[mbronkalla]

I am building a router with a mix of aluminum extrusions and steel. Structure:
x beams, legs and risers for the Y carriage are Bosch-Rexroth 9090H. Legs are bolted on with Bosch 90 mm corner brackets
Welded cross members are 2x2 x 3/16" . These provide the leg braces in the Y direction. This was welded up by using one of the x axis rails and legs set t the appropriate width as the jig
Y beam / gantry is 6x6x1/4" 66" long with 5x 3/8 diagonal steel rods welded in per Dave Malicky's suggestion - CNC Router for Hardwoods: Evaluation and Questions #125. The faces are 1x1/4" HRS that was drum sanded to final thickness and finish and then glued on the beam with West system epoxy and colloidal silica filler.
Other Cross tubes are 2x2x1/8" HRS
X and Y linear rails are 15mm NSK

The Y beam / gantry was bolted on today and used to align the front linear rail. The rear rail was the reference, which was aligned to a groove in the x rail extrusion. Overall I have 56" of x axis travel. Y would end up at about 54"
The gantry moves nicely
Attachment 267136

[daniellyall]

I would reinforces the legs a bit better

[wizard]

Looking nice so far except for one thing. That is the arrangement of the legs has me concerned about the machine rolling over which would be bad.

[mbronkalla]

Thanks. I have been toying with doing that, adding diagonals form the legs towards the center under the side rails. I can easily weld up the pieces but now my outside work area is buried in a foot of snow.
The leg spacing seems fine. I was climbing up on it repeatedly yesterday and there was no signs of tipping (I weigh 230 lbs). Legs are 3' apart. I also plan to bolt the whole thing to the floor once I am done. Right now I have a feeling I may still have to move it a few times (despite it being nearly 500lbs so far) to get some pieces attached.. Bolting it down not only helps stability but takes out vibration. With my small 9" lathe I saw a huge improvement in cut performance once it was bolted down

[mbronkalla]

Yaxis / gantry rails mounted on. One high spot on the lower rail (z direction by about a few thousandths). A few more passes, check with straightedge and a little pressure while screwing down and it is running well.
Z axis is built and the first of the stepper motors is mounted. There were a few mis-steps along the way, such as the ball screw mounts not fitting between the rails. Redrill the holes - I don't know how I tuned 120 mm center to center into 100mm but I did).
In the end no real harm done, just more chips on the floor and extra holes. I would have probably done well to prototype in MDF.
The Z carriage with the ball screw can be pushed up or down by hand without the stepper motor attached. Stepper mount turned out perfectly. The coupler is rigid aluminum. I through bored 15/64" for the motor shaft, then 8mm for the ball screw and final ream to .251" for the motor shaft. Fits nicely.

[mbronkalla]

First motion.
Using Mach4, Ethernet Smooth stepper and Leadshine MX4660
I purchased the motors and controller hardware form Automation Technology. John was helpful and even did a free saturday delivery to get the last parts to me for weekend building fun.
Configuration was a pain but I got help from the Mach forum from Daniellyall and he got me set in the right direction today.
So I now have the Y and Z carriages moving.

[daniellyall]

the vid of it working is all i need in thanks and I buy all my cnc stuff from Automation Technology John is really helpful and he has the same stuff as everyone else and changes a ok price

also some bad news for ya you have Z and X going Y is the other direction front to back I think that's where you went wrong you had the wrong motors set

[mbronkalla]

Interesting thought.
Up until I started the testing, I had always been looking at the machine from the side - facing the white wall which is on my right in the video. Based on that I have thought of the x axis as the double driven long axis which is als the bottom and longest, the gantry carriage as the Y.
Your post makes me wonder if that is not the norm and will just cause communication problems with others builders.
What is the most common labeling for th axis carriage , screw and motor mounted on the gantry?

[louieatienza]

Interesting thought.
Up until I started the testing, I had always been looking at the machine from the side - facing the white wall which is on my right in the video. Based on that I have thought of the x axis as the double driven long axis which is als the bottom and longest, the gantry carriage as the Y.
Your post makes me wonder if that is not the norm and will just cause communication problems with others builders.
What is the most common labeling for th axis carriage , screw and motor mounted on the gantry?

