Thread: MDF CNC kits

Looking good John!

I've heard from lebuyn1 that mine's been shipped now so
sometime early next week I guess... I'm in the middle of
house renos so it will be a while before I get mine all put
together though, so I'll be keeping a keen eye out for what
you find out!

Cheers, Dieter.

I machined up a new set of mounts out of aluminium to suit the Ozito router today.

Hi John,
Nice work on the machining - how did we get by without CNC?

I am interested to see how the Ozito is locked into the mount. Can you give a sideways shot showing the locking mechansim?

I just used the holes that normally connect the metal part of the spindle the the plastic body. I found four long wood screws that have the same thread as the original ones and screwed it all together.

That is bit different than how we made ours with the help of Greolt. Ours is just a alloy plate that takes the whole thing at the base of the Ozito.

Slightly different

Crocky has made his mount exactly like mine. I do find that it binds to the aluminum after a while and makes it a little difficult to unlock when you want to use the router for something else.

The only thing that i see with these tables is that the screws and guide rails will collect swarf/dust from the routing process. My suggestion is to look at protecting these with something. Otherwise, will wait with baited breath to see the progress of these units. They look to be designed well, what size are those slide rails, they look close to 1". The biggest issue i had with my unit was that I ran 1/2" slide rails on my y-axis and I had to add an extra rail on top to stop the porposing that occured when i took cuts.

/M

The slide rails are 3/4 inch.

The missing bearings were delivered today so I can continue construction.

Just a question on limit/home switches. Can I get away with just using 3 switches for homing only and not worry about limit switches for the other end of each axis? I'm thinking that I can just use the soft limits in Mach3 to set limits.

John,

Home and limit switches have different functions. (not trying to point out the obvious here, please read on)
I would recommend using a dedicated set of switches for homing and another set for limiting.

On my setup I wired the home switches to Mach directly through the parallel port.
For my limit switches, i ran these directly to the gecko 201 drivers I had, isolating them from the computer or mach. Mach is great software, but i would never use it to limit/halt my machine.

So you can use 3 switches for homing, although 2 would be adequate for the x and y axis and I would then use some other method to deduce the Y axis, such as a plate that can be placed on the material being machined, which has a known thickness. This plate is grounded to Mach 3 and triggers when you touch it with the tool.

Of course the tool gets a wire too, which is placed on it when you complete this touching action, making a circuit which is detectable to Mach. For the exact setup of this I would ask Greg to explain it in depth as I know he has this working on his unit. I just shim the tool (paper) to the workpiece when I machine, which is good enough for me.

Ok, I'll give the home/limit switches some more thought.

I managed to get the unit assembled and jogging on all axis tonight. Now the fun begins getting everything setup right before making some sawdust.

You certainly are a man of action. That is probably the fastest build I have seen.
The Z axis touchplate is an easy and time saving gadget for zeroing on the job. One of those things you wonder how you ever got on without it. The Web cams are also a good tool for setting up X and Y axis.
I would not get hung up on home and limit switches. I have found them to be more of a pain (false triggering) than a benfit. Because they gerally work on 5 volt and low watts they are very prone to EMI. I disconnected mine and have not missed them one bit. Another issue people have raised is that if you set up on home every job then you end up with uneven wear in your screws. Not sure if this is a big issue but it does make sense.
Keep the posts coming as it is very interesting to see this machine being built.

Mine's finally arrived! Unfortunately I'm busy hammering holes in various brick walls around the house for the next few days - the data cabler will pay a visit on Saturday. Still, based on John's experience it should be a quick build. Still can't decide whether to give it a coat of protective paint before assembly as MDF really hates moisture...

Cheers, Dieter.

Holy crap batman, that is one quick build.
Keep up the great work John

What is the available cutting area of the machine?

/M

No real expertise needed to build this unit as it's a pretty well put together kit.

The cutting area is X = 400mm, Y = 250mm, which is a little small but ok for what I need at the moment.

Rod: An interesting comment re the home and limit switches. I might wait and have a bit of play the unit before I look at installing them. Might save myself some time and heartache.

The Z Zero touchplate sounds like a good idea. I'll have to see where I can hook it into the Xylotex board.

Any details on the webcam setup? Is there one available that is better suited to be mounted and zeroed in?

Yep agree on the homing switches as well took mine off will put them back on when I get a C11 Breakout board if I can be bothered lol as I had trigger problems like Rod, couldn't be bothered playing with them any further as they are really low on my to do list.

The touch-plate rocks and easy as to set up off the Xylotex board