Door painted and installed. Took some tweaking to get the door to slide in and out without scraping anything. Not the cleverest design Ive made, but it will do. Still need to add a handle.
Spray test. Full flow at a 12mm end mill. Turns out that the coolant the goes beneath the bellow cover runs right out the back. More silicone and some small plates will do the trick i hope.
We have very similar enclosures, I am re-working mine and love too tinker. Will make my own blog of the updates. Love your enclosure though, and sealing the first time around did not go over well, I located the gaps! Other than those, it was pretty good.
buikpijn, im not sure what you mean but slip-stick?
Right now im using regular R8 tooling, the ATC is set on hold for now as other projects takes up my time. I wanted to make a semi ATC, tormach style, but I couldnt get the R8 collet I bought to run true and so far I have gotten along just fine with manual toolchange
Slip stick, that's the will to stand still for a dovetail, it tends to bind from a standstill to a move. Good oil and tight adjustment can help, but a dovetail has got slip-stick, unless you are using a well balanced counterbalance.
Hey, I learned a new expression:-) I havent taken the time to measure the z backlash, ive seen other here on the zone that have had succes with adjusting the z axis and making a bracket to stiffen the column. I dont think I will get to do any improment on the machine until I get to move to my own place, probably will be a couple of years:-)
What kinds of updates?:-) The machine is more or less finished, or lets just say that it can mill. Right now my focus is on completing my lathe project which has been ongoing for 1½ year, maybee even more.
Other than that I have dived into the world of electronics and are building robots now, which ofcause spaws the need for more machines:-)
You said once before that you would do things different with your enclosure. Other than the thickness of the metal. Would you do anything different with the layout or the size of the exclosure?
The main problem with the current enclosure is actually not the enclosure itself, but the stock way covers of the machine. They do not provide a very good cover as there is free access from the sides and quite easy access to the ballscrews.
Im in the process of building the enclosure for my lathe at the moment, and im bolting things together rather than welding. It makes for a lot easier access when tweeking the machine. Also take into consideration what door mechanisme you want. Sliding doors are cool, but hinged doors are a lot easier to make
Thanks for the thoughts. Myself, I have the SX3 that I modified myself but the work envelope will be similar.
Some things I noticed were that when you had a larger plate of material that hung out of the door a fair distance. I wondered if the depth of the enclosure may need to be longer. I have had times that I had similar cutting jobs or needed a hole that was larger than any bits that I had so I hung them off of the mill and interpolated the holes for shafting etc. Would you have made the enclosure a few inches deeper to accomodate larger pieces. (Within reason of course.) Maybe a couple hundred more mm.
Also, what are your thoughts on having just 2 sliding doors in the middle rather than 1 large one? Your slide design would work great with that with smaller slides for each side. Then it would eliminate the opening on the end for the large door.
I think I am going to rebuild my enclosure this summer and I really like your ideas on that one. It looks very factory and sturdy. I just need to find somewhere that sells the sheet steel like that around here.
Make the door opening just a tad lower than the table, this way you can do large objects hanging outside the door. You could make it a inch or two deeper. When my y axis is fully extended, i cannot open the door:-) i cannot remember why i ended up with a single door, probably because the cabinet have had to be wider if i wanted the same opening
How's the mill doing? It's been some time since your last post? I'm in the process of possibly buying a kx3 also and want to build an enclosure identical to yours. Any chance you have the plans?
The enclosure was pretty much just a design-as-you-build. I actually sold the mill, didn't have any room for it anywhere. It was a nice machine, but consider if you can use it without a full enclosure. It was a lot of work to make it.
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