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For now I am. I eventually want to replace the whole cross slide setup with either some sort of gang tooling plate or a CNC turret. But that is going to be a bit down the road.Originally Posted by will gilmore
Mike
are you keeping the compound? you could probably gain some rigidity and swing by ditching it.
--Will
For now I am. I eventually want to replace the whole cross slide setup with either some sort of gang tooling plate or a CNC turret. But that is going to be a bit down the road.
Mike
The update is a day early. I usually have Mondays off from work, but I gotta work tomorrow. And I'm working next weekend too, so there might not be alot happenin' on the project. I should be able to get a little done next Monday as I will be back to my regular schedule then.
OK. On to the pictures.
Pic 1: I started building the enclosure. The sides are 3/4" birch plywood.
Pic 2: A close-up of the 1/8" x 1" strip that I welded along the bottom for more support for the sides and back. You can sort of see that in pic 1 along the bottom.
Pic 3: The door for the top. The plan is to hinge the front door to the top door along the top front. Then I will hinge the top door towards the back and hopefully, the whole thing will easily lift up. I found one little problem. My plexiglass for the opening is around 1" too short length wise. I'm going to put a divider in the middle of the opening, split the plexi and have the "short" part under the divider.
I'm thinking of staining all the wood a light oak color and then putting about 3-4 good coats of gloss polyurethane on it to seal it. Was also thinking about painting it all white. I'm leaning towards the stain unless someone talks me out of it. It should give my cabinet a little classiness.
I don't like working with wood. This has not been the "fun" part of the project for me. Ugh. That is why I used those corner brackets to join the corners of the door. I'm going to paint them black once I tear this down for paint or stain.
I also got the headstock tore down. I am putting new bearings and races in while it is apart. I'll post pictures of that on the next update.
See you on the flip side.
Mike
Update for 9 Aug 2010:
Didn't get a lot done this weekend because I had to work. But made a little progress on the enclosure:
Pic1: It is pretty well put together here. The middle piece does not have the straps installed to hold it in. The are just installed by the pressure of the main frame pieces.
Pic2: The front door lifted up out of the way.
Pic3: Tore down and the pieces are stained.
Pic4: Hard to tell, but I have 3 good coats of Gloss Polyurethane on these. They are starting to shine pretty good. I am headed down in a bit to put on the fourth and last coat.
Hoping to start taking this home this coming weekend and setting it back up. Maybe running the weekend after that.
We'll see. Stay tuned. Same bat time. Same bat channel.
Mike
Update for 16 Aug 2010
Got a bit done this weekend since I did not have any distractions.
Pics 1-3 The stand is painted and ready to move back home.
Pic4 The headstock tore apart and ready to go back together.
Pics 5-6 Painted
Not going to get a lot done next weekend. Got another wedding on Saturday and need to be there to run the sound board.
Probably won't have this running for a couple more weeks at least.
Mike
Update for Saturday 21 Aug 2010:
Early update. Gotta run the soundboard for a wedding at church this afternoon and the job is sending me on the road again starting Sunday. Should be back at this next weekend.
Pic 1 and 2: Weeeeeeee'rrrrrrre Hooooooooooommmmmmme.
I need to move the 220 plugin. It is going to be in the way of the enclosure. I have no idea why I put it there in the first place. The control box that plugs into it is about 5' over to the left of it. I should have mounted it over further to begin with. DOH!
The funky paint job on the walls is from when my son was 9 or 10 years old. This used to be his bedroom. We painted it white and then gave him and his sister a quart can of black paint and a paint brush and let them splatter paint to their heart's content. They had fun. The room butts up against my workshop and when he moved out, I tore out the end wall and expanded the shop into the bedroom.
Stay tuned. Like always...comments welcomed.
Mike
Ugh....forgot to post my Monday update....not alot to post though. But don't want ya'all to think I lost interest.
No pictures
Got busy this weekend and kept gettting interrupted. Had homework to do on Saturday. I had planned on finishing up the homework Sunday afternoon, but my 4 yo niece and 3 yo nephew came over and wanted to go to the park. Who could resist? And since the carnival was in town, Uncle Mike had to run them downtown and ride the ferris wheel a couple of times. I no sooner got back and settled down to get some homework done and my wife calls....she is broke down 30 miles from town. So....end up making two trips out (120 miles total) and finally got back home around 9pm. Lost interest in doing anything. Did the homework on Monday instead.
