Thread: Chris's Extruded Router.

Originally Posted by Bupton

Looks good!!
Just wondering where does the ball screw for the long axis go is it underneath?

I plan to drive the machine via 2 motors on the X axis, one on each side.

The gap in the base is for a drip tray as I want to run spray or flood cutting fluid on this machine, but I'm not completely sure how it will turn out in the end.

Looking great Chris won't be long before you have it up and running!

I wish I had the same welding skills, my bench is made from 70 x 70 pine studs!

Where you mounted the rails on the ally extrusion, did you go to the effort of milling the surface face of the extrusion? or was it pretty flat already?

Looking forward to seeing your cnc making some chips

Cheers
Glenn

Originally Posted by Lappy

Looking great Chris won't be long before you have it up and running!

I wish I had the same welding skills, my bench is made from 70 x 70 pine studs!

Where you mounted the rails on the ally extrusion, did you go to the effort of milling the surface face of the extrusion? or was it pretty flat already?

Looking forward to seeing your cnc making some chips

Cheers
Glenn

I'm still a newbie to welding, there are alot of bad welds on the frame but nothing that cant be fixed up with a grinder, the most important thing is that the top 4 holes are level to which they are very close.

No milling of the rails, and to the naked eye they straight and flat.

I hope its finished soon, I've got a big list of things I want to cut out.

A little update.

Ended up dumping the aluminium table supports and going with some steel angle, as the angle will pull itself up against the aluminium and also doesnt have the T-slot to collect swarf or coolant if I decide to go down that road.

How do others level the machine itself? I was thinking of buying a digital level which would be ~ 0.1 degrees accurate but was wondering if there is another way, as you can see each corner has a mounting bolt which can be shimmed (Found out there is also a local shimming mob if I cant get it dead on level with washers)

Just need to get the little angles recut in some thicker material as the 1.5mm steel flexes a bit.

Hi Chris,
Looking good. I copied lots of ideas off your original design for Tubot so stop changing things or I will have to rebuild my machine.

I use a machinists level to take the twist out of my machines. The digital level will probably work as well but as the base in not as long use it on your rails to get a nice flat area. Your eyes will get it fairly close if you sight your rails like you would use winding sticks.

Hi Chris,

With the stacked extrusions on the x/y axis, are these only held together by the endplates. Or do you have other fixings somewhere?

Originally Posted by chrisb691

Hi Chris,

With the stacked extrusions on the x/y axis, are these only held together by the endplates. Or do you have other fixings somewhere?

Yea just the endplates and its not stacked but a single piece of 120x60mm extruded aluminium, being such a short length and the strength of the aluminium I doubt it would need additional supports but the option is there if needed as I dont have anything running under the machine.

Originally Posted by rodm

Hi Chris,
Looking good. I copied lots of ideas off your original design for Tubot so stop changing things or I will have to rebuild my machine.

I use a machinists level to take the twist out of my machines. The digital level will probably work as well but as the base in not as long use it on your rails to get a nice flat area. Your eyes will get it fairly close if you sight your rails like you would use winding sticks.

Thanks rod, I recon most of the ideas came from your builds already just modified for aluminium

A long overdue update, decided to just get things moving so back to my original plan of direct driven belts and from there cut some reduction gear boxes for the timing belts or make some mounts for ballscrews, the machine definitely has the torque but its lacking in resolution so I'll see how that works out.

Its not a pretty solution but it works

Hi Chris

I love the looks of the belts on the Y axis. It is a simple effective way to bypass ballscrews. But are you saying that you are going to change over to ballscrews (or, as my spell checker suggests, screwballs)?

This is a really impressive build Chris. Nice clean lines and tough looking.

Bob Willson

Originally Posted by Bob Willson

Hi Chris

I love the looks of the belts on the Y axis. It is a simple effective way to bypass ballscrews. But are you saying that you are going to change over to ballscrews (or, as my spell checker suggests, screwballs)?

This is a really impressive build Chris. Nice clean lines and tough looking.

Bob Willson

Thanks, it really comes down to how it will handle aluminium if I will stick with belts or move to ballscrews.

Set the motors up last week and ran them around at 10m/min without a problem, they could even run at 24m/min without stalling, I did push it upto 40m/min but obviously it stalled on startup most of the time.

Just setting the spindle up today, does anyone know how many poles these chinese spindles have? the VFD is asking me but there is no information on the spindle, not even a brand name laser etched onto it and the ebay listing is long gone.


I'm hoping to start cutting this weekend as I need a new gear puller (broke my last) and not looking to manually machine it up again

That is quick Chris
Need good reflex to stop that.
Motor poles setting are 2 with Hyuang (spelling???) VFD and 3 phase spindle.

Originally Posted by rodm

Hyuang (spelling???)

Try to get it right Rod........Huanyang.

Bob

So Chris, how come you get that sort of speed and I flunk out at 2m a minute?

Bob Willson

Originally Posted by Bob Willson

So Chris, how come you get that sort of speed and I flunk out at 2m a minute?

Bob Willson

Most likely due to the low speeds the motors run at because they are direct driven, steppers have all their torque down low but that means I also get a measly ~26 steps per mm resolution. 2m does seem a bit slow with the gecko drivers, maybe there are other forces at play here, alignment or a very heavy gantry ect., I wouldnt be able to say with 100% certainty as I've always built with the nema 23/24 motors I have yet to build a larger machine.



Thanks rod, I'll give it a whirl tomorrow.