Joe's 2006 in Boise ID

[gacrwell]

My daughter just called and said somebody delivered a box of giant puzzle pieces!

Gary

[bp092]

I'm assuming that's your kit . Welcome to the club, just rent a forklift on the way home to bring it in, it weighs a ton!

[joecnc2006]

Originally Posted by gacrwell My daughter just called and said somebody delivered a box of giant puzzle pieces! Gary

LOL, Watchout for my popcorn ninjas as someone called them.....

Joe

[bp092]

haha, I didn't have the luxury of fighting off mine but I hear they make a mess, by the time I got home from work all my parts were unpacked in my garage.

[gacrwell]

Originally Posted by joe2000che LOL, Watchout for my popcorn ninjas as someone called them..... Joe

Now I understand that. I'd love to see the machine that Joe uses to pack these. First, it grinds about one fourth of the peanuts into tiny bits, then it places a 50,000 volt static charge on them, then hydraulically injects them into every nook and cranny in the box.

Hint #1: Don't unpack in the house. Hint #2: If you ignored hint #1 be sure you have lots of time to clean up before the wife finds out.

But it seems to work. The box looked like it had been mauled by a mountain lion (really, it looked like claw marks), but everything inside was just fine. Oh, and about the forklift thing - I never tried to lift it - got a son that does all the heavy lifting; it was parked in the house when I got home.

Hint #3: My daughter suggested using dryer softener sheets to wipe off the atomic peanut bits that were madly clinging to all of the parts. Seemed to work.

Here's what it looks like on Der Tag:

[toneV8]

Everyone is afraid his own wife.

[bp092]

Looks good! Glad you held back the packing peanuts main line! Look forward to seeing you assemble it.

[ccsparky]

Congratulations on your new arrival! Any cigars?

Look forward to seeing it come together!

I can see it now, Joe and Jay get together, redesign custom shoe hold down to hold Ninja peanuts, Joe engraves them with "Joe's Ninjas 2007".

Bob

[gacrwell]

Progress - 6 weeks

• Joe's kit arrived and unpacked; test fitted the gantry box.
• Completed the bearing slides.
• Purchased some additional odds & ends and tools.

The fit on the parts that I've tested is fabulous.

You guys were being kind at not commenting on the bearing alignment measurements that I'd made. I finally did put a fence on the drill press table to control the 0.433" dimension and it made a world of difference. The worst slide now measures half the misalignment of the best one before. I redrilled the Z-axis slides, and assembled all of them - except I find that the hardware list (and the BoltDepot order) is short by eight 5/16 x 1" bolts; what I need for the Y-axis slides. I'll have to go out tomorrow and search for full thread bolts.

Edit, next day - Ah, Home Depot had full thread 5/16x1; any longer than that and they have the shoulder, but for now, I'm good.

Also cut the threaded rods for the carriage assembly. I've been to half a dozen local hardware stores and never found more than two 72" 1/4 rods in stock at any one. Looks like I'll wind up having to stop at 3 or 4 different places to get enough. Also, even though I knew it ahead of time, I neglected to follow the tip of putting a nut on the rod before cutting it. Removing that nut after cutting opens up the threads, simplifying things later.

After having it for about two years and never taking it out of the box, I finally got a stand for my bench grinder and mounted it. Also picked up a spray gun and a gallon of Kilz primer. Gotta go find some taps; 10-32 and 1/4-20 are all that's needed right? Probably have to buy a set anyway.

Heh, after drilling all but 4 holes for the slides, I finally notice that my drill press has a work light. Duh. Hey, it was in the shadow, OK...

Earlier I'd bought a couple of cheezy corner clamps at Harbor Freight for $3 each, thinking they might be good for aligning the box assemblies. Later I found a coupon for the same clamps for $1 each, so I wound up with eight of them. Turns out they do fit beautifully, and make the box absolutely square. (Flat, not so sure.) Pics later.

Still haven't put together a PC for it. Have a good PC but was expecting to have to buy a disk drive for it. Just realized I've got a couple of 10 Gig drives here somewhere & they'd probably do. Finding them could be a problem.

vCNC schematic is still coming along slowly. Found some information on bipolar controllers & decided I'd work on one of those too, in a similar form factor/feature set. The hardest part is deciding which features should be integrated - what are commonly used; how many zillion jumper options needed. I've really only looked at Mach3; I need to survey the other popular driver software to see what they support/need.

