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Thread: Spindle router build
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19th August 2020, 09:43 PM #1Member
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Spindle router build
Add me to the club of ultimate router table dreamers! Every time I start making one though,someone builds something even more fantastic and the bar is raised again and I go back to the drawing board. With the lock-down (and a kitchen project requiring a lot of routing)I finally got to work on my as yet unfinished, but workable RT.
Firstly though, thanks to MandJ (Mike, I think) for his detailed postings which served as an excellent guide.
The RT is one of three cabinets making a continuous bench compromising mitre saw, RT and drill press. A 150 mm dust extraction pipe runs behind all three cabinets. The total bench length is about 3 m. The mitre saw dictated the bench depth (800 mm).
I played around for hours on Fusion 360 designing the carriage for the router lift and control. I finally gave that up and ordered a complete carriage assembly on AliExpress - it was pretty much the same price as making it myself and probably saved days of work (and procrastinating). I got the spindle (2.2 kw water cooled with ER20 collets, pump and HY VFD) from the same company. The day after I placed the order I got a call from China asking me what size motor shaft I was using as the they would supply me a coupling for free. Nice touch. This was back in May and I was expecting delivery months later.About 10 days later it all came well packed and working. I bought from HLTC zhejiang bearing factory store. I got the NEMA 23 Stepper and driver from Maker Store - Maker Store PTY LTD. I fabricated a dust cover to go over the linear rails.
I fabricated the frame from steel thinking it would be easier to hang parts off and modify than a solid wood or ply structure and it's possibly more stable.
The electronics are based on an Arduino Mega. I wanted to keep it simple to start with and used a 4x20 LCD display with a rotary encoder for menu navigation and a SPDT up/down ‘jog’ switch.The router bit can be 'homed' to a 150 mm ruler connected as a limit switch - it's placed across the table opening, and when the router travels up and makes contact, it stops and sets the height to zero.The encoder can select height adjustments in steps of 0.1 mm. The stepper motor resolution is 0.006 mm (5 mm ball screw pitch, 200 steps/rev, 4 microsteps). I don't have any feed-back from the steppers, but I'm driving it slowly for now and it doesn't lose steps. It'll always return to the home position within a needle width of a 0.01 mm dial indicator. I used 24V proximity limit switches and opto couplers since I hadn't used these before and wanted to see how they work. Very repeatable and easy to mount. I will add more features to the software and probably a graphics screen later - but as this can be a major time trap, I'll get everything else finished and working first.
A 150 mm port with blast gate attaches to the bottom of the cabinet. Air flows through the cabinet from the front and top. The front entry provides flow over the router motor just under the table. I tied to create a venturi by accelerating the flow at under the table opening and further decreasing the pressure there. I've no idea if this has worked because I can't test it. The flow through the router bit insert joins the under-table flow. It works really well, and after a long session with the RT I get pretty much zero dust on or inside the table. There is an opening lower down on the front of the cabinet. The idea here was to have some air flowing past the linear rails to keep dust away, but I don't think this is necessary. Once again - the dust extraction was straight out of Mike's post.
Overall,I'm thrilled with how it all works. The spindle is very rigid - with moderate pressure radially on the spindle I get about 0.05 mm deflection. This is mostly coming from the linear slides. It's a breeze to set up and adjust and while the temporary fence is only clamped to the table for now it works. The large area makes routing with a copy bit or round-over easy, safe and dust free.
The cabinet will ultimately have drawers and storage underneath and the electronics need completing. I designed and ordered a PCB from China($2.80 for 5 pieces, shipped two days after I ordered!!) for the electronics - a board to sit on top of the Arduino with debounce circuitry for the rotary encoder switch, limit switch optocouplers and motor interface. I've never done this either so let's see what shows up- and if my design works. I may put in a motorised fence later like Mike. I just received T track for fence guides but otherwise the fence works OK and I guess I need a mitre fence. I also need to be able to operate the blast gate remotely.
That's about all I can think of for now. Hope this helps anybody else contemplating a spindle based RT.
