Outstanding welds. Nice to see craftmanship in the workshop.
It looks impressive, good luck with the project.
Outstanding welds. Nice to see craftmanship in the workshop.
Been there, done that ! I was alone at home at the time and did not think riding the bike to the hospital was a very good idea.
Plus the doc was shut between 12h and 14h and I had to pick the bits of ali swarf out and clean it up myself. Stuck it back together with butterfly sutures. Worked out OK for a DIY job. Barely any visible scarring and not loss of sensitivity.
Tricky bit was controlling the very fine nosed tweezers and the magnifying glass while the adrenaline was making my hands shaky.
Lucky it was a nice clean, sharp 1/4" end mill. Sounds like yours went a bit deeper.
They're great for cutting metal but make a really messy job on fingers and thumbs Hope it heals up nice and quick.
BTW , really nice welding and construction work there Will. I wish I had a barn that big for my workshop.
Damn you Photobucket! Anyways I don't know what the last image I post was but Ill try to follow on. Ive tried looking for where I can edit my posts but haven't had any luck
Ive been away from the cnc build for bit cause Ive been planning my proposal to my partner. The ring Ive bought should be resized soon ready for me to go pop the question and decided I needed to get back to the build to calm the nerves lol.
So I welded up a frame and used it massage out the warpage in the bed that I caused welding it up.
Then I slotted the waterbed rails and added an adjuster rail to raise or lower the slates. Which I also cut and placed in
After that it was onto the main rails for the gantry
6 Beers Later I had the holes Tapped and ready the bolt down the 90x10 flat
By this stage the sun was going down and I felt like having a few beers in front of a fire. Only problem was I didn't have a fire pit. So I decided to make one. Got my mate up the road to cut me some pieces on his plasmacam and couple of hours of cleaning and welding I had a fire pit to sit in front of enjoying the bush and the beers of course .
Great to see it coming together. It was really only this weekend, I got mine cutting but I'm sure I have a lot more to do... I was able to prototype a couple of parts today which will make me money
Rod Webster
www.vmn.com.au
That's awesome mate, well done, the plan is to make a living off the machine. Got a vid of it cutting?
Cheers
Will
A couple of vids on my channel
https://www.youtube.com/user/MrRodW
Rod Webster
www.vmn.com.au
G'day guys, so my motors arrived and now it's time to get the gearing ratios planned out and I'm needing some help.
i got nema34 hybrid steppers with a torque rating of 8.5nm they have a maximum rpm of 3000 with no load (I know very helpful measurement). I'm planning on being able to cut very thin materials and a fast pace although most of what I'll be cutting is 3-8mm steel. The gantry will weigh in the 40-55kg ballpark
Now for the stupid questions, sorry.
because I've got ample torque can I gear it in reverse to gain speed? Like 1:3 instead of 3:1. The more I think about it, the more answers the old noodle comes up with and it's confused the hell out of me.
Will, with steppers, movement gets very notchy at slower speeds. I could not see what drive type you were using.I'm using a rack and pinion.The Nema 34's I've got on each side of the gantry are on a 5:1 belt drive reduction and can still run at 21 metres per second which is way faster than you will need to cut. The sweet spot for steppers is somewhere between 15-30mm of travel per revolutions with somewhere in the middle being Ideal. I've seen 25mm per rev quoted and another guy told me he liked 18mm/rev.
Rod Webster
www.vmn.com.au
Thanks Rod, I'm going to be using a rack and pinion as well. Just trying to figure out which pulleys to buy and then I can calculate the belt length needed
I took a shortcut.
Gear Box Drive Shaft 1 Terminals Rotary Speed Geared for belt pulley | eBay
I figured I could barely build a reduction drive for this cost. Had to buy his rack though. I've got 2 pieces spare...
Rod Webster
www.vmn.com.au
Sorry, the last post was a bit cryptic but thats a 5:1 belt driven reduction drive for NEMA 34 motors complete with drive belt and pulley for the motor. I have 2 x pieces 1400mm of matching helical gear rack spare. I thought I'd need a bit more rack but found that I only needed one length as side. I guess I could ship these up to you ex Brisbane pretty easilly. The rack module was not as stated but I've got it dialed on so I could tell you the number of mm per revolution which is within 0.02mm per 20 metres.
Rod Webster
www.vmn.com.au
These racks have to be right and left? Can't only 2 ea left racks or 2 ea right racks, you should have left and right? Is this right, I have never used helical racks...I have 2 x pieces 1400mm of matching helical gear rack spare
I wondered about that too but once I played with this gear, it does not matter. Think of the rack and gearbox as an assembly. You are just turning the whole assembly around on the opposite side. It does seem nicer than the straight rack I used on the gantry sourced from CNC & Cupcake world on ebay.
I did not use his linear rails. I ended up buying 1600mm long Hiwin 25mm rails from Aliexpress. https://www.aliexpress.com/item/2pcs...311.0.0.Nwxwif. I think they would customise the length or make sure it is cut so it can be joined.
Rod Webster
www.vmn.com.au