Pumelloman Solysylva 25x37 Router Build

[pumelloman]

Hi Everyone,

This is actually my first time using a forum... so I feel a little nervous haha.

I've been constantly reading the posts of other members, such as thkoutsidethebox (I think I spelled that right..) and have been reading (and learning) a lot from this forum, so I thought that it was time that I started my own build of the Dual Leadscrew David Steele Solsylva 25"x37" table.

The day before yesterday (first day), I cut out the Gantry out of Red Cedar 2x4 (don't know if that was an appropriate choice...) but then yesterday I buggered up the holes so it became NFG.

Lesson learned: Do not trust the laser "alignment" on a Ryobi Drill press.
Second lesson learned: Cutting multiple piece of wood with a calibrated (squared by hand) Chop-Saw is faster than cutting a piece every few days and having to re-calibrate the saw every day...(pretty obvious...I know...)

So that's what I did yesterday, just cut up all the 2x4, 1x4, and 1x6 pieces that I'm going to use. (See attached picture!)

Plans for today are....actually I'm not sure, maybe cut up the MDF or Hardboard? I don't have a bandsaw though....so I'm not sure how that's going to work....

I'm also asking my uncle to see if he has some kind of metal cutting saw to cut the conduit on the Gantry...arm? I don't want to cut it using a hacksaw...who knows how square that would be with my lack of skillz.

I built the shed that you see in the pictures with my Uncle and laid down some bricks and everything...all to start this project haha....wow what an effort that was. I moved out to BC from Saskatchewan for University, so I don't have a workshop out here or garage yet since I don't even have a house! So I guess this shed will do for now...until I fill it with CNC machines... ^^

Any tips, suggestions, or comments for a CNC n00b?

Thanks!

[harryn]

Welcome to the forum.

Suggestions
- buy a heater for your shed.
- Keep the wood off of the floor or it will warp from moisture (yes, I am very sure about this.)

[CarveOne]

You can buy for a few dollars, or borrow, a tubing cutter to cut the conduit. Squareness on the ends is mostly an appearance thing. A hacksaw is useful and accurate enough for most of the parts, and a little file or bench grinder work will clean up the cuts that go off angle.

I'm building one of these also.

CarveOne

[pumelloman]

Wow I already have responses to my posting haha. Thanks for your advice!

Originally Posted by harryn Welcome to the forum. Suggestions - buy a heater for your shed. - Keep the wood off of the floor or it will warp from moisture (yes, I am very sure about this.)

Ah yeah....I should probably get a heater....hopefully it won't be too cold in Vancouver for now until I get one. I'm from Saskatchewan though so I'm used to the whole -40C thing.

Wood warping! Yeah that's not good, better move that from the shed floor to the table or something.

Originally Posted by CarveOne You can buy for a few dollars, or borrow, a tubing cutter to cut the conduit. Squareness on the ends is mostly an appearance thing. A hacksaw is useful and accurate enough for most of the parts, and a little file or bench grinder work will clean up the cuts that go off angle. I'm building one of these also. CarveOne

Oh really? I had thought that maybe the squareness would be important for aligning/measuring where the holes go to attach to the gantry. Hmmm but I'll look into renting/buying a cutter though.


Yesterday I re-did the Gantry, drilled the center holes and holes in the top to attach the conduit. I *almost* made another NFG but it turned out functionally ok, but maybe not aesthetically. No pictures though, didn't have a chance to take any. Not too much done... hopefully I'll accomplish more on the weekend! Mostly I was trying to figure out how I was going to go about cutting the aluminum extrusion and conduit, but now that I know that hacksaw and a little grinding is probably ok, I think I'll just go do that.

Thanks everyone! More posts with pictures coming this weekend!

[CarveOne]

What's most important is that the holes in the conduit match the holes in the channel and those holes match the holes on the gantry (or the x axis side rail holes as the case may be) or the mounting bolts won't fit through all of these parts so that there is some freeplay in the bolt holes for alignment of the conduits for parallelism and coplanarity. If these aren't near perfectly aligned there will be binding in the truck bearings against the rails.

The tubing cutter I mentioned is the simple hand held variety that cuts deeper into the tubing as you tighten a knob and rotate it around the tubing. You might pay $10 to $20 for a decent one, or a cheaply made one for $5 on sale at Harbor Freight. As long as it can handle 3/4" steel conduit it will suffice, and produce square cut ends.

