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Hello everyone
Been waiting for this day for a year now. I just ordered 5 x 10 TM 1 last week. Josh at Torchmate sent me to this site to look up Blakes gantry rebuild. Been looking at all post from blackhollow, millman52, ben88ner and Shapenfab(Blake). Very interesting, I am going to do the same gantry rebuild with a watertable. Hope to be talking to all of you soon, I know I'll need some help.
Great forum!!
Derick
Welcome aboard It's a both challenging & fun project to build a table.Originally Posted by ssderick
The upgraded gantry really helps.
My personal opinion would be to use some 80/20 aluminum for the cross bar or a piece of aluminum box tube.
I forget exactly what the TM plans call for 3/4" X 3" CR steel bar?? anyway it's a pretty heavy chunk of steel you can eliminate for the steppers to drag around.
If it works.....Don't fix it!
hey millman 52
I have spent countless hours on this forum looking at post since last Friday(no sleep to excited). Your post have been helpful. I am lookig at doing the same thing that shapenfab (Blake) did. What is 80/20 alum? is that the extruded piece that he used for his gantry? Josh @ Torhmate gave me his number to call him, but I have not yet (been busy). You have helped a lot of folks, Hope you can help me also. gto go wife callin
Thanks
Derick
Yes 80/20 is extruded profile. It's strong fairly light & very easy to attach a profiled linear rail. Even a length of 2 X 2 X 1/4 Wall steel tubing is about 1/2 the weight of the solid bar.
Of course any modification you make, I'm sure you will have to adapt the TM brackets, etc. to make it work.
You just have to decide for yourself what is best for you to use. Only you know your abilities & what tools, machine tools etc. you have to work with.
It is best to ask all these questions before purchasing. Only to find out later what you bought wasn't the best choice.
Here is a link to 80/20 on ebay. http://stores.ebay.com/8020-Inc-Garage-Sale They may have something you could use. Of course they aren't the only source. Extruded aluminum can be purchased many different places.
If it works.....Don't fix it!
Update
Well I recieved my Torchmate AVHC Friday. Got my Thermal Dynamic A80 yesterday. Got my new air dryer today. That's about it. It's Planting seasone here in south Texas and I have been working 12 to 18 hour days for the past week and a half. Have not had time to work on my build. Still waiting on parts from Torchmate, should be here this week. Can't wait to get some time to get started.
ssderick, the picks on my post are all of the build process. if you need any help or have any questions please don't hesitate to ask..... going down this road is fun and frustrating at the same time..... not as much so if you have someone with you on the journey helping you with the navigation..... just remember " everyone's maps are different " .... good luck ! P.S. I have many more pics that i havent posted yet...of the finished product.
ben88ner
BENFAB and Design LLC.
ssderick, where abouts are you in south texas? I mite be close by to you.
I have a flashcut powered cnc plasma cutter too.
Hello Derick,
The problem is always with the Y-axis, the TM1 cassette design just doesn't work.
People have come up with some very ingenious solutions some costly some not, but almost always very time consuming.
We came up with a very simple solution that took us just one day to implement using all the existing bits from the TM1 and it works great.
How far have you gone with this?
Maybe what we did, will work for you too.
Chris
have been woking 12-14 hour days, its been almost 2 months since last post. worked on my table the last 5 days straight. have been talking with Blake (shapenfab) on the phone and email. pretty much copying his table but i went 6 feet wide and a little longer to park gantry out of the way when loading table with material. its been very exciting and just as frustrating. will try to post some pics tomorrow
MAS, sorry forgot you. I am in Schroeder, TX between Victoria and Goliad.
Where are you?
OK Here are some pics
been a long time coming. i got my table copletely fabbed, painted and assembled. i even installed a gib hoist with a coustom spreader beam i desigened to load from 4x8 to 6x10 sheets watertable filled and ready with plasma quench. found a new company that maskes it (chemicalmethods.com)and they are really nice people there not like koal industries. bad news, my height controller box is not working right. finally got it to cut on manual today. new box will be in thursday. will be posting pics soon.
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