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Trevor;
is this table driven from one side like the other one you had?
the other table you had was driven with one belt and the other side was just stabilized by the roller on the x axis.
very good work here!!!!
keep up the good work Ron
Ron, the end of the long axis is just allowed to follow along on two rollers and is not driven or captured in any way. It just goes where the other end goes and is only kept in guide by the rollers at the driven end and the rigidity of the tube. It worked pretty well on the last table years ago and its axis was considerably longer than this one so I hope it will work even better this time. Thanks for the interest. I will attach a couple of pics of the end roller assy.
Trevor
I made some progress this week getting most of the z axis built and mounted on the carriage. I have now turned my attention to the control for awhile. I have the three Linisteppers mounted up on copper heat sinks each with its own fan to keep them plenty cool and I have begun wiring up all of the other junk inside of an old cabinet re-purposed form a project years ago. I will attach a few pics.
I have the rest of the components for the z axis completed. As you can see in the pictures the torch holder is mounted to a short linear rail that allows the torch to "float" about one inch up and down. It is held down by gravity and I hope to be able to use this feature along with a switch of some kind to be able to do initial height sensing at some point in the future. This in turn is mounted on to a longer linear rail whose carriage is powered by the stepper motor and screw to move it up and down. The torch is simply retained by one thumbscrew and can be removed in about 5 seconds when needed for hand cutting.
Also attached is a picture of the brackets I milled out to support the water tray. They will also serve as the supports to hold the framework for the slats down inside of the tray. It is hard to describe how they will fit and I didn't take a picture but the groove that you see in them will fit down over the walls of the water tray.
Here are a couple of pictures of how i tapped into the plasma cutter so that I could control it with Mach3. I found the two wires that came into the unit from the hand torch trigger. In the case of my unit it was a pair of brown and white wires. I simply tapped into these wires with a pair of scotch lock connectors so that the hand trigger would still operate normally whenever needed. I then wired these two up to a pigtail cord that exits the unit and has an audio connector on it so that I can disconnect it from the control cabined whenever I need to. The Plasma unit uses a 24 volt dc signal between these two wires to act as a trigger circuit. Whenever the circuit is closed the plasma unit fires. The current draw is very small so only a very small relay is needed to close this circuit and make the cutter think that its trigger has been pulled. All of this has been covered in much greater detail elsewhere but it is a very simple process all in all.
I was able to do some more work on the table and after scabbing together some temporary slats and a pan that will eventually become the water table I couldn't wait any longer and made some test cuts of some little 4" x 4" gussets that I drew up. The results left more than a little to be desired and highlighted the need for tweaking and tuning in several areas but it was exciting to see all of the parts working together to actually cut something out of metal. I began this project back on the RD of December so I am pretty pleased with the time it took me to get to this point. Now I need to see it through and finish it rather than getting it 90% done and leaving it like i do with so many other projects! I also have a lot to relearn about feed rates and cutting amperage so that I can achieve nice square cuts and eliminate as much dross on the bottom as possible. I am hoping that the water table will also help some with the dross issue but I am not sure. I will attach a couple of pictures of the first cuts.
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