Thread: Bitser

The replacement 12mm ballscrew arrived from Chai, and, thankfully, it came complete with nut.

Finished painting the components, using mostly left over 12 year old undercoat/sealer and hammer finish. For the bed I bought some mis-tint cheap from Bunnings. Decided to have a bit of fun, and did some highlighting with yellow rattle cans.

Got it mostly assembled yesterday, and everything seems to line up well. Had motion on all axis, using my Ryobi 14.4vt drill, on it's lowest torque setting.

Still have to mount the motors, and sort out the drag chains. Then I can start wiring up. The old machine had home switches, and I'm adding an extra limit to X and Y. Also bought a DC-03 from Peter Homann, and will add spindle control to Bitser. Bob Wilson put out an excellent howto on this, which I will be using, so thank you Bob.

Next job will be to set up the machining table. I'm building this from T tracks from Professional Woodworkers, and 50mm wide Tassie oak.

Getting close now.

Finally got the cabling finshed today.

As I'm going for spindle control, I have purchased a larger box for the C10 BOB and now have the room to fit the DC-03 from Peter Homann (to be done later). This time, I have gone for all cables connecting to the BOB via plugs so it will be a lot easier to work on as needed for future enhancements.

The addition of the drag chain is a real improvement over my earlier machine, and all cables are now neatly stowed. Whilst the wiring is not up to the neatness of some of the machines I have seen here, it is fairly good and I am happy with it. The addition of the X+ and Y+ limits, will save a few gotchas from happening in the future. Also rewired the Spindle, and have stowed the vfd on the wall out of the way. Will be earthing the spindle via a hose clamp initially, until I can machine up the replace aluminium z axis parts.

Fired it up, and all movements as smooth as I could have hoped for. Played a bit with the motor tuning, and can get to 1500 mm/min. Steppers don't stall at that speed, but are a bit noisy so I have backed off to 1200 mm/min. Don't know how that speed compares to others, but it's 4 times faster than I could safely go on mk1. I'll make up dampers as one of my first jobs, and will re-visit motor speeds after fitting them.

The table appears to have a slight twist to it, which is a dissapointment. But I think a 0.7mm facing cut off the table will sort it out, so it's not a show stopper. I'll need to order the T-Track, so that I can fit the table.

Total overall movement over the bed is x = 485mm, y = 630mm, z = 170mm. I'll lose a bit when I fit the table, but overall it's about what I was aiming for so all good.

pic 1. The new BOB box

pic 2. From the back end.

Pic 3. From the front end.

Hi Chris,
Certainly looks the part and well worth the effort put into it.
The variation on your table top is within tolerance of an MDF build given the number of components connecting the machine together.
I reckon you have earnt a beer while you sit in the corner of the shed and reflect on the months of hard work to make it.

I like the colour too. It makes it look as if you have made an industrial machine out of steel.
Congratulations on finishing it. Haha .... It will never be finished as you want to constantly be updating and changing little bits of the machine.

Got the table on, and surfaced. Just the tuning, and fine adjustments to do.

Will sort out clamping, now that I have the table, and will build the dampers as a first job. Then re-make the spindle holder in aluminium.

I had several random stoppages, during the surfacing, which came up as emergency stops. I've got the shielding on the spindle cable grounded, but figured I was getting spikes onto the switch cabling somehow, so I fitted caps to all the inputs. Still getting EM stoppages, and was pulling my hair out for a while. Finally tracked the problem to a faulty micro-switch. Replaced the switch, and everything ran as it should.

This is the last post on this build, but hopefully my next cnc post will be in the cnc projects forum.

That has got to be one of the best MDF builds I have seen so far. Very Nice

Impressive