Design Concepts

[ardenum]

I'm thinking regular HS machining and enough low end torque to do face milling.

Is it worth paying more for HSK40 vs ISO30?

You can do face milling with any spindle just have to use smaller endmills. I don't see any reason to pay twice for an hsk for regular diy hobby stuff.

[Buoyen]

Yes

Great thread btw

[ardenum]

Yes

Great thread btw

Thanks, I went through your thread, you're doing a lot of good work. Good news is you aren't even scratching the surface of what you can do with a bt30, once you upgrade your machine frame you'll be surprised how far you can push a bt30...

[Buoyen]

Thanks

Yes I guess a 30 taper is more than sufficient for what i want to do.

[ardenum]

Here's what the final machine will look like.

I had to abandon building it on a 1200x800x120mm granite plate. The weight of the thing was 350kg and I do not want to risk having it brake in half if the guys drop it while transporting it to the 2nd floor, one guy slips and its over.

Moving from aluminum inserts to steel. I wanted to use aluminum plates and glue them with moglice to the blocks initially but once I computed how much of it I'd need I had arrived at the same cost as steel inserts.

I will use marking blue, a 4um straight edge and a hand grinder to get the inserts to desired flatness without a reference plate. If that won't work(as in takes too much time)I'll get a 800x500 granite plate as both the bed and reference. Fingers crossed I won't need it. Regardless, the bed will be 2 piece. Not sure about the front mounting plates on the bed yet.

Size 25 rails, narrow carriage CG series from hiwin(same price as HG but load and stiffness rating of RG), size 20 or 25 ballscrew with 5 pitch. Travels 420X 280Y 280Z. Total weight approx. 600kg

anyway have a look yourself : https://www.mediafire.com/file/emc1d...ca/be.stp/file

[ardenum]

Unsurprisingly the steel tube under table is proving to be a major headache. Nothing wants to align nicely, if the structure is good to support the weight, can't make the sheet metal covers for muck removal work. If I make them work, the structure is faulty. It's not looking too good. Been looking at haas cad models for some inspiration on enclosures but haven't found anything of help. Have to try a different approach.

[ardenum]

Managed to get something remotely working. Have to say I am not a fan of it. There's something about it I don't like though I just might be too picky. This setup allows me to separate chips and coolant. Though I can't get rid of a feeling that it's flimsy at best.

[Buoyen]

I don't really understand your model. Is the chip tray the sheet metal beneath the table with a very tiny gap on the sides?

[ardenum]

I don't really understand your model. Is the chip tray the sheet metal beneath the table with a very tiny gap on the sides?

Yes, but I don't like it very much. There's not enough space between the components to fit the tray in any other way. The gap is 20mm. This approach is flawed.

[Buoyen]

Can't you make the gap wider?
Is there any gap on the front side?

[ardenum]

Can't you make the gap wider?
Is there any gap on the front side?

On the front same gap, the gap isn't the problem though, 20mm is good enough for small chips and coolant only pools slightly on flat surfaces, the problem is this approach to steel table + chip management. I've already deleted this so no point in dwelling on the past.

[ardenum2]

It's been a while, I'm quite busy these days addressing a medical emergency related to sleep apnae, will be having a custom surgery to solve the problem but I have to design my own medical supplies in the meantime, which isn't the easiest of things, parts need to be on par with class IIa certification and not be an annoyance to use daily. There are no commercial products available for this type of surgery, if you were wondering why.

Anyways...

Welcome back. Last time I was so occupied with maintaining each part's proper dimensions(stiffness wise), I was blind to the fact that the spindle was way too far away from the bed to make it functional. Today I will show you 2 ways that I tried to fix this problem.

Part A...Weight: bed 230kg saddle 60kg column 80kg...Workarea: 200x240x900mm(XYZ) https://i.imgur.com/6Iw3NGU.png

step(https://www.mediafire.com/file/p2dfy...odel2.stp/file)
prt(https://www.mediafire.com/file/ox2of...odel2.rar/file)

Part B...Weight: bed 230kg saddle 30kg(AL6085) column 140kg...Workarea: 200x240x480mm(XYZ) https://i.imgur.com/6Iw3NGU.png

step(https://www.mediafire.com/file/yzbxw...odel3.stp/file)
prt(https://www.mediafire.com/file/yet5a...odel3.rar/file)

Both if these use one of these fancy XY covers:

RAIL ALIGNMENT https://i.imgur.com/mN4ySpz.png

The surface for the rail is raised 2mm over the rest of the part, this is to allow the surface to be sanded/ground/lapped by hand, side alignment is done via setscrews on both side. In theory no post-cast machining required. $500 vs $5000 (additional parts vs machining).

IN OTHER NEWS

C3 ground ballscrews. Finally available to us mortals at a reasonable price.
https://www.aliexpress.com/item/1005004778503006.html?

