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This really isn't a build thread. Its just to show you my machine. I've been building it over the past couple months buying stuff here and there and money permitted. I got lucky and found a metal supply house close by that sells aluminum bar in 1' lengths by weight. It was much cheaper than any of the online supply houses. I only had to use the online ones for the longer pieces. I think I have almost everything except the epoxy to level the work surface. Getting that soon. My electronics are on the way. All the metal and wood work are done. I just have to do all the final fitting of everything. In aircraft building, we say that when you are 90% done, you still have 60% to go.
Anyways, here's how it looks so far. Yup, its green. Green is my favorite color and the color I race under.
You can see the smart level. What I'm doing here is a preliminary level of the gantry before adding all the extra stuff to it. The rails have been leveled to each other and the work surface and are exactly 24 3/16 apart. The gantry is 90 degrees to the rails. I've also got the gantry and Y rail each level to the work surface. I'll do final touchup of the alignment as well as the vertical stuff when the rest of the stuff is in place. It was easier to do this preliminary level while the assembly was lighter.
The hole in the side is for a dust collector I have that I'll be using. I will be milling quite a bit of carbon fiber and keeping dust down is essential.
The only real modification I made to the wood structure was to use not do the thick inner sidewalls with the cutouts for adjustment. I replaced them with 1/8" plywood to clean things up. The structure was plenty strong before this so the loss in sidewall thickness should not impact it.
My primary use for the machine will be creating parts for radio control off road racing vehicles. Up until now, all of my parts have been drawn in my mind and shaped by hand using my manual standup mill and a dremel. I've since taught myself Solidworks and figured it was time to make things easier on the fabrication side.
I'll post more pics as I go.
Chris, nice work, the machine looks great. I love the green!
The 1/8" inner skins is a nice solution. It will be plenty strong enough as a skin material, and it avoids routing out those pockets. I'm curious to see more of your dust collection system as it comes together.
-Bob
It will be pretty simple. I have a 4" inlet that will attach to the outside and a grating for the inside to cover the hole. It will go to a portable dust collector i already have for sanding the CF. I'll work on it this week and post pics.
Oh, and even with the 18" ply, I still had to grind one of my box wrenches down to fit in to tighten the bearings. It was too thick.
Work has stopped for the weekend on finishing fitting the gantry. I found out that I somehow built the Z rail from 3/16" instead of 1/4". Can't adjust the bearings enough to hold it. Looks like a trip to the metal supply house is in order this week.
Ah, I think I see. So no dust shoe around the spindle, but just evacuating dust from the whole inside volume of the enclosure. Intriguing. I could see it working well for fine, light dust.
-Bob
The fine stuff is what I care about. It won't really be for aluminum or heavier metals, but more for the carbon fiber. I'll have a vent in the back door to create a way for air to flow in and then out in to the dust collector. I'll test it with aluminum but will most likely cap it for that.
I installed the dust collector port today. Here are the pics:
This is really just for dust. You can see that I installed screening behind the grill to keep bigger stuff from being sucked in to the collector.
Update on the build: My electronics are here. I changed gears completely and went with the TB6560 board sold by HubbardCNC. He provides the config file for Mach3 that is supposed to make this board work correctly. We'll see. I ended up going with this board because I decided to go a little more expensive (for me) on the CAM software and get the Vectric Cut2D and Cut3D. As a result, not as much money for the controller board. It will at least get me up and running and I can use the article on this forum to fix it or save up later for a Gecko.
My resin is on its way. Then, I'll do the final leveling of the gantry.
I would probably delete the fine mesh screen. It will quickly clog.
I might also consider a dust shroud on the spindle. The closer to the cutter you collect, the better your collection will be. The one in the side will collect ambient dust, but you'd rather not get it there in the first place. If you can do both, even better.
I don't recall what vacuum you are using, carbon fiber can kill a standard shop vac. If using a FEIN or similar, definitely use a bag in addition to the normal filter. A HEPA bag if you can.
I'm using one of the smaller sized industrial dust collector thus the 4" connection. I know all about what CF does to a shop vac. I'm on my second now. I run a bag on the outlet of mine when doing other CF work.
I'm going to use a flow through design with an air inlet on the rear door. This should pull the carbon dust in to the collector. If I need to go beyond that, I'll figure out a way to a spindle type collector.
As far as the screen goes, I had thought of the clogging issue. CF dust is very small so it shouldn't be a problem but if it is, I'll remove it.
More updates. Got the carriage installed. Still needs to be leveled.
Also did the cable arms and routed the cables. You'll notice that the holes in the back of the gantry are a bit bigger than spec. I enlarged them so I could get washers under the bolt heads.
Finally, got my epoxy in and poured it. Leveled the X rails first and then across Y axis of the bed of the the table. The Y rail is easier to adjust the level with regard to the table than the X rails since they have to be level to the table and each other. I had already leveled them to each other.
Went a little overboard mixing it and it will be a little under 3/16" thick. The aluminum strips you see are 1/4 x 1/2 strips I bonded in place with silicone to act as a dam for the epoxy. They will stay in place to finish the edge. Got three of them for a couple bucks at my favorite metal supply house. They were in the scrap section. I thought about having my graphics guy do my logo in vinyl to put under the epoxy but just wanted to get it poured. Would have looked cool.
Gonna let that stuff cure a few days then I'll finish leveling the gantry and carriage.
This thing is really starting to come along. Still waiting on the standoffs to mount the electronics. Once I have those and verify the machine will move on its own, I'll buy the router and software and make the clear part of the cover. Oh yeah, Also have to finish the rear door. I was going to put the inflow vent on the door but I'm not sure. Might be hard to get to to open so I may put it on the front of the door. We'll see.
Last edited by SpeedyDad; 09-25-2011 at 01:50 AM.
Well, its certainly bright and shiny. Mine was shiny too, but not so much now.
I have mine almost to a point of actually calling it usable. We will see how tomorrow goes.
Wow, I checked on the epoxy tho morning and it is already rock hard. The instructions say 24 hours cure but that is at 70-75 degrees ambient, not the 98 degrees my garage is. I'll still let it sit the rest of the day before putting a level on it.
Cure and setting up are different things.
For instance, I have a clear topcoat I use that "sets up" in one hour. Its 150 hours to final cure. (but who can wait that long).
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