Newbie Zenbot Mini help - Looking for suggetsions on holding material down on surface?


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Thread: Zenbot Mini help - Looking for suggetsions on holding material down on surface?

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    Default Zenbot Mini help - Looking for suggetsions on holding material down on surface?

    First off, thank you for the community! I am surprised on just how much information is here.

    A few weeks ago I picked up a Zenbot Mini to handle PCB milling and maybe attempt some small nameplates. And mostly to understand the process of CNC, Mach3, and have some confidence when attempting to the larger systems at the Hackerspaces around me. I am running into a few problems and thought I would post up a few questions here. Feel free to snigger' and laugh. I'm a noob' and just attempting to wrap my head around all this.

    I have a few questions:

    1. I have to admit I am lost on how I can hold securely items to the Zenbot Mini's surface board. The one I have has 1/4"-20 holes every square inch and attempting to understand how to make use of them. Any suggestions?

      I have a few assumptions:

      I assume I need a to attach some type of board to the top Zenbots surface to act as a sacrificial board.

      I assume I want to make the attachment of the sacrificial board using countersunk bolts through holes outside my router/spindle's x/y area.

      I assume I will need to use my spindle to grind down a level area across the sacrificial board. This I expect using 1/8th in shanks will take a long time!.

      I assume I will need to use something to attach/hold the material I want to mill to the sacrificial board. I have no idea how or what to use here and keep it out of the way of my spindle when moving around.

      Picture of Zenbot Mini's Surface board.

      Zenbot Mini help - Looking for suggetsions on holding material down on surface?-zenbot-mini-wrapped-jpg

    2. DC power for a Wolfgang Engineering TB-650 spindle. Can I use a PC power supply? I do not want to just drop a Car battery down and use it. This was a gift and I would like to use it. I would like a DC version of the Super-PID-V2 controller. Is there Such a thing?


    Any suggestions, images, or drawings of what I need to chase down would be helpful, well as long as they pertain to the subject .

    Again, thank you for such a great community.

    - Sraney

    Similar Threads:
    Last edited by sraney; 03-08-2014 at 09:52 PM. Reason: Correcting my stupidity.


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    Quote Originally Posted by sraney View Post
    [*] DC power for a Wolfgang Engineering TB-650 spindle. Can I use a PC power supply? I do not want to just drop a Car battery down and use it. This was a gift and I would like to use it. I would like a DC version of the Super-PID-V2 controller. Is there Such a thing?
    Although I have no experience with that spindle, I don't see any reason why you couldn't use a PC power supply to drive it.

    Control of the speed of a DC motor is typically done using PWM. You can probably find suitable ones on eBay (search for "PWM controller", although, again I don't have hands-on experience with them) - the spindle is rated at 150 watts, and so you would probably want to look for a PWM controller that can handle more than 15 amps.

    As for the work hold-down questions - you might find some useful discussion on the Shapeoko forums - it's a similar class of machine IMHO, and I have seen several articles about people using threaded inserts in the baseboard for hold-down options.



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    Default Re: Zenbot Mini help - Looking for suggetsions on holding material down on surface?

    I have a mini and I have that spindle. I used a spare transformer and rectifier to turn 120VAC to 12VAC to 12VDC (approximately). I then used this device to control the speed since I need to slow it down for some types of plastic to keep the plastic from melting and sticking to the bit.

    I'm still working on the hold down problem. I'm also trying to figure out how to level the platform.



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    Default Re: Zenbot Mini help - Looking for suggetsions on holding material down on surface?

    I have a very similar machine, the Sable-2015, and as I use it mainly for circuit boards, levelness is key, and I found the easiest way to achieve that was to use double sided tape to stick a 12mm sheet of MDF to the platform, a little bigger than the cutting area, and then used the widest cutter I had to surface the MDF to have it perfect for PCB's. This gave me a lip along the front and left edge to use as the 0:0 reference, so I could line up PCB's perfectly. Then it was simply a matter of a few pieces of masking tape to hold the PCB down while machining.

    I've produced many really great quality PCB's this way, and using the cheap Chinese cutters, I could easily route traces inbetween DIP holes.

    These machines are cheap, but they really are very nifty.

    cheers, Ian

    It's a state of mind!


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Zenbot Mini help - Looking for suggetsions on holding material down on surface?

Zenbot Mini help - Looking for suggetsions on holding material down on surface?