

Hi All - This evening I did some work on the columns. Since they will have pockets for a motor now. I made a solid column as a reference and pushed the top 1mm. I also made a laminate column and a webbed one. The webbed was softest the laminate in the middle and the solid the stiffest. So will sort that as I add the motor. I pushed and pulled it to check the stiffness was the same in both directions , which it was. Peter

[peteeng]

Hi All - I've fleshed out Lanky No6 general arrangement. I don't like the belts at table level due to getting dust in them (and having to load sheets across them) but that's the way with this design. I'm going to revisit a long high rail design. The gantry being twice as long has to be 8x stiffer than the short one to provide the same deflection at the centre. So the steel 95x95x3mm one I have on Scoot would have to be 150x150x7mm thick steel to be same rigidity at centre. Not bad really. I can get 150,160 and 200mm wide aluminium extrusion plate to make the gantry from.... more thought needed. Peter

[peteeng]

Evening All - Put more CAD time into Lanky today. Coming along nicely. There is a family resemblance but I like the high rail design better. I've put a coping rail along the side to protect the belt when side loading. Now to work on the gantry drives... Up to variant No7...Will start doing formal part numbers soon. This is much easier in Fusion as when you change the part name its still associated. In Alibre if you change the part name you have to re associate the part in the assemblies.... Peter

[peteeng]

Hi All- Lanky has graduated to a folder! Must be getting serious now! Peter

[peteeng]

Hello All - I'm at Version 10 and the GA is looking good. Now to start detailing out the parts and generate drawings. Have to decide on its aesthetics as well. I like art deco or organic but maybe brutalist is the go this time....Peter