Waiting for bits from 80/20 to arrive before much mores is going to happen. Love the 80/20 stuff but hate the round about to order it in BC. Seems you have to go through a distributor. I thought a distributor would have stock, have product expertise and have an economical method of shipping.
With any luck early May I will be able to start bolting the base together. :-(
Dave
Finally some progress
Got the base bolted together yesterday and got the unit assembled.
Here is an overall view with my messy shop in the background.
Some more details of how the units bolts to the base. The base is made out of 80/20 40 series extrusion. My only observation is the base will have to bolted to the floor. If I were to do it again base unit would be longer and extend in front and behind unit to prevent tipping.
Here is a picture of base with the rails mounted.
Everything fits nicely and manual is pretty good for a first pass.
Next step is to mount up the steppers and electronics and go through the alignment process add limit switches etc then tackle the spindle.
Thanks for the encouragement. I have half the motors bolted on, Ran into a minor hitch as the kits was missing a couple of SHCS. Picked up a box of 100 so I can drop a few. :-)
I have Mach3 loaded on the touch screen PC so I plan on finishing up the motor attachment and getting it moving on the weekend.
I have my machine up and moving around. Have cables to adjust for length on and figure out how to tidy-up the wiring.
Mach 3 with MSM screens and my touch screen PC went well. once spindle is mounted need to crank up the Velocity and Accel numbers but it nice and safe for now.
Ran roadrunnner file and seems to work cutting air.
I have limits switches on order and now trying to find suitable table material. Pricing out some T-slot table extrusion.
Any suggestions on options other than 80/20 and XZerocnc are appreciated.
Thanks
Dave
Table tops.
After looking around there don't seem to be many options.
In aluminum extrusions I have found the 80/20 40-8020 and the 5013 profiles the Techno Isel (nice but too expensive) and the xzerocnc stuff. http://www.xzerocnc.com/forum/viewtopic.php?f=5&t=92
I guess you could also use a 25x50 extrusion but that starts to eat up z axis room
Thanks Dave
Last edited by dfmiller; 05-11-2011 at 10:31 AM.
Reason: Added link
Two 3/4" layers. One is full width. Mount T-Track on that. Fill in between the T track with 3/4" MDF strips. On yours, you might want to throw an extrusion across the middle so you only have 1' unsupported span.
Brtech,
Good idea, I am planing on using a MDF spoil board.
I think I have an extrusion solution worked out and once I see the material quote make a decision.
I agree I need a extra cross piece if I go wit just MDF
Thanks
Dave
Dave,
Watching this with great interest. The machine looks just great. I hope it performs like it looks.
I have a request for a quote in with XYZGantry and am hoping I can sqeeze the budget some and get together with them.
I've got a homebuilt MDF machine now, so I have all the motors and electronics, would be fun to move them to something like this.
Well, I just heard back from XYZ and I'm on the verge of taking the plunge.
I know you're not complete yet, but can you give me your impressions of this product so far? It looks like it should be solid, with very little flexing or racking, is this your impression?
Any other thoughts you care to share to someone ready to take the plunge?
Edit: Oh, one more thing. Any idea what cut/rapid speeds your anticipating with the motors you using?
Bob,
I know Dave is gone this week but have had many talks with him. I also have a machine on order from XYZ Gantry. I do think it will be stronger but will find out. I don't know about speed or feed rates, for me I don't need it. I'm not a production shop but an artist that wants quality over quanity. I know the lead time is long but it's going to get longer. So if you like what you see so far go for it.
Will
BobL,
Thanks for your interest.
Will, thanks for stepping in.
I am back now. I survived a week on no internet. :-) Well almost non. Had a 4 hour drive for data coverage on phone. I did find some WiFi.
My impression is that in the size of mine racking etc will not be a problem. For my little machine its way overbuilt. I expect Gantry size of over 5 foot would not be a problem. I have not run the calculations yet.
As for speed, I have not started tuning up the motor to determine max speed. Fro my size tables I dont think there are any issues.
Getting my limit switches mounted are the next step. I have the prox switches. I have figured out locations for X and Y , still working on Z. I have some holes to drill and tap and some T nuts to fabricate for the adjustable limits.
A area to consider when ordering is how you are going to mount the unit and what you are going to use for a table top. If you are going to use MDF remember you may have to add at least one more cross piece to support the MDF. If you are going to use extrusion make sure you get the Y axis dimension to fit the desired extrusion. I ended up going with with 40-8020 extrusion and will have some gaps to fill in with spacers.
Hindsight is wonderful.
A suggestion is to have patience when dealing with XYZ. They are in the early stages any sometimes they take longer than you would expect for answers. The end result is worth it.
I hope to get some pictures posted this weekend
Dave
And thanks for the additional info. You're right about things taking time when dealing with XYZ, but glad to hear that is 'normal' if you will, for now.
I've decided to order one, am waiting on the e-mail with the order form, but like you say, the wheels turn slow.
I'm going with a 24"x48" cutting area.
So I will be following your build closely. It sounds like your well pleased with what you got from XYZ and that is good news to me also.
BoB,
24"x48" is a nice size. Thinking about things now I should have probably gone for that size myself. I imagine it will be identical to mine but with longer rails. I guess I could probably upgrade mine later.
Are you going for mechanical only kit or all the electronics also?
If you want any particular pictures etc drop me a note and I would be pleased to oblige.
Dave
I'm going for just the mechanical kit. Original plan was to just move my current motors/drivers/PS etc.
When I talked to, actually it was Dave , up there I found out that anything larger than 24x24 comes with Nema34 mounts and my motors are Nema23s.
That's why I've been wondering how efficiently your system drove as I'm contemplating using adapters for a while to take time to seriously consider where to spend the money. Oh yeah, and let my wallet recover.
I've been starting to look at Nema34 motors and if I can find some that will work decent enough on my drivers and PS I may just do that and then consider the next step.
Anyhow, sounds like a nice machine you've got there, hee hee, and hopefully, in a while I'll have one too
I think earlier in this post it was speculated that the main axis had effectively a 3 TPI and 5 TPI pitch. Can you confirm this (I assume you had to calculate for this in Mach3 or whatever your using)?
After some thought and lots of procrastination I mounted the Limits switches for X and Y today.
I made up a crude drill bushing to ensure that the hole was relatively square and similar position on the X gantry uprights since I am using two X limits.
Drilled a 11mm hole and tapped M12x1 and used one of the Jam nuts.
I went with limits with replaceable cable. I figure that will make it easy to troubleshoot. The limits also have a LED in them.
X Axis is similar. Mounted on left so I have room to locate the Z when it arrives.
Located the X so that both set screws are accessible to adjust the Cam adjusters on the V rollers.
Everything just fit so I guess I picked the correct locations.
Next step is to make up some flags for the inductive prox switches to trigger on. I have not decided to make adjustable units that fit in the T slots or just drill and tap some holes and mount socket head cap screws.
Bob,
Y and Z Axis (Ball Screws) are 0.002" per rev.
The Rack on X is approximately 0.431969" per rev. they have 10:1 gear reductions.
I am using Mach and after jogging just adjusted to fit. On Y it moved and 2 inches when told G0 Y1 in MDI so I just halved the Steps per unit etc.
They claim the rack since its adjustable engagement requires fine tuning. I used the steps per unit calibration to get the correct number.
Once it's all together I will do a final alignment and fine tune.
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