My third build, all steel this time!

[RotarySMP]

Nice fabrication skill. Would be cool if you could post more pictures of the formers and tools used when your made that cabinet.

Mark

[marchudson]

Fluxion

Great build. How far apart did you space the rebar inside the 8X8 gantry tube? What size rebar did you use?

Thanks
Marc

OBTW Your PM mailbox is full.

[Foximus]

Good gracious. What are your motor tuning settings? 2000 ipm? So fast.


Im using nema 34 steppers, set at 1600 pulses per rotation with NcUSBPOD XHC motion card., and about 4:1 gearing.... I get about 800-1000 ipm before it starts to slow and drag (data lock?) Though its sporadic.


Though I'm halfway wondering if my voltage is too low to maintain that speed?

[Fluxion]

Sorry I've been busy with work but I thought I would answer a few questions real quick.

difalkner, Yes I am using pneumatics. I tried to use a couple cylinders and a solenoid valve I already had on hand. It works but it's not very smooth. The cylinders are single action with a spring return, when air pressure is applied they extend. When the air is released a spring pulls the piston back up. Today I received double acting cylinders in the mail and will be changing them out real soon.

mcphill, My vacuum system is really crappy and not anywhere near adequate. The dust hood I made has a 5" connection to the hose and I made careful calculations to keep the same cross section area at several places down the hood to the opening at the bottom. My dust collector is a cheap Chinese 2 hp unit similar to the one available at Harbor Freight. The impeller is way to small in diameter to generate the static pressure needed to extract the dust effectively. It gets most of it but not all and I will be upgrading the dust collection eventually. I am getting tired of sweeping under the frame, it's just not very accessible with a broom.

RotarySMP, I will look around in my messy shop and see if I have the hammer forms I used for the cabinet ends and take a pic, it's really simple. The rest of the forming was done on my sheetmetal brake with a radius die, I'll get pics of that as well.

marchudson, The rebar is 1/2" because that is what I had and the spacing is about 8". If I was to do it over again I would probably increase the spacing maybe to about 16" I haven't performed a FEA on the gantry with either spacing but I would bet money 16" would still be overkill.

Foximus, My steps per revolution on the X and Y axis is 2037 if I remember correctly. I currently have X ad Y limited to 1000 ipm and it still seems fast, in fact I have broken my last 1/8" carbide ball nose spiral bit. I have broken about 5 bits in the last couple weeks, all my mistakes but this thing moves too fast for me to hit the E-stop sometimes.

[Eddard_Stark]

Fluxion,

Nice build. A couple of questions that I didn't see asked earlier.

How did you align the long axis rails?

And after alignment how did you locate the mounting holes accurately?

I had a 144" axis and those were two of the most challeging aspects of my build. I used piano wire and a make shift electronic micrometer....that wasn't so bad. Transferring the hole location to the bed without disturbing the rail was indeed difficult; which in turn made the final alignment more difficult than it should have been.

[Foximus]

What I mean however, is how many pulses per step do you use off your motion controllers? I have my 200 step motor set at 1600 pulses per rotation... I seem to motor lock around a combined speed of 800ipm, so it seems to be a bandwith issue with the USB.... I can set X fast and Y slow... or Y fast and X slow... or meet in the middle... but combined speed around 800 ipm.

[Fluxion]

It's been a bad week here, I am on the internet for the first time since last weekend. Last Sunday while making some changes to some code for a carved molding my computer shut down. Turns out my SSD that I was using for my boot drive went bad. The really bad news is I was doing some cleaning and organizing and had moved a few folders to the desktop to make them easy to find. One folder contained every CAD file I have created over the last 12 years or so, including all the files associated with this router. I also lost all the G-code and CAM files for everything I have ever done on a CNC machine here at home and personal files I cut at work. I thought it would be nice to have it all organized in one location but I never got around to making a second copy or a backup of any kind. It was only like that for a few days and I was planning on backing up on Sunday. What a stupid, hard and preventable lesson to learn. I am now recreating a file in Aspire for the carved molding I mentioned above, I had intended on running the machine this weekend to get a few pieces carved out. I need 140 lineal feet of this stuff eventually but I need at least an 8 foot piece Monday morning. I'm not going to make the deadline.

[fransfourie]

Good day.

Awesome machine that you build there. Also...sorry to hear about your loss of data.

