New KRMx02 50x50 Build log (Canada)

[jckstrthmghty]

That's going to be a very nice stand. Professional. I hear you about fasteners. HD or canadian tire is pricey if you are buying just a few. Princessauto is another alernative. With some builds a few $ for some bolts may not be a big deal but with an aluminum extrusion build it's signifiacnt.

Looking foward to see this build come along.

[pamcinto]

A little bit more progress this evening. I've put the base support rails and shelf edges in to make the footprint. Now I'm shoving it around trying to figure out where I should locate the beast.
Aluminum from 8020 comes tomorrow morning! Scheduled the delivery with UPS for today but they had a truck breakdown....oh well. I've got my steel order in with a semi-local guy. Great price and the guy Steve is great to deal with. (Metalheadz Leduc, Alberta). Hopefully I'll be picking it up in the next week or two.
I've got to get my US order together as I've picked the weekend my wife and I are headed down to Montana for a mountain biking weekend/parts pick up trip.

CNCrouterparts order needs to happen
(CNCRouterParts)
Amazon order needs to happen (Bosch router 1617 is half the price in the states)
(Bosch 1617EVSPK 12 Amp 2-1/4-Horsepower Plunge and Fixed Base Variable Speed Router Kit with 1/4-Inch and 1/2-Inch Collets - Amazon.com)
Dynomotion order needs to happen (I've settled on Kflop/Kstep rather than the standard gecko drive)
(Dynomotion | Motion Control Boards)
Leveling casters need ordering (believe it or not these bad boys are $50 each here!!!!)
(2P80S 2" Leveling Caster Hexagon Top Plate)

I've got to get the orders flying so all the gear can meet me at the hotel!!
Anyways, here's the a pic of the stand as it sits

[pamcinto]

I got my 8020 order yesterday! Everything looks great and was packaged well. Time to start tapping ends! (I had a brand new tap kit that had never been used, so I decided to do it myself rather than pay the extra).

[cd_edwards]

Irwin tools or princess auto sell a special Adapter to convert a tap into a 3/8 square drive. That along with a butterfly air tool will make that tapping job much easier and quicker

[jckstrthmghty]

I guess my method of using a hand drill is not advised. I hate tapping threads. I would definitely pay for someone else to do it if I had the option.

[cd_edwards]

Does a hand drill even have enough power? A little butterfly has enough torque and the forward reverse is quick and easy since you shouldn't try todo the tap all in one go and should be forward and reversing until you bottom out

[jckstrthmghty]

I use a compact 12v ridgid to tap my holes in aluminum. It's worked for me but I haven't had to tap anything larger than 1/4-24. At the end of a full tap it can slow down and you might need to back out a few times but it's still much faster than doing it manually. Mind you I wouldn't do this when I need accurate threading or into steel.

[pamcinto]

cd_edwards: I like your tip and even went so far as to pick up the butterfly impact tool, but for the life of me I can't find the 3/8" square drive to tap adapter. I have found the thing on amazon.com, but no luck locally or even on canadian retailers. I talked to both Princess Autos in town and they had nothing like it. I now have to decide if I'm going to order the adapter from amazon or return the butterfly impact tool and bite the lengthy bullet of finishing the taps by hand.

...

[cd_edwards]

I had fasten all order one from Irwin tools for me. Should be fastenal

[jckstrthmghty]

I found amazon.com great for ordering stuff from. Like any store they get things wrong time to time but always are quick to resolve.

btw yesterday was tapping 1/4-24 thread 3/4" deep into aluminum dowel with the tap in my drill and had some troubles. Did some 10-32 1" deep and went very well but I had concerned I would break the tap.

[pamcinto]

Thanks again Colten. I talked to fastenal and they want $45 to bring the thing in. That's basically the same price as the butterfly tool!
I'm headed to the states here pretty quick and I think I'll just lump it on my amazon.com order. It's $20 that way!
I've been de-railed from my router build for a few weeks anyway as the weather's smartened up now and the kids playset is demanding some time.

[cd_edwards]

Igot mine from fastenal but I only bought the single adapter. It was 28 plus tax

[pamcinto]

So I got my Irwin tap adapter the other day and played around with cutting threads. I like the and it's speeding me up quite a bit, BUT I'm not a big fan of using the butterfly impact driver with it as the threads are much more blown out. I'm now using a ratchet with the adapter and it's cutting just fine. The threads seem as competent as when I was using the regular t handle. Hopefully I'll have a few more progress posts here in the next few weeks as I should get a bit more time to get on the project.

[cd_edwards]

One solution is to slow it down by reducing the air pressure. a ratchet works though as well. anything is better than the tap handle when doing alot of threading.

[pamcinto]

I'm finally making progress again after a long hiatus. I've finished my first Y-beam!

I used a metal file to clean up the edges of the hot roll angle steel pieces and mineral spirits and a wire brush on my drill to clean up the metal. There is a lot of "stuff" to remove from the steel before you get the expected grey colour of the steel. This clean-up took me an hour per piece! I'm not sure if there's a better tool for the the job, but I'm very happy to have had a corded drill here.
I used my drill press to make the hole patterns in each angle. Because I am making a 50x50 machine, I have four aluminum uprights inside the steel angles, so I had to make some assumptions on the distances between patterns. I wound up having to buy the entire two book plus templates kit from Kronos as this was the only way to make it worth his while to ship to Canada. I made my first use of the templates here. After marking all the holes with my steel punch, I started with the drill press.

