Landarts, I have a quick question if you don't mind. How much of the CRS Rails do I need to leave un-painted on the edges so it doesn't interfere where the bearings ride? 3/8" or 1/2" or...?
Reply to Groc426 -
"I'm just curious regarding how you've mounted the base to your table. You mentioned using 6 brackets from CNCRP, I assume these are what you were referring to:
Angle Bracket for 40mm Series Extrusion | CNCRouterParts"
Here is a photo of the brackets and how I did it.
Reply to question:-
"How much of the CRS Rails do I need to leave un-painted on the edges so it doesn't interfere where the bearings ride? 3/8" or 1/2" or...?"
I am not sure what the CRS rail is but if you mean the table base I painted the entire base, If you are talking about the standard rail system I am not sure i built the pro4848 version.
Here is a sneak peek of a few of the parts coming together for the 4th axis build.
-Tailstock from Grizzly Tools
-3" Lathe chuck from Shars.com
-1/2" threaded backing plate from Shars.com
I have the brackets designed and this weekend will be working on completing those so it can be mounted to the front of the extrusion as per the drawing.
Mounting for headstock
Mounting for tailstock - may have to build sliding bracket for alignment purposes
The plan is to have this mounted just below the spoil board surface so there is no interference with the full cutting surface on the table. I will be wrapping the wires in a wire sheath, drilling a hole in the table base so I can feed the wires inside the table structure and exit out where the electronics box is mounted.
Finished building the bracket for the 4th Axis. The welding, grinding and filling welds with spot putty are completed. A little more sanding, drill for placement of Axis body and drill for bracket mounting. Then paint to match table base with Rustoleum Hammered. The material I used was 2" c-channel and a piece of 1.5" square tubing.
Finally have the remaining parts for the 4th Axis build. Should have a few items to post later with it all going together and mounted in the new bracket.
Well got the 4th Axis bracket sanded and prep for paint. Welded in weld nuts to plates to go inside of the legs for the leg levelers and getting ready to make cuts at the bottom of the legs for the leg levelers. When I installed the casters I did not leave enough room for the leg levelers, so I need to take off about 1" and weld in the plates with the weld nuts.
Here are a few photos of the indexer completed. Today I will work on mounting to table base, the indexing headstock will be mounted with drilled and tapped holes. The tailstock will be mounted on a sliding plate for the front of the aluminum extrusion so i can adjust for length as needed.
Getting back to machine this week. Checklist of of items to do before testing.
- mount indexer
- recheck alignments
- check all fasteners and belts
- check all electrical
- mount temporary spoil board
Well got a few of the items done off the checklist:
- mount indexer - Drilled and tapped holes for mounting indexer headstock
- recheck alignments - Checked all alignment issue and all is good for now
- check all fasteners and belts - Have a few belt adjustments left to do
- check all electrical - checked all electrical....will try some test air cutting this weekend
- mount temporary spoil board - Need to do this weekend
Hello Landarts,
You have an awesome looing machine...
I have a Sketchup questions... Did you model this from scratch? or did you somehow convert the Edrawings file to be able to use it in Sketchup... I'm trying to design a modified machine, but I only use sketchup... even the free Edrawing program to open the CNCRP models works very slowly an poorly and isn't much help...
Frankmali17 - I modeled it from scratch in Sketchup pro, I have been using Sketchup since it came out years ago. If you need help with something let me know.
Today i was able to fire up the machine for the first time and get movement. There were a few stumbling blocks getting there but seem to get it all sorted out. First I had my e-stop wired closed, so a couple of quick wire swaps and that was fixed. Then I could not get any movement although the PMDX board said that there were signals getting to the motors. Did some poking around and made a call to the folks over at PMDX for a little trouble shooting. We tried a few different things, and the only way we could get any movement was by swapping the step and direction around in Mach3. After I hung up with him I thought that cant be right so I started by shutting everything down and checking all wiring and making sure that I had not crossed something. Turn it back on and same results. Next morning , which is today i decided I would start by swapping out the parallel port cable. Once I did that and put the step and direction back to the original xml supplied by CNCRP, we have movement.
Did some jogging around, a little fine tuning and a little cable management test. I will need to get some cable chain and finish up with getting wiring secured in the chains so I can get to cutting. It was a good day!