I am also in the process of building a machine but its going to be a slow process. Wanted to find out what you payed for the epoxy? also maybe technical information regarding the epoxy. non shrinkage ? I live in South Africa and people ask a fortune to face mill metal and once i saw your build and to get beds leveled with epoxy i just had to find out more to see if it will be more cost effective for me.

When are you going to upload some videos showing your machine making some dust tried to mill aluminum yet ?

Once again ..awesome build...Have you tried a data recovering service for your data loss ?

Regards

Frans
South Africa

[onecut]

Fluxion,

Nice build.

What is the cutting size of your table and the height of the gantry to table (Gantry clearance)?

[1Jumper10]

Phenomenal build Fluxion! Sorry to hear about the data loss. I'm starting my second build and I'll be referring to your build very frequently. You should post some more video's

[Fluxion]

Sorry I haven't been here in awhile, I have been busy at work.

Onecut, the cutting size of my table is 49"x49" and 8" between my spoilboard and the bottom of the gantry. I also have about 8" of extra travel past the 0 point of the X axis. This is to allow me to cut pieces mounted vertically to the end of the table between the main gantry tubes.

I am using the router now but it still isn't complete yet. Some of the things I still need to to are to paint the dust collection hood, upgrade the spring return air cylinders on the dust skirt. I ordered some double acting cylinders and a new 3 way solenoid valve. I will post an update with some new pics soon. I am almost done running some carved molding which I don't currently have any pics of the CNC cutting but I'll get some, maybe even a video. I do have a few pics of some projects I have been working on that I'll post below.


These first two pics are of an 80% Telecaster guitar body I made for a friend. He wanted something for a practice guitar that had the same neck as his stage guitar. He loved this one so much it became his main guitar. Its all maple construction but I did hollow it out a bit as you can see to try and keep the weight down. Also I am trying to add a short iPhone video of the lightening cuts.







I was poking around on designandmake.com and saw a skull box that somebody had made. I really like skulls and this looked like a cool project so I bought the Halloween collections and mad a few of these.





The next pic is of an Alder sample door I made years ago on my first CNC router. This door is similar to a pair installed on a china cabinet in a butlers pantry in a house I am working on. The differences are that the final versions are Birch, no knots,the panel edge is different and I carved in a background texture. The next pic is dark and I tried to lighten it up a bit and it's still hard to see but it is the china cabinet during installation. I will try and get better pics next time I am at the house.





This pic shows a light box or whatever you want to call it, mounted on the ceiling above the kitchen island. You can't see it but the outside is carved in a pattern to match the doors from the china cabinet above and the two rosettes I also carved. I actually built all the other cabinetry in all of these pics too.



This last pic is of the same kitchen above but if you look at the bottom of the crown molding you can see some of the carved molding I am making right now. I actually made all the moldings you see except the rope molding, it's pretty cheap to buy and not really worth the effort. The corbels that can be seen I purchased, hopefully I will be making some like them soon.

[1Jumper10]

Fluxion, you've got a lot of talent! Thats some pretty amazing work.

Sent from my VS980 4G using Tapatalk

[asuratman]

Hi Fluxion,
That glass door, all frame from wood or frame on the glass is steel?

[ger21]

Nice work.
Do you have access to a spray booth for your finishing?

[Fluxion]

Asuratman, the door frames are all wood.

Gerry, I don't have a spray booth anymore. I used to but I had to move to a smaller shop and didn't have room. I will have one soon, I am looking for a new building now.

[RotarySMP]

Beautiful slab of flamed maple you made that Telecaster out of. Nice workmanship.
Mark

[onecut]

Fluxion,
Didn't you change to DC servos? Can you give us a updated list on your parts setup or did you go with the original setup plans you started with on post one?
I'm looking at building one like yours but for the gantry I was going with 4x10x1/4 steel tube. I also plan on cutting alum. to make alum. molds.
Can you cut alum. and even maybe steel?

[Fluxion]

Fluxion,
Didn't you change to DC servos? Can you give us a updated list on your parts setup or did you go with the original setup plans you started with on post one?
I'm looking at building one like yours but for the gantry I was going with 4x10x1/4 steel tube. I also plan on cutting alum. to make alum. molds.
Can you cut alum. and even maybe steel?

I decided to stay with steppers because of the cost associated with the gear reduction needed for the servos. I pretty much stayed with the original setup plans.