CarveOne

[pumelloman]

Sorry everyone for not posting lately, been really busy, but I have been working on the table!

My Uncle suggested making a ghetto setup for cutting the conduit with the chop-saw. SO we took off the saw blade and replaced it with an abrasive disc. Kinda scary, but it worked pretty well...I hate the smell of burning metal...even though I wore a dust mask I could still smell it. Probably getting cancer from that. I also cut the Plywood Edging the same way, worked really well to cut the aluminum...would recommend it, if you first align your saw blade haha....(experience...again).

As you can see in the photos, my CNC has been blessed with a splash of gold.... The reason for this is that I couldn't find any other colour in Home Depot. Oh well, I actually think it looks kind of cool.

I got some fluorescent lights now in my workspace too, courtesy of my Uncle again. Pretty sweet, no more squinting in the dark trying to measure something out.

But, I have some serious problems (related to what CarveOne was saying about hole placement).
Unfortunately, I found that I cannot drill properly.....my drill bit wanders a little bit every time I try to drill a hole. I talked to a co-worker, and he said that this tool should solve my problems:
http://www.leevalley.com/wood/page.a...80,42311,42321

So, I haven't bought this yet, but I'm definitely going to before I go to work on my table today. I drilled my conduit but one of the holes on them was 1/16" off, so I have a slight deviation in the rails (!!!!!) I've already had to re-drill one once, and this is getting retardedly expensive if I have to redo every part every time...

I also made some of the angled aluminum brackets, but I suspect the corner holes of being slightly off, although they look not too bad. I will likely remake this part too with the tool from Lee Valley.

Alright, that's it for now, better get back to work....

[CarveOne]

Next time you need a set of drill bits, buy a set of split point drills that are made for drilling metal. These have no V shaped web in the center of the drill point, as with normal drills, and they will start cutting metal immediately on contact with no walking around in a circle. They are the only drills I will buy now. You should also center punch the hole location in the center of the pipe's diameter. If the drill contacts the round pipe off center it will try to slide off to one side even with a split point drill. Split point drills are available at most hardware centers. These are not the same as the pilot point drills sold by DeWalt, which have a reduces diameter tip with the standard drill point.

There is a simple Y shaped centering tool that will fit into the chuck of a drill press and has a pointer that tells you when the chuck is centered on a round or square bar. Prices range from $5 to $13 depending on where you buy them. Grizzly Industrial, CDCO Tools, and others sell them.

CarveOne

[pumelloman]

Worked on the table again last night, more pictures to show!
I went to Lee Valley Tools and picked up that drill alignment guide. That thing was so worth it, it drills holes extremely accurately with my drill bits.... I wish I had Carbides, right now I'm using HSS.

Originally Posted by CarveOne Next time you need a set of drill bits, buy a set of split point drills that are made for drilling metal. These have no V shaped web in the center of the drill point, as with normal drills, and they will start cutting metal immediately on contact with no walking around in a circle. They are the only drills I will buy now. You should also center punch the hole location in the center of the pipe's diameter. If the drill contacts the round pipe off center it will try to slide off to one side even with a split point drill. Split point drills are available at most hardware centers. These are not the same as the pilot point drills sold by DeWalt, which have a reduces diameter tip with the standard drill point. CarveOne

I think they're probably just the V shaped ones as you said CarveOne, instead of these split point. Seems like a pretty good idea, I was unaware of the differences in points... Pretty interesting, reading up on it now.

Anyways about that drill alignment thing from Lee Valley Tools. I would strongly recommend it to anyone building this table, since it allows you to drill pretty good corners in the aluminum angle extrusion. I ended up making a new Aluminum Bracket last night since I was pretty unimpressed with the alignment on the other one. I must say I was really impressed in comparison to the one i made before.... I guess that one was really garbage. Another NFG.

Had to buy more conduit again last night since I didn't have enough to remake the Gantry conduit (just one side). Will remake it tonight.

Oh I also put on the bearings for the Brackets, bought these bearings from VBX. They're ABEC 7's, 2RS. Pretty good for the money (really inexpensive, bought 100 at once or so, sold the other half), and pretty decent quality. They're oil lubricated though, would have preferred grease I think.

