next router

[dertsap]

thanks
its the same channel as what weve got going on my sons machine but its a different chunk , ive hung onto that material for some time , so i'm glad to have finally put it to use

[dertsap]

I've decided that the gear head that I had setup on the 4th axis didn't quite have enough torque for my liking so I decided to build my own custom gear head . since I plan to build a trunnion to add a 5th axis then I need some power happening and this was the solution . its experimental not pretty and its as basic and crude as it can get but the amount of torque that this has generated with using a small nema 24 167 oz motor is great . its sort of slap together right now in order to test it and it has proved to work well so I will be doing some tweaks and get it all mounted properly
it has a resolution of .036 degrees/step and the ratio is 50:1 its not fast and takes about 20 seconds at this point of time to do one full rev , I will get it to move a bit quicker but its not of any real concern as long as it has the needed torque and is consistent
the worm is a 1/2-13 thread and the gear was mounted on my lathe and cut with a tap (see vid) . a high torque 4th axis will give me the ability to do some better gear cutting and get me to a better point so that the 5th axis will be easy to create and build at home from scratch

the video shows my first attempt at forming the gear , it worked well but the finish was much better cutting with a tap , and the tap took far less amount of time

YouTube - homemade worm gear forming

YouTube - homemade worm gear forming

heres another vid i did a while back while test cutting some mild steel , 1/2 way thru the vid i bump the speed right up .

toys , gotta love em

YouTube - cutting steel

YouTube - cutting steel

[dertsap]

so i often wondered how long a pc will survive the dampness and cool weather , along with mdf dust aluminum and steel chips
turns out to be about 2 yrs , for the hd anyhow (so far) ,
my patience had got the best of me so about two months ago i picked up a sweet little rotary table to connect my stepper to http://busybeetools.ca/cgi-bin/picture10?NTITEM=B2424
it worked great and i decided to add my gearhead to add more torque from the motor , It worked awsome and with no backlash , mdi got boring quick so i whipped up a little routine for mach to run it back and forth for a while , i went to load the program into mach and all i could here was a heart beat sound coming from my pc and the screen was frozen dead , PItA I was having fun , the hd i don't care too much about because ive got at least 5 others to replace it with but it spoiled my fun .

I'm also near completion of an air activated counter balance for the z axis , once its complete then i will be adding my 1"/rev screw back to the z axis and she will haul

[dertsap]

heres a pic of the counter balance so far , I know some people will cringe to abs pipe being used as a reservoir but the pressure needed isnt high enough to destroy it , the pipe will piggy back on the back of the gantry out of sight and out of the way

[dertsap]

I have always liked the tool probing idea for mach3 but I don't feel comfortable with doing what others have used which is a flat aluminum plate to touch off on , to me it seems too easy of a way to destroy a tool if the z overshoots a little . so i whipped this up quickly , Its spring loaded and has 1/8 travel . its nothing pretty , needs a bit of deburring but it serves its purpose , it is exactly 1" tall and the contact area is .5 , this will be permanently mounted at x0 y0 home position .the nice thing about this setup is that it is self contained which means that i don't need to alligator clip a wire to the tool because its built as a closed switch , once the tool presses down the contact is broke and the values are recorded
touchscreen has been mounted , counterbalance needs to be mounted , need to redo the edge probe , then other than that - some planned upgrades ,then this butcher job will have come to an end just as is this thread has