One More Time

[TommieK]

Hello all. I was visiting a good friend, that I had not seen in about two years, with the hopes of getting information from him on a small vacuum eductor that I knew he had. Well, when I walked up his driveway to greet him, I saw in his garage what appeared to be a gantry for a CNC machine. Funny thing was though was that it looked as if was made from MDF! We visited for about an hour and a half catching up and him introducing me to the world of CNCZone. I went home and immediately hunted up homemade CNC router. The more I read the deeper I got into it until finally I decided that I have to build one for myself, so I downloaded and printed the JGRO plans and studied them for about a week. I had a lot of small pieces of MDF in the garage, leftovers from various projects, and started to gather them up in a pile to see what all I had. Well, I had enough to make the entire gantry and all the associated parts. Now after about two months and uncounted trips to the various hardware and supply stores in the area, I have built the entire machine except for the driver motors and of course the associated software. Throughout this build I have referred back to all the build logs and have kind of adopted Dave (Glidergider) and Ron (Broken Balsa) as my mentors. I hope you two don't mind. Anyway, I have decided to go with the 1/4-20 lead screw for the time being while I go through the feet wetting process and would sure appreciate some opinions on motor and software packages. Thank you all in advance. Tom

[TOTALLYRC]

Originally Posted by TommieK Hello all. I was visiting a good friend, that I had not seen in about two years, with the hopes of getting information from him on a small vacuum eductor that I knew he had. Well, when I walked up his driveway to greet him, I saw in his garage what appeared to be a gantry for a CNC machine. Funny thing was though was that it looked as if was made from MDF! We visited for about an hour and a half catching up and him introducing me to the world of CNCZone. I went home and immediately hunted up homemade CNC router. The more I read the deeper I got into it until finally I decided that I have to build one for myself, so I downloaded and printed the JGRO plans and studied them for about a week. I had a lot of small pieces of MDF in the garage, leftovers from various projects, and started to gather them up in a pile to see what all I had. Well, I had enough to make the entire gantry and all the associated parts. Now after about two months and uncounted trips to the various hardware and supply stores in the area, I have built the entire machine except for the driver motors and of course the associated software. Throughout this build I have referred back to all the build logs and have kind of adopted Dave (Glidergider) and Ron (Broken Balsa) as my mentors. I hope you two don't mind. Anyway, I have decided to go with the 1/4-20 lead screw for the time being while I go through the feet wetting process and would sure appreciate some opinions on motor and software packages. Thank you all in advance. Tom

Well the only cure for cnc is more cnc.

G540 and steppers with 48-50v power supply.If the budget allows.

This setup will run this machine and a whole bunch of different machine you may aquire or build. If the budget is tight it would be easy to set yourself up to run more than one machine from it and setting up different profiles in Mach3 is a snap.

[Broken Balsa]

Originally Posted by TOTALLYRC Well the only cure for cnc is more cnc. G540 and steppers with 48-50v power supply.If the budget allows. This setup will run this machine and a whole bunch of different machine you may aquire or build. If the budget is tight it would be easy to set yourself up to run more than one machine from it and setting up different profiles in Mach3 is a snap.

Thanks for the kind words. As you have seen what I used as to motors and controllers on my thread let me just say this. With the 1/2-10 acme it is no speed ball but is quite acceptable for what I use it for. If it were a large table then I would have gone with bigger motors and faster acme. For what I have used it for so far it will cut to the limit of my router and bits. I do a lot of G-10 you might have noticed. Its a good table and the Mach 3 and Cut 2D work with out any problems. Heck of a system through out. I hope you enjoy yours as much I enjoy mine...Ron BB

[TommieK]

Thank you two for the replies. As I said I am staying with the 1/4-20 lead screw and will probably NOT upgrade this machine. If I need more than this machine I would rather build the Joe's 4x4. The only things that I changed from the original was I went with stainless for the lead screws and I made both sections of the table complete torsion boxes. If I need access I can just drill a hole wherever I need one and not affect the properties of the torsion boxes. Opinions and questions appreciated. Thanks....Tom

[TommieK]

Happy New Year to all, Especially the people here at CNCZone. These are a few pictures of my recently completed router and if you look closely a few minor modifications I made to keep the gas pipes from bowing. The thing I ran was 37 pages of code From Glidergider's excellently detailed thread. I cut it on 1/2 inch MDF so it didn't cut all the way through and at this time I don't know how to adjust this but the point was and is it cut this without a hitch. Right now i'm having an issue with my controller but I'm not going to make a problem here (I'm dealing with that elsewhere)

[voltsandbolts]

Nice work!

[TommieK]

I only brought this thread forward for the pictures for jcdammeyer, or anybody else that's curious. John asked if I could explain my pipe supports. Mine are wood and very crude. What I did was to trace, on paper, the aluminum hold-downs that I purchased when I decided to install the blue T-slot material for table hold-downs. Then I held the aluminum hold-downs under the gas pipe and measured (close approximation) the difference to the bottom end of the table. Went back to the paper and extended the legs on the drawing the amount of the difference. Then I used the drawing as a template and hand-cut the new supports out of wood. I have no particular expertise on plastics or aluminum so this is where I stopped. If you don't come up with a better idea on what to do about support I sure hope this helps a small amount. As far as deflection goes for the accuracy of the JGRO I experience practically nothing. Tom