Solidedge community edition. No CAM included, but CAD should prove more capable than Fusion360.
https://www.plm.automation.siemens.c...ware/community

[ardenum2]

So I wrote a semi long post with .step files for download but the post didn't go through, some review process or something, I didn't save the links, maybe it will come through some day...

Long story short, I did 2 attempts at fixing the previous frame, the spindle was too far from the bed:

A1 https://i.imgur.com/6Iw3NGU.png
A2 https://i.imgur.com/oJ4Xln2.png
B1 https://i.imgur.com/U4WHFOM.png
B2 https://i.imgur.com/TOdubub.png

Other things:

C3 ground ballscrews : https://www.aliexpress.com/store/gro...02562133.html?
Solidedge goes free aka community edition, no CAM : https://www.plm.automation.siemens.c...ware/community

[RaderSidetrack]

So I wrote a semi long post with .step files for download but the post didn't go through, some review process or something, I didn't save the links, maybe it will come through some day...

The 'system' decided to hold your post in suspension for moderator approval. It has now been approved, and posted publicly. I don't know the exact triggers for "moderated posts", but I suspect that since you are now using a "new" user account, that is part of the trigger. Generally its better to resolve whatever issue there is with the older existing account (even if that resolution required Admin intervention.)

[ardenum2]

The 'system' decided to hold your post in suspension for moderator approval. It has now been approved, and posted publicly. I don't know the exact triggers for "moderated posts", but I suspect that since you are now using a "new" user account, that is part of the trigger. Generally its better to resolve whatever issue there is with the older existing account (even if that resolution required Admin intervention.)

Thanks for the swift action!

[peteeng]

Hi Ard - Solidworks must be feeling the pressure from the Fusion360 camp. I'm starting to warm to Fusion and see that it is and increasingly going to, rival/overtake inventor/SW and solidedge and all those old tech CAD systems. Peter

[ardenum2]

Hi Ard - Solidworks must be feeling the pressure from the Fusion360 camp. I'm starting to warm to Fusion and see that it is and increasingly going to, rival/overtake inventor/SW and solidedge and all those old tech CAD systems. Peter

Fusion would be on top in this cad wars if it didn't start cutting modules away from the free edition. It almost seems like their business mentality is cutting things out of the cad instead of adding them. Anyway I tried simsolid, 4h FEA in nastran took <60s in simsolid, holy ****, it doesn't have a lot of options, but it eats through structural like its butter

[ardenum2]

UHPC vs EG

To those buying uhpc from https://www.moertelshop.eu once you buy all the required additives, shrinkage reducer(which is a must) PCE etc. you end up at about the same price as EG. So make sure you know what you're doing because it's not cheaper as durcrete price list would have you think.

[peteeng]

Hi Ard - Re Fusion. You don't get a free lunch. The aim is to get the paying users in. They have to develop the business, so payment is important. The Fusion subscription is less than my prior CAD systems annual maintenance so I'm happy. My only complaint at the moment is that the drawing features need refining. The drawings look like high school level to me... Re: Simsolid - I have been using it for a few years now on large mining vehicles. What used to take me 2 weeks to do I do in a day. It will analyse right down to individual welds or nuts and bolts. A feat that is uber impressive. Plus it is the only FE system I know of that will analyse the internal structure (infill) of 3D printed parts. Being meshless and driven by partial derivatives vs matrices means they can use optimisation algorithms easily. I read a paper on using simsolid to optimise a medical implant. Using std FE took 2 weeks to run the code, using SS took an hour and the result was more accurate. This sort of engineering is scary futuristic happening now... Next machine design I will be doing generative work on every part to see how it goes.... Peter

[joeavaerage]

Hi,

Solidworks must be feeling the pressure from the Fusion360 camp. I'm starting to warm to Fusion and see that it is and increasingly going to, rival/overtake inventor/SW and solidedge and all those old tech CAD systems. Peter

I've been using Fusion, a paid subscription for about three years and I too am OK with it. Fusion does lots of different things, including and especially important to me is the electronics and PCB module.
Fusion it not the best at any particular thing, I prefer AutoCAD for drawing, MasterCAM for CAM and PSpice for electronic simulation and EAGLE for PCB design.....but what Fusion does
is bring all of these things together. I just have learned to accept that any particular aspect of Fusion may only be 95% of what I would call top-tier but I can go seamlessly from one aspect of design
to another in the same software package.

I have a few months ago purchased the Machining Extensions, even the introductory offer was nearly $2000NZD, and am really only now starting to get the hang of it. Machining Extensions has 4 and 5 axis,
collision avoidance, tool path editing etc....but it sure does cost!. I have to make up my mind before August whether I wish to renew the Machining Extensions subscription, it's a little over three times
the basic subscription, so its not trivial.

Craig