There is no norm. It all depends on how you program your parts. As a rule of thumb the way you face and load your stock can determine the axes and avoid confusion when programming. So facing the machine as you load your stock, ledt ro right would be X, from you to away from you Y, and tabe up is Z.

[daniellyall]

yep as louieatienza says left right = X, front to back =Y up down Z.

so I am pretty sure the Axis`s in M4 are per determent so you have to have 0 = X, 1 =Y plus 3 will be your slave for y whats A, it can be 4 B or 5 C if you are going to get a 4th axis use 4 or 5. ( if I am wrong some one will say)

it just makes it a bit easier if you have the motors set the same as M4 motor config then when you are mapping the functions in M4 you know whats what

[mbronkalla]

Yesterday I made the first test cuts.
Y axis diagonal leg braces were added. It shook a lot when moving the gantry. Rapids are comfortably 250 IPM, i could probably push higher,
Getting Mach 4 and ESS working well was a bit of an adventure. Here are some of the things I learned along the way:
The first thing is getting the PC to reliably talk to the ESS. In the ESS config if after restarting , you don't see the IP address for ESS, they are not communicating, the value in the config screen once Entered is blank until they communicate. If in doubt look in the Mach config file to see the IP address is really there. If you can ping the ESS successfully but they are still not communicating, it is likely windows firewall getting int eh way. I had more trouble getting it to work with Win 7 (temporary test) vs XP - the normal CNC PC.
The order of setup is important. ESS I/O assignment and naming must be done before the Mach I/O assignment. It may seem obvious to an experienced Mach user but was not to me, I assumed the plugin assignments would come second.
When making your initial tests to see if things can work incrementaly, you really have to be extra careful as you can easily destroy things. In my case 2 D connectors, 2 microswitches buried in the middle of the Z carriage, and a router bit). Impressively the Leadshine MX4660 stepper driver survived the connector crunch and short . Conversely it does NOT like having motors unplugged and plugged in while powered on. It gets into some weird oscillation (lots of noise, no motion). The MX4600 does normally make some noise via the motors at rest. It must be switching the holding current some how. I have not hooked up a scope to see what is going on, but is s now part of the background noise
Leg bracing is important. in this case there is a lot of mass moving around with the Gantry (> 150lbs.). Moving along the x-axis was fine, but Y direction would oscillate pretty badly. With one more diagonal per leg it is nice and quiet now with minimal wiggling.I had to wait for the welding work until it warmed up a bit here in the frozen north.
So here is the second run: The bit was just a 2 flute straight bit - waiting for the right ones to come.

And some more photos:
Attachment 273552
Attachment 273554
Attachment 273556
Attachment 273558

Now I am moving the electronics to a permanent enclosure, finishing the limit and home switch mounting and wiring and then hooking up the cooling loop.

[louieatienza]

Yesterday I made the first test cuts.
Y axis diagonal leg braces were added. It shook a lot when moving the gantry. Rapids are comfortably 250 IPM, i could probably push higher,
Getting Mach 4 and ESS working well was a bit of an adventure. Here are some of the things I learned along the way:
The first thing is getting the PC to reliably talk to the ESS. In the ESS config if after restarting , you don't see the IP address for ESS, they are not communicating, the value in the config screen once Entered is blank until they communicate. If in doubt look in the Mach config file to see the IP address is really there. If you can ping the ESS successfully but they are still not communicating, it is likely windows firewall getting int eh way. I had more trouble getting it to work with Win 7 (temporary test) vs XP - the normal CNC PC.
The order of setup is important. ESS I/O assignment and naming must be done before the Mach I/O assignment. It may seem obvious to an experienced Mach user but was not to me, I assumed the plugin assignments would come second.
When making your initial tests to see if things can work incrementaly, you really have to be extra careful as you can easily destroy things. In my case 2 D connectors, 2 microswitches buried in the middle of the Z carriage, and a router bit). Impressively the Leadshine MX4660 stepper driver survived the connector crunch and short . Conversely it does NOT like having motors unplugged and plugged in while powered on. It gets into some weird oscillation (lots of noise, no motion). The MX4600 does normally make some noise via the motors at rest. It must be switching the holding current some how. I have not hooked up a scope to see what is going on, but is s now part of the background noise
Leg bracing is important. in this case there is a lot of mass moving around with the Gantry (> 150lbs.). Moving along the x-axis was fine, but Y direction would oscillate pretty badly. With one more diagonal per leg it is nice and quiet now with minimal wiggling.I had to wait for the welding work until it warmed up a bit here in the frozen north.
So here is the second run: The bit was just a 2 flute straight bit - waiting for the right ones to come.