Once again I am very happy with my drill press table purchase! It certainly made my life easier here with the long steel pieces.

I used a drop of old motor oil on each drill location and used a 1/8" bit first to "pilot" the the holes. I thnk retrospectively that the only benefit of doing this is a slightly more accurate placement of the holes. I did try a few with the larger 3/8" bit without a pilot and when paying close attention to the tip of the bit, I found it wandered ever so slightly before biting into the steel. I did a bit of a pecking motion with the press to make each hole as it seemed to make a cleaner cut and shed the debris more easily.

Once I had all the holes drilled and reamed to be smooth, I used a Rustoleum steel primer and then two coats of Rustoleum gloss black paint over top. I learned here that a coat of oil-based paint in a cold garage in the middle of winter takes an awful long time to dry, although it does level out the brush strokes perfectly. I wound up with a lot of drips around the drilled holes and cut them out with a razor blade. I wasn't too careful with the paint job as I'm not all that concerned about the look of the thing as long as it's well protected. I do have a bit of touch up to do after I get the whole thing together.

When it came time to assemble, there an important lesson I learned. I think I have been over tightening bolts so far in my build. After assembling the aluminum uprights and bolting them between the angles, I noticed that the slot on the edge of the uprights was no longer wide enough to accept a threaded carriage bolt! I had tightened enough to close the gap here enough to have problems. I then had to loosen all the assembly bolts in order for the aluminum to move back to it's original shape and get the bolts into the profiles. Also, as I was working on my bench, I had to put the assembly on it's side to keep the carriage bolts lined up straight in the aluminum uprights as I tightened them.

And of course when I tightened one of these carriage bolts - snap! I guess I should use a little less torque. I had to disassemble again to replace this carriage bolt.

Anyways, all in all a pretty good assembly. The Kronos instructions are pretty good here and I've learned a few things to do differently on the second Y-beam.

[pamcinto]

So the second Y-beam went a little bit easier. I took a few photos to step through the process a little better here.
I centre punched each of my holes using the template from Kronos. A drop of oil on each and I drilled the holes in two stages (small bit, final bit)



Then I broke all the sharp edges on the cut ends just so they catch less

Then I used a sandpaper flapper wheel to clean all the slag/oil/wax off the steel to prep for painting.


Nobody wants to see a picture of me painting so I didn't bother taking one.

I found a couple of stores in Calgary that actually stocked the leveling casters I was looking for! Who knew that we had a place called CasterLand! Imagine my shock when I also found we have a competing shop called CasterTown! Anyway, after price comparing, I picked these bad boys up for $35 each.

They are supposed to be good for 500 pounds each. Here's one in my hand for reference....pretty beefy unit. I hope they work well.

With these, I'm hoping to have a stable stand for running the router, but also have the ability to move the machine around if/when I need to.
Also, I guess the rule of thumb for caster sizing is that your number of casters minus one should be able to carry the full weight of the machine. In my case, I think the machine is going to weight between 400-500lbs so each caster should have a weight capacity of 133-167lbs. So I guess the 200lb casters would have worked if they were in stock.

[pamcinto]

So I got a little more time over the weekend and started actually putting the machine together. It's going fairly well, I have a little bit of a squaring issue, but nothing I can't get sorted out in short order.

I had to get the y-beams lined up on my own, which I definitely wouldn't choose to do. Lining up 8x4 carriage bolts with the hole pattern on the steel flanges took a lot of patience and quite a bit of heavy lifting. It worked out in the end.
I deviated here a little bit from the Kronos design. The manual calls for u-bolts on aluminum extrusion in order to hold down the cutting bed. I've decided to use plywood and I used carriage bolts in the base extrusions as a method of fixing it. I will have to drill a bolt pattern in the plywood including a countersink and bolt it down. This will be a pain in the ass the first time, but if I ever have to replace it, I can use the router to make the pattern auto-magically....
Also, try as I might, there is no information whatsoever on how to fix the machine to the stand. I've elected to buy a 4' piece of drilled galvanized steel angle. I am going to chop it into 3" sections and use it to bolt the 80/20 base extrusions to the channel strut stand I've put together. I'll show some pictures when I get that step done.
The casters work great and the stand it easy to push around now as I work. Also, I've almost put the shelf in at the base of the stand. I have a little too wide lumber at 48", so I'm going to have to rip 1/2" off the edge in order to have the channel strut holes line up so I can bolt the other side in.

[eat5hams]

Hi! I'm just little south of you in the Lethbridge area, fun to see a build in the area. curious where you got your 80/20 from? Also how dud it all turn out? any updates?

[bryndz]

I'm guessing the "I have a little bit of a squaring issue, but nothing I can't get sorted out in short order." never actually got sorted out? lol, I was really interested into how it all turned out pls keep us updated. Thank you