Leigh
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19th August 2020 09:43 PM # ADSGoogle Adsense Advertisement
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19th August 2020, 10:02 PM #2Woodworking mechanic
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Looking good
What length rails are you using?
i started on mine some time ago but shelved it for another time
Digital router lift - proof of concept
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19th August 2020, 10:10 PM #3Member
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The rails are HGH20 - not sure of the overall length but should be close to 280 mm. The whole stage is 310 mm long. The travel is a little over 100 mm. I was worried this wouldn’t be enough, but it’s plenty.
Leigh
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20th August 2020, 06:27 PM #4Member
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Looks great Ambrosia.
Im also looking at building somthing like Mikes, and was thinking of using a pre built linear stage like yours, again coming to the conclusion that I couldnt buy the parts for the price of the complete unit. I like how you have mounted is sideon to the front of the cabinet to improve the air flow, good idea. Would be interested in seeing some more information on what youve done for the electronics control side as well, ideally I'd like a full setup like Mikes, however might do something with Arduino first just to get a functional lift working, then add to that. Anyway will see how we go.
Keep up the great work btw, its great to help inspire the rest of us!
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20th August 2020, 07:25 PM #5SENIOR MEMBER
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Thanks Leigh for chiming in and providing some more ideas
Do you have a link for HLTC because i can't find them AE and even searching for complete linear motion stages is painful. From a open it up and make it easier for people it would be good to locate a decent linear stage as it makes it a bolt in and you only have to align the stage in two planes not the individual rails as well.
I'll likely still just use individual rails still
What model is the Nema23? no issues with it holding in place? Stepperonline is my preferred go to for stepper motors especially if they have it in the AU warehouse. I'm assuming it is a 1.8 deg stepper, my fence steppers will be 0.9deg as that's what i have on hand. still need to work out what to use for Z lift.
Think i decided overnight to mount the lift assembly 90 degrees to the normal so it runs front to back
anyway, great job and great to see another spindle RT up and running
Cheers
Phil
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20th August 2020, 08:02 PM #6GOLD MEMBER
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I am going to start again, how about this Aluminum Alloy CNC Linear Stage Slide Stroke Screw Motion Table 250mm-500mm | eBay
CHRIS
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20th August 2020, 09:57 PM #7Woodworking mechanic
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I looked at one that looks the same but I wasn’t convinced that it was “rugged” enough to handle a vertical spindle mount but I stand to be corrected.
The one Ambrosia posted looks the goods but it isn’t cheap.
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20th August 2020, 09:58 PM #8Member
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Phil:
Linear stage: XYZ axis Slide Linear Stage SFU1605 Ball Screw+ HGH20 Linear Guide +Nema23 425ozin 3N stepper motor+DM542 driver for CNC machine|Linear Guides| - AliExpress (Travel length 100 mm)
Spindle kit: Free shipping 1.5/2.2/3kw CNC spindle motor+HY VFD inverter +spindle clamp+80w pump+5m water pipes+1 set collets for CNC|spindle clamp|spindle 80mmspindle motor - AliExpress
The motor was from makerstore.com.au but I can't find it on their website. Maybe a runout. It was a NMEA23, 1.26 Nm with a S109AFTG 3A 40V driver. The motor seems plenty powerful enough at 24V. I bought a small one thinking I could use it for something else if it wasn't strong enough, and anyway it was cheap.
Chris - I spent way too much time looking at all the options for the linear stages, including the ones you have linked to which look like a vee-slot type. While I was OK with upgrading the motor if it wasn't strong enough, the idea of replacing the linear stage with an upgraded version if it wasn't good enough seemed a lot of work. So I went with the safe, overkill version. OK - it's a lot more money, but I figure a rigid spindle is really going to make a difference and I'm not sure if the Vee-slot rails are suited for axial loads. I think their mainly for linear translation. But then I have no experience with them so my opinion is only worth what you paid for it!
I got a PM asking to share the arduino code. I have no problem posting it here for all to see but let me clean it up and add few comments first so its makes some sense - I'm a lousy, undisciplined programmer! I have been meaning to do it anyway, as I often look at code I wrote a few years ago and no idea what's going on.
Leigh
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20th August 2020, 10:20 PM #9Woodworking mechanic
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Formite Gnc42 was good enough to share a blog and his code for a router lift over a year ago. Not nearly as sophisticated as Mike’s program but it was a simple but effective arduino program without a screen - just a switch and an encoder,Height adjustment router table
He used a Moto Monster driver board which was expensive in OZ at the time so I played with it so it would work with a standard T6600 style stepper driver that I had on hand.