And some more photos:
Attachment 273552
Attachment 273554
Attachment 273556
Attachment 273558

Now I am moving the electronics to a permanent enclosure, finishing the limit and home switch mounting and wiring and then hooking up the cooling loop.

Looking good... Straight flute carbide bits can be good for stuff like mdf...

[ger21]

The order of setup is important. ESS I/O assignment and naming must be done before the Mach I/O assignment. It may seem obvious to an experienced Mach user but was not to me

I'm not sure if there are any experienced Mach4 users - You're on the bleeding edge. This is the first router I've seen moving with Mach4. Please post more videos, as I'd really like to see what the motion is like before I spend $700 on a Mach4 motion controller.

Conversely it does NOT like having motors unplugged and plugged in while powered on

A few years ago, that would have killed almost all stepper drives. Some of the newer ones can now protect against that happening. But it's never a good idea to do that.

[wizard]

There is no norm. It all depends on how you program your parts. As a rule of thumb the way you face and load your stock can determine the axes and avoid confusion when programming. So facing the machine as you load your stock, ledt ro right would be X, from you to away from you Y, and tabe up is Z.

To minimize confusion I'd like to see everyone use one convention when it comes to axis naming. For three axis router it is pretty easy to start from the bottom and work up. That is the lower axis is X, the gantry is Y and the vertical is Z. I realize that it doesn't make much difference (at least for X & Y) software wise but it would really help in forums like this if everyone was on the same plane. Yes a joke!(Plane vs axis).

[nlancaster]

Wizard, people use thier machines form different sides. IT would be nice if all the axis are named in the same way, but your system wouldn't work with my machine. I work facing the gantry so that is X on my machine, Y is front to back.

[pippin88]

I do find it difficult at times as people do refer to different axes as X or Y, but I'm in the same situation as nlancaster - my new machine has the X axis on the gantry, because I stand in front of it.

[pippin88]

A few years ago, that would have killed almost all stepper drives. Some of the newer ones can now protect against that happening. But it's never a good idea to do that.

I had a G540 axis driver die, and I think it may have been from disconnecting too soon after killing the power (caps still energised), though I can't be sure as I later found a bad solder joint.

I accidentally disconnected a motor from a Leadshine DM856 the other night - didn't cause any harm that I have detected.

[mbronkalla]

In naming the axis directions my first thought was start at the bottom. However, in some of the replies and other posts that more folks think that the gantry travel is X, the base double axis is Y and so far no questions about Z! So I switched. Gantry itself is now X, the double base rails are Y.
Now I am embroiled in resolving the rats nest, Moving from initial - "can I make anything work " mode to the permanent wire paths and connections. So the most of the electronics are now moved to a proper enclosure / rack cabinet. I still need to make the mounts for the VFD. I am hoping that those simple pieces will be the first "useful work" of the CNC router. From here on out, I want it to make as many of the required additional parts as possible. That may be limited however by my meager cad skills and software purchase progress. Now is the stage of moving from lots of little brown boxes on the front porch or blocking the garage door to software license keys. The UPS guy i particular likes to lean packages against the garage door...

[ger21]

So I switched. Gantry itself is now X, the double base rails are Y.

It makes things easier if the X axis moves left to right when you operate the machine. Hopefully that's what you changed it to. My preference is gantry is Y.

[mbronkalla]

I had to change my orientation. When initially building I looked down the basement shop at the machine. From this vantage point I envisioned the X asis as the base rails and the gantry motion as Y. However when troubleshooting and now loading on parts, I go to the "side" and have changed the axis naming., As I am using it now, I am looking at it facing the gantry. So the gantry cross travel , which is left to right in that view is now the X.