Here's what I ended up buying:

1-Ethernet Smooth Stepper
1-PMDX-126 breakout board
1-PMDX-107 speed control
4-Gecko G201x stepper drivers
1-Power supply: 48v, 21A to power the stepper motors made by Mean Well from Jameco.com. It is the same one cncrp sells but was cheaper from jameco.
1-5v, 3A power supply to power the ESS, the PMDX-126 breakout board doesn't supply enough power for both the ESS and the PMDX-107
1-24v 5A that is used to power the air solenoid that I used for the dust skirt.
4 Steppers NEMA 34 960oz from cncrouterparts.com
4KW air cooled Chinese spindle and Huanyang VFD off eBay, they came as a set.

I had a spreadsheet with all the components and all hardware that I have purchased but I lost it when my SSD died a few weeks ago. I had a lot of work in that spread out over the last couple of years.

I have cut aluminum and it does it well but I am somewhat limited by the spindle I have. Because of the high speed and low torque I am limited to smaller cutters. The spindle manufacturer doesn't recommend running the spindle below 8000rpm, I think this is for cooling reasons. I may be able to use it as slower speeds by adding an external cooling fan instead of the shaft mounted fan. I have ran the spindle as slower and as slow as 100rpm while messing around but it wouldn't have near enough torque to cut at low speeds. A small router bit made for aluminum such as the "O" flute cutters from Onsrud, Vortex and Amana cut beautifully but an average HSS or carbide endmill typically used for cutting aluminum on a milling machine doesn't work so well. I haven't tried thick steel and probably won't try it at least on purpose. I have cut 1/4" MDF that was laminated with 28ga steel made for magnetic dry erase marker boards. I used a 3 flute cutter from Vortex that they recommended. The bit is normally used on phenolics and hard plastics. Cutting speed is important when cutting metals so you don't overheat the cutter, faster shallower cuts are usually better. The spindle I have will not work for thick steel no matter what cutters I use but according to the stiffness calculators I used the rest of the router should be up for some light cutting of steel with the appropriate chip load.

[onecut]

I decided to stay with steppers because of the cost associated with the gear reduction needed for the servos. I pretty much stayed with the original setup plans.

Here's what I ended up buying:

1-Ethernet Smooth Stepper
1-PMDX-126 breakout board
1-PMDX-107 speed control
4-Gecko G201x stepper drivers
1-Power supply: 48v, 21A to power the stepper motors made by Mean Well from Jameco.com. It is the same one cncrp sells but was cheaper from jameco.
1-5v, 3A power supply to power the ESS, the PMDX-126 breakout board doesn't supply enough power for both the ESS and the PMDX-107
1-24v 5A that is used to power the air solenoid that I used for the dust skirt.
4 Steppers NEMA 34 960oz from cncrouterparts.com
4KW air cooled Chinese spindle and Huanyang VFD off eBay, they came as a set.

I had a spreadsheet with all the components and all hardware that I have purchased but I lost it when my SSD died a few weeks ago. I had a lot of work in that spread out over the last couple of years.

I have cut aluminum and it does it well but I am somewhat limited by the spindle I have. Because of the high speed and low torque I am limited to smaller cutters. The spindle manufacturer doesn't recommend running the spindle below 8000rpm, I think this is for cooling reasons. I may be able to use it as slower speeds by adding an external cooling fan instead of the shaft mounted fan. I have ran the spindle as slower and as slow as 100rpm while messing around but it wouldn't have near enough torque to cut at low speeds. A small router bit made for aluminum such as the "O" flute cutters from Onsrud, Vortex and Amana cut beautifully but an average HSS or carbide endmill typically used for cutting aluminum on a milling machine doesn't work so well. I haven't tried thick steel and probably won't try it at least on purpose. I have cut 1/4" MDF that was laminated with 28ga steel made for magnetic dry erase marker boards. I used a 3 flute cutter from Vortex that they recommended. The bit is normally used on phenolics and hard plastics. Cutting speed is important when cutting metals so you don't overheat the cutter, faster shallower cuts are usually better. The spindle I have will not work for thick steel no matter what cutters I use but according to the stiffness calculators I used the rest of the router should be up for some light cutting of steel with the appropriate chip load.

Thank you so much for the really good reply.
Can you tell me what is the thickness of the plate at the bottom of the gantry it looks like 3/4 but I'm not sure? Oh, can we see come videos?

[Fluxion]

Thank you so much for the really good reply.
Can you tell me what is the thickness of the plate at the bottom of the gantry it looks like 3/4 but I'm not sure? Oh, can we see come videos?

You're close, it's 1/2" plate with about 3/16" of epoxy.

I'll have to take some videos and post them up, I will have to get some editing software and get that all figured out.