My new machine

[gloomyandy]

Almost got my new machine completed.....

The box off to the side is my home built (and designed) controller - bipolar chopper running at 40V. For the full story take a look at
http://www.gloomy-place.com/cnc.htm

Andy

[WOODKNACK]

Hey,
Looks good pal. I like your bearing design. What is the cutting area of that?

[gloomyandy]

The cutting area is kind of interesting. This is a place I'm trying something new. I don't really have a lot of space and I also have two main jobs I want to use the machine for:
1. Routing prototype PCBs
2. CNC milling of parts in plastic and balsa
So I've built the machine so that the table overhangs the sleds on which the bearings are mounted. This gives a nice rigid area in the centre of the table (actually offset to one end), that is about 6" by 10" for PCB milling. In addition I have a bigger area of approx 10" x 10" which is not so well supported but which I hope will be OK for lighter work.....

I've already seen a few things that I may change, but for now I'll go with what I've got and see how it works out....

Andy

[abasir]

Hi Andy,
Machine looks good! If you don't mind, could you provide some more pictures of the roller bearing mounting as it look easy to do with regular hand tools.
You PCB also look good. What do you use a the milling bit?
Thanks.

[Jmtwo]

Very Nice solution to the Y-Axis using the roller bearings. I had some Frakenstein idea going, but yours is much more elegant. I put together a little drawing of what I think you did to assemble. With the bearing angle rotated at a 45 and then bolted through to the mdf. Is this your approach?

[gloomyandy]

Hi,
Yep that's exactly how I have things setup on my machine. SO far it seems to work well. One thing to watch out for is that the 45 degree bearings but an odd force on the rails when you apply twisting force to the (in my case) Z axis. The setup tries to force the rails apart, if the rails are not very stiff you can get a lot of movement........

Andy