Build Thread- $1.50 per axis Dirt Simple Damper

[THend]

Ok, so I read the entire thread in this forum on dampening the resonance experienced with steppers. I was about to try and make the rattle style dampers, I bought the steel rod and other stuff..

Then one day it hit me..and I had no idea how cool this was going to be.

A hockey puck is already round, made of material that would preclude the steel rods from making too much noise, and they seemed like the perfect fit for making the rattlers per the drawing provided in the other forum..

Then my buddy comes over, and he says we should just drill an undersized hole in the center of the puck to see what happens...

I have the Xylotex 428 4 axis package and the steppers have a 0.250 shaft, so I drilled a 0.233 or so sized hole in the puck.

Pushed the puck on, and sure enough, it holds pretty tight, but has some elastic motion...

I went from approximately 25 inches per minute up to 72 and change with super smooth sounding steppers.

Here is the fun part, I just guessed at where the center of the puck was, and one of them is way off center and the other is better, but neither of them is dead on... I've got plenty of vibration because the suckers are not balanced, but the machine moves out like crazy ......

I got my pucks from Play It Again Sports for $1.50 each..

I'll be going back for more and getting them centered and balanced..

TADA!

I am so jazzed..

[MadMachines]

that sounds like a nice and also cheap mod!! does it change the machine's ramp up/down speed? also what is the machine like at slow speeds now?
Cheers

[codexmas]

Lovely! You just saved me some engineering time and tons of testing!

Going to go to Walmart and pick up my pucks.

[THend]

Ok, I am using this on a 4 axis machine running the Gilles Mueller foam cutting software, GMFC PRO. The software has two settings, one with no accelleration and one with..

So, the ramp is based upon number of steps required to go from zero accel to full accell and I have it set at about 2400 which is 3 revs at 1/4 step..

I know about Mach3 as I run it on my servo driven table, so I imagine you could set the ramp on that easily...

At slow speed it is SOLID and really sounds cool...

I just bought 4 new pucks so I can have them drilled out on center..

I could make video, but honestly the sound and results are EXACTLY like the other thread... Without, the system eventually stalls.. with, the system sounds and runs so smoothly it is amazing...

Buy two pucks, try it... laugh your back side off... go buy two more...

For less than ten bucks you just improved your rigs performance significantly..

[Drools]

I needed to find the center of a puck but just how. This is how I did it.
I realized that a puck will fit in the center of a roll of masking tape. I then took some copper tape, the stuff stained glass people use and placed it around the inside of the roll of masking tape. I then used the Mach3 Blue screen program listed here (Mach3 Blue Scree mod). to find the center of the puck.

[wendtmk]

Why not just chuck it up in a lathe and drill away?

Mark

[Drools]

well because I do not own a lathe. I wish I did but....

[THend]

A bud used a thing like a right angle finder, but it is a center finder? You scribe a line, rotate, scribe again and violla you at least know where to drill.

I don't have a lathe either... and my router is down..

[RomanLini]

Knock 3 nails in a piece of wood, so the puck JUST snugs in between the nails and will just turn. You can bend the nails a little if needed to make it snug.

Then clamp the wood in your drill press and use a short stiff drill (a centre drill is good) and turn the puck as you peck at the drilling. This starts to centre the hole and you can align it very close to centre and clamp the wood there.

Finally just turn the puck as you drill it, run through with a slightly smaller drill first (to get a hole properly centred), this works almost like a lathe and is surprisingly accurate once you get it set up.

[THend]

RomanLini, great idea.. I had to think it through at first, but I can see it working rather well. If all goes well, I'll be running it today. I'll see if I can get video.

[15mgtar]

I really don't get about this damper idea.

[michaelthomas]

I realize this thread is pretty old, but I thought I would post anyway. I slapped a puck on my x and went from 400ipm rapids to 2000ipm after upping the kernel speed to the max.....lol. I don't think its too reliable at this speed.....but there is no apparent stalling. What a crack up!