I got the ballscrew on the front bolted up, but I need to get it lined up with the mic.
That was about it.
I have at least 4 days off this weekend. Should get something done to the project now.
Working next weekend.
Later Gater.
Mike
The weekly update 7 Sep 2010:
Got a little bit accomplished. Not as much as I wanted mostly because I did not feel like wiring the thing. LOL. On to the pics!
Pic 1 is the front of the case. I took the cheesy carbon fiber decals off from the beginning of this build and polished the aluminum up so that it matched the lathe better.
Pic 2 is the interior of the case. I still need to put more wiring in and get the fans hooked up.
Pic 3 is the back filler panel that I made in place of the old ATX filler.
Pic 4 is some of the wiring sort of layed out neatly. In the bottom left corner is a spacer that I needed to make for the NEMA 42 motor. The shaft was just under 3/4" too long and instead of chopping off the shaft, I made this spacer. Seems to work OK....but I am getting ahead of myself.
Pic 5 is where I left off with the lathe. Got the NEMA 42 motor mounted. You can see the spacer that I made installed between the motor and mount.
Pic 6 is another view from the tailstock end.
Alrighty....I got the Z axis motor wired enough to run Mach3 and the NEMA 42 motor! I am calling the Z axis the ballscrew across the front, with the X axis the cross slide. The carriage travels down the whole length of the bed without any hassles.
I do have a interesting problem. I am going to post this over on the Mach3 site too: When I run the motor from the arrow keys on the keyboard and let up and then press down on it again, about 50% of the time, the motor reverses direction. I let up the key, press it down, and it goes back to the original direction. What could be causing this?
I also need to figure out how to get everything set so that when I tell the carriage to move 1", it moves 1" and not 3".
And....does anyone have any ideas on something to use to protect the ballscrews? Or is that a big deal? I am building this for flood coolant but not sure if I am going to use it yet.
Forgot to add: I gotta work this weekend. The following weekend I am helping to roof my daughter's house. So....might not get a lot done on this over the next couple of weeks. Will post updates if I get anything done.
Thanks
Mike
Ok...about time I got this back to page 1 where it needs to be.
Been cleaning up my shop downtown and getting it ready for a rewire job. That has been taking a lot of my time lately.
I hope I got this right....I am calling the X axis the carriage ballscrew and the Y axis the cross slide ballscrew.
No pictures for this update, but I've been spending the last week getting the X axis tuned. I finally got it this morning! I still need to fine tune it a bit, but the movements are getting really close.
I want to get the Y axis motor mounted (picture opportunity!) and the Y axis tuned.
Then...maybe I can run a few test cuts!
Mike
i think standard nomenclature is Z for axis that moves parallel to axis of spindle rotation. so on a lathe Z is moving the carriage and X is moving the cross slide
Here is the status so far of the build and it is not good...
I am having some issues with the ballscrew going through the carriage. I think I have it sitting too low. When the ballscrew nut turns, I can see some slight flexing in the ballscrew which appears to be the source of some of my backlash. What I think is happening is with the ballscrew too low and trying to pull the carriage from the bottom (basically, pulling a rectangular object from the bottom is going to cause the rectangle to tilt) is putting pressure on the ballscrew and causing an ever so slight bind.
I have a couple of ideas to fix this:
1. I am going to try to reinforce the bottom part of the carriage that I made by putting a couple more pieces of aluminum bracing through it. I am hoping this may strengthen it enough to pull the whole carriage evenly. I do not have my hopes up this will work.
2. Figure out some way to raise the ballscrew a good inch or so.
3. Do both 1 and 2 together. I am leaning towards this hopeful solution...
Any other suggestions???
Thanks
Mike
Is the ballscrew assembly aligned and running dead level from end to end with your ways?
Do your ways have a wear dip causing a bind between the carriage and screw?
Is there good support in the carriage for the ball screw? It does look like a long run and I would imagine either that ball screw floats somewhat, or has to be aligned dead nuts, running true from end to end.
Just throwin' thoughts out there. I've never done a retrofit.
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