I'll add pics when my son brings back my camera's SD card.

Gary

[ccsparky]

Originally Posted by gacrwell Progress - 6 weeks Joe's kit arrived and unpacked; test fitted the gantry box. Completed the bearing slides. Purchased some additional odds & ends and tools. The fit on the parts that I've tested is fabulous. Also, even though I knew it ahead of time, I neglected to follow the tip of putting a nut on the rod before cutting it. Removing that nut after cutting opens up the threads, simplifying things later. After having it for about two years and never taking it out of the box, I finally got a stand for my bench grinder and mounted it. Also picked up a spray gun and a gallon of Kilz primer. Gotta go find some taps; 10-32 and 1/4-20 are all that's needed right? Probably have to buy a set anyway.

I use a grinder to clean up the ends of the rods, by taking a little off the end at a slight angle then clean up with the wire wheel.

The thing I like most about using Mach3 is that so many folks here building Joe's machine use the same and it makes it really helpful when trouble shooting! It's also very nice software!

[joecnc2006]

for a 10' 1/4" threaded rod try looking in the electrical section, they use it to hand the electrical stuts from roof lines. if they only have 3/8" use that and just drill out the holes at the ends of the router. Also you could use 1/4" x 12" carriage bolts on the Carriage slide.

Joe

[gacrwell]

Progress - 7 weeks

• glued the Z-axis carriage together.
• ordered Kabel Schlepp off of ebay.

Sheesh - that's about it. Wife has been away for the past month and returns on Monday so I've had to start putting the house back together, takes time.

Everything fit so well on the carriage that it'd be hard not to get it square. It would be easy to get something in backwards though, dry assemble it and make sure. I don't know if Titebond III was a good choice - it doesn't give much working time - had to scramble. The fit is so close that you can't put too much glue on the joints - if you do, it just gooshes out. I think just a fine sheen of glue, preferably on both parts to be joined, is about right. I got away with not too many drips. It was good to have the threaded rods ready (or clamps); tightening them up forced out a bit more glue.

The only place there was a bit of slop was the top and bottom pieces in their slots - they could slide about 1/16" front-to-back, so I made sure that both were fully at the end of the slots in the same direction before the glue set up.

I also found that the inside finished dimension is a hair less than 7.5" - I suspect the slots were just a bit deep. The only result is that my Y-axis bearing slides and the HDPE bearing block will have to be shortened up just a smidge. It all looks good though. Supposed to rain tomorrow, so I'm not gonna get it primered this weekend.

I saw the cable carrier working on David's video, so I started looking around. Got in a bidding war with one guy over some IGUS carrier on ebay that would have been great at the original price, but this guy just had to have both pieces that were offered in two auctions. Anyway, the next day there was this Kabel Schlepp (literally German for cable carrier, I think) stuff, 33" for $30, and the other dims looked good. I wasn't sure how much of it would be consumed in the bend radius, so I got two pieces of it to be sure. Should be here this week, will let you know if it looks like it'll work. There were several more pieces of it on ebay - search for "kabel".

We got pictures:
WOW- was walking around getting pics and went into the L/R to get a pic of the carriage box where I'd left it - and found a lamp on fire! (well, seriously smoking, anyway.) CFL bulb was arcing at its base - didn't know they could do that. The lamp was right over a blanket laying on the arm of an overstuffed chair next to the curtains. If it had dropped something burning on the blanket the place would have been gone in minutes.

Anyway, the pics:

• The culprit CFL bulb; I think this was from Costco.
• Here's how I drilled my bearing angles and kept the 0.433 distance constant; vice clamped to the drill press base.
• Checking the bearing distance from the opposite angle face by holding a straight edge against it - the bearing should just touch the edge. Mine are about 10 mils too far, but at least all are consistent.
• X, Y, and Z bearing rails with hardware installed. I've seen a couple of threads with questions on the hardware stack, I think these are right, from the angle piece outwards: X: nut, nut, bearing, lockwasher, nut. (I also added a lockwasher on the inside of the bracket, let me lock the bolt down with the first nut - don't think it'll upset anything. Y: nut, lockwasher, bearing, nut. Z: nut, bearing, lockwasher, nut.
• Glued up Z-axis box, with and without nosey cat.

I may still get some time tomorrow to work on the Z-axis assy and/or glue the upper/lower torsion box(s). Bedtime now and I gotta remember to turn out the lights.

Gary