I've been asked to assist with a few DIY builds and have also recently acquired some kit, so it's time to put this tech that's been staring at me into action. The hand-cranking of my benchtop milling machine for the circle jigs has also been taking some time of late with 1.5mm advance per rotation of the handle.
Apocalypse boy turned my ball-nut holders and bearings for my ball screw components (came out beautifully) so now I can assemble my gantry (Z-axis already operational).
I'll assemble the first test-bed with which I'll bootstrap myself (use a lesser machine that's simple to knock up to build the next improved iteration). I have had all the assembles for a while now and I cleaned out one garage last weekend (so my man cave is now even more full of gear) to begin assembly of a rough first pass.
My full router plan is meant to cut ali as well as wood and plastics and is a bit involved with a surface cast on the metal frame for the X slides to run on and so on. For wood cutting only, like the mechmate, one can get away with a much simpler setup. So out with the AC servos, ball screws and precision ground surfaces for the X-axis and in with steppers, 32mm pine ply, angle iron and rack & pinion. It won't do better than 0.1mm repeatability, more like 0.3mm-0.5mm after some adjustment, but for a first few tries it'll surely do the job and with some fine tuning it'll cut a very straight line. Thankfully with MDF sheet after I surface cut my sacrificial bed the MDF will follow that contour by its own weight I hope.
Some might remember a cnc project of mine that didn't materialize some way back. That was a mechmate project with a friend where I made all the sub-assemblies but the machine never got assembled due to his factory space constraints. I sold the components back on started on my own build of which this will be the first iteration.
I can hardly wait.All I'vebeen able to do this week is to set up the router PC and ordered the pine ply sacrificial sheet (I'll probably glue some MDF on top of that). I'll slap together some simple assembly pieces out of MDF and I hope to be making some chips in short order, even if it's just straight cuts for dados and circles for baffles and to rout out bracing.
Apocalypse boy turned my ball-nut holders and bearings for my ball screw components (came out beautifully) so now I can assemble my gantry (Z-axis already operational).
I'll assemble the first test-bed with which I'll bootstrap myself (use a lesser machine that's simple to knock up to build the next improved iteration). I have had all the assembles for a while now and I cleaned out one garage last weekend (so my man cave is now even more full of gear) to begin assembly of a rough first pass.
My full router plan is meant to cut ali as well as wood and plastics and is a bit involved with a surface cast on the metal frame for the X slides to run on and so on. For wood cutting only, like the mechmate, one can get away with a much simpler setup. So out with the AC servos, ball screws and precision ground surfaces for the X-axis and in with steppers, 32mm pine ply, angle iron and rack & pinion. It won't do better than 0.1mm repeatability, more like 0.3mm-0.5mm after some adjustment, but for a first few tries it'll surely do the job and with some fine tuning it'll cut a very straight line. Thankfully with MDF sheet after I surface cut my sacrificial bed the MDF will follow that contour by its own weight I hope.
Some might remember a cnc project of mine that didn't materialize some way back. That was a mechmate project with a friend where I made all the sub-assemblies but the machine never got assembled due to his factory space constraints. I sold the components back on started on my own build of which this will be the first iteration.
I can hardly wait.All I'vebeen able to do this week is to set up the router PC and ordered the pine ply sacrificial sheet (I'll probably glue some MDF on top of that). I'll slap together some simple assembly pieces out of MDF and I hope to be making some chips in short order, even if it's just straight cuts for dados and circles for baffles and to rout out bracing.