Ground down the bolt heads a little using my bench grinder (parents brought it from Saskatchewan....probably will have more use in my little shop than it's entire lifetime in my dad's garage..) Unfortunately it's a bit hard to get into the bolts without grinding on the aluminum :S so I took off what I thought was appropriate for the bold heads, and also took off a little aluminum in the process :S hopefully that wasn't too essential for something....should be ok..
Sorry for the blurry picture of the bolt heads, I set my camera in Macro mode but it's from year 2000 or 2001 or something, so it's a 1.2 MP Canon (good camera, just old) and the lighting was not so hot... Pretty sad coming from a hobby Photographer, but I'd rather leave my 1.2MP in my car or shop than my Nikon D70S ><

Anyways thanks for the advice! will keep you posted

[CarveOne]

Glad to see that you are making some progress with drilling the holes now. At least the EMT conduit tubing is one of the lower cost items in this build, and the no-good tubes make useful stakes for the garden.

CarveOne

[pumelloman]

Worked on the EMT again yesterday....
Cut out another piece, and drilled the holes. I had two surprises though, one was that actually I HAVE Split point drill bits (and was using them...), and the other surprise was drilling by hand on the EMT works a lot better than drilling using my drill press. Interesting....After center punching the spot (did that last time), then using a smaller drill bit to pilot hole, I found that drilling concentrically was really easy, in comparison to trying to get everything all aligned with the Drill Press. I remembered someone once saying that "too many precise holes = no precision" or, over-constraining things does not work in my favour, maybe that's what happened. That or I suck with a Drill press (likely).
I only discovered this after I drilled 2 holes, all three are axially parallel, and co-linear to each other, but actually one STILL wandered, in spite of my efforts to build a crap jig to kinda align things better. Whatever, it worked better.

Today I think what I'll do is cut out another piece of 1x6 for the Z axis assembly, then start drilling my holes.... After that I'll coat it in Polyurethane clear coat. Oh crap I forgot to coat my Gantry as well.... I guess I'll take that apart and coat it, then maybe lock-tite it?? Good idea? or should I wait a bit longer to make sure the alignment is ok....(maybe I need to cut more EMT...)

Any suggestions on how to go about cutting the hardboard and MDF??

[CarveOne]

I wouldn't Locktite anything until you are happy with the alignment. Use the type that can be loosened when needed such as the blue Locktite.

Use a 14" woodworking bandsaw if you can get access to one.

I managed to make some progress on my own Solsylva 25x37 today. Hopefully there will be more progress tomorrow. The gantry block is ready for polyurethane and assembly of the tubes. Also made some metal parts today.

CarveOne

[pumelloman]

Yeah I haven't used any lock-tite yet, will do when I'm sure the machine actually runs ha ha ha...

I didn't have a bandsaw, but I did have access to my uncle's jig-saw and I also did most of the cutting using a hand saw, which worked really well. I coated both the Gantry and most of the Z carriage with Polyurethane yesterday, which worked pretty well. I was too lazy to take apart the Gantry though and paint it properly... haha....so lazy. Oh well, it's clear coating and I mostly just want to keep the humidity out of the wood, so I think it should be ok.

Yesterday I also went and cut out my profiles from the hardboard, and drilled all the holes. I really think that guide from Lee Valley was worth the money, I haven't screwed up nearly as much since I got it, and I think it takes me half the time to drill holes now too. Very impressed.

Ahhhhhh as I was writing this I realized I forgot to drill the corner holes in my second pair of brackets that I was working on today!!! So pissed.... well, hopefully I'll be able to do that tomorrow...otherwise I'm not sure, I'll have to take out my ground bolts. I ended up drilling holes into a wooden cutting board, then mounting my grinder to that, and clamping it to my table hahaha, it looks pretty awesome.

Now I realized that I have to figure out what I'm going to do with the Z carriage, I didn't buy a trim router yet, and I need to do that (or should have done that...) before making the hardboard profiles, because they're dependent on how big the router is (...sigh). I was thinking about getting the DeWalt one, but that one's kind of long..... any suggestions for a reasonably priced one that's fairly high performance (like 5A)? Canadian Tire?

So CarveOne, you worked on yours too eh? Awesome ^^ do you have any pictures?