Question to Solsylva builders/users

[Karlf]

I received my plans from David Steele a few days ago. My plan when ordering them was to build the belt drive table. I'm still going to build it, only with a slightly larger gantry than he describes.


My question to builders is why did you choose to build the machine you built or are building?

Cost?
Complexity?
Working with aluminium?

The dual leadscrew tables appear to be the most popular, but it's work area is only 25x37. This seems too small to do alot with it. Also, I would think aluminium would be yield a more accurate and durable machine.


What are you thoughts?

[skipper_52]

I built the 25x37 table and found out like you said that it is a little small. A caution on his plans. They are very thorough and well thought out. So, when when you think you know what he's doing and want to jump ahead.....don't. Although you might think he forgot something, he didn't. It's usually a few pages ahead. I'm getting the material for a 2nd table build right now that I'm designing myself based on his design, but am beefing up the screws to larger ones, ACME thread screws AND, the 4th axis. Never thought I'd ever use it. I was wrong.
I need to be able to slide a 4ft sheet of plywood into the machine, so the new one will be about 65 x 48 cutting area. The second one will still be wood.
Why? One of my buds is an engineer that balances flywheels on generators for Wisconsin Electric, and he says that a wood frame machine will absorb a lot of the vibration from the steppers where metal can't. Metal on the other hand will not move as much as wood from humidity. I'd never use the wood David recommends however. It will move like a SOB. I used 3/4" baltic birch plywood and laminated it for the larger peices. I'm currently cutting to 003 accuracy with the wood frame machine and for machining wood I really don't believe I'm going to need closer than that.

[CarveOne]

Most of David's designs can be easily modified to change the working envelope that you need. It just needs the appropriate dimensional changes and some thought as to the improvements needed to get the accuracy and repeatability that you need.

I wish now that I had made mine 24"x48" or even 48"x48" but I didn't. I don't regret that I used laminated 3/4" red oak instead of pine. Skipper_52's laminated baltic birch plywood is probably even stiffer. The red oak does not compress much when the carriage bolts are tightened.

The basic framework design works, and is easy and relative cheap to build. There is a lot of room to improve on the design using high tech and more expensive components.


CarveOne