Worth a look at I reckon if you want something simple.
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20th August 2020, 11:19 PM #10SENIOR MEMBER
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Leigh:
Thank you - i've bookmarked them as they have a couple of options that are more than capable without buying the stepper as i already have nema23's that should be fine.
I have actually decided now to do an air cooled 2.2kw spindle, square body version and one of those linear stages would be perfect.
with the HGH rails etc they look expensive but when you add the parts up and take into account what you get they are really good value.
Chris - a quick look at the one you linked said no.... it's a simple roller bearing v-slot based stage (based on the picture) and i'd expect it would be a pain even in a well dust cleared table ... forget the DC anytime and you would have to do a tricky clean job to get smooth motion back.
v-slot stuff is loved by a section of the 3D print world but frowned on by anyone doing serious sized printers so it would be even worse in a RT.
What i still like about using individual SBR rails and ball screw setup is you can space the rails to your own situation ....
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20th August 2020, 11:28 PM #11Member
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I have attached the Arduino Mega program and schematic. The programming doesn't make much sense without the schematic. The schematic has different pins for the I/O than used in the program as I updated it to make a PCB and had to change the pins around for the routing.
The schematic is for a version with 2 steppers on the fence and one on the router lift. There are 9 opto isolated limit switches; one for a zero probe, 2 for top and bottom router lift, 4 for each end of the fence rails and 2 for homing (router spindle center) on 2 fence rails. An interface is provided for upgrading to the Nextion graphics display. There is a debounce circuit for the encoder switch (for menu selection) and the 4x20 LCD display uses a 4 wire interface as I found that a simpler SPI interface couldn't keep up with the rotary encoder (but that could probably be fixed with better programming). I ordered PCBs from China from this schematic - they are yet to arrive, so it's not tested. My current prototype setup does not have a motorized fence and I'm sure if I'll get around to it.
The program was adapted from another project so there may be some variables that are not used and some names also don't make complete sense for this application. It's also a very basic version just to get it working so that I can work out what features I really need later on.
It does the following:
Raise and lower via the jog switch (toggle)
Raise router to the top limit switch to change the tool
Set zero when the tool touches the probe
Move to an absolute value relative to the zero set by the touch probe in increments of 0.1 mm
Uses the accelstepper library to accelerate and decelerate the stepper.
Stop when reaching the limit switches and only allow movement away from the limit
Disclosure - I'm self taught in programming and electronics. Happy to answer any questions though and listen to advice.
Leigh
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20th August 2020, 11:39 PM #12GOLD MEMBER
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20th August 2020, 11:40 PM #13Member
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Phil,
The spindle kit I got came with a pump and hoses. I got a bucket full of water, chucked the pump in, connected the hoses and that was it - done. Spindle is completely enclosed and hopefully dust free. The other thing that put me off air cooled - I believe the air flow exits the tool end, so it's opposite to the dust extraction flow into the cabinet.
But air cooled works too...
Leigh
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20th August 2020, 11:57 PM #14GOLD MEMBER
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The absolute best thing about the water cooled spindle is how quite it is, no screaming induction motor. Yesterday I was speaking to Stuart at Illawarra Woodworking School where I helped build the fully manual one and he is still very impressed with just the manual version with a DRO and even more impressed with the lack of noise when it is running. That RT gets used every day in both a school and production environment and nothing has fallen off it yet. We used a plastic paint bucket for the water and drilled two holes in the lid.
CHRIS
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21st August 2020, 01:12 AM #15SENIOR MEMBER
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@ Chris and Leigh on the air cooled v water cooled spindle, I appreciate the info and for all the reasons you both have the water cooled makes sense but my woodworking time is sporadic at best and often a long long time between using the tools so too me the extra noise and maybe air flow concerns offset the hassle of ensuring either the water is drained for extended periods of non use as it should be or risking corrosion and water going bad... I have a pool that’s a hassle enough if I was using it regularly or for production then it’s no brainer water cooled
besides I can add in the experience and knowledge of using a square bodied air cooled spindle for hobby/home use.
i should dive into this a bit more in my own thread
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