It's alive!!!!!

[twombo]

After more than 2 years sometimes very slow effort, it is finally alive. More to follow, but it is a 24x36 Bob Campbell designed unit and it has a Servo electronics unit by Dan at Camtronics.

Two great guys these are.

mike

[CNCRob]

It looks great, I like how mobile it seems to be.

[joecnc2006]

what was the total cost?

[twombo]

Thanks Joe! Just a bit under $5000 including RhinoCam and Mach 2.

Since this post I am having problems getting it to run reliably and it all seems to be centered on the the power supply. I am completely rebuilding all the cable and and building a larger PS box to be able to wire everything justa bit neater and install signal grounds in all cables to encoder, motors and proximity sensors.

I took the beast to our local Bluegrass festival two weeks ago and displayed (and worked on it) in our Luthier's Pavilion. Got a lot of interested people stopping by to chat and met several real time CNC experts who helped me immensely on my teething pains.

Also had several really good discussions with people on the mundane stuff like fixturing simplifying machine zeroing and and production tooling setups.. this stuff has bee a real mystery to me, but now it is not so intimidating.

Also made several contacts with fellow luthiers who are interested in possibly job shopping some basic fabrication work to me.

Met a fellow who may be needing some extra CNC capacity for supporting his current client base.

Lot's of things happening.

Very interesting experience.

Mike

[mxtras]

Mike -

The problem with reliability is very easy to see from your picture, actually and may not be as complex as you might make it sound. As difficult as it's going to be to accomplish, you really need to relocate your mouse and keyboard. I can imagine that has a lot to do with irratic operation due to random data entry! (Just kidding, of course)

That is one of the better photos I have seen - clear and not washed out - nice photo of a nice looking machine.

Awesome to hear that you have lots of interest! Could be fun, huh?

Good luck! Nice build!

Scott