Ok, got a ton more done this week but I have been slow to go through the photos and post an update - so here is a quick one with more to come later. Drilling the plate that will be the bottom of the gantry. This mounts the the slides on the rails: Now, I ordered a 21" piece of bar-stock (2" x 3/4") which I need to cut down to two equal pieces ~10" in length. These will form the gantry uprights... Marked and ready for cutting: Cut, now I will take a very thin cut off of the ends while they are clamped together. This should give me a pretty square and even surface for both parts. Cut done, and a perfect finish. I love this saw... Now to square-up the gantry sides: Again, super smooth - did I mention I love this saw? I decided to take a notch out of the gantry sides (what will be the 'front' and top of the plates when mounted) for purely cosmetic reasons. Now to square-up the two plates that make the bottom of the gantry: Yes, two bottom plates. I modified my design to give it some added rigidity - there should be almost no flex side-to-side in the gantry...
I am trying my hardest to get the hardware done this week and the electronics as soon after as possible.
Ok, now that I have all the metal cut and squared for the gantry it's time to get it drilled and put together. First to drill is the rear-support bars: Next, I had to drill holes (that will be tapped) in the gantry sides to mount the support bars. A little bit of a PITA since they need to be drilled on edge, but I managed to get my drill-press set-up to be pretty repeatable without much adjustment. Little closer showing the actual holes: Coming along good, gantry sides with the support-bars bolted on: Now I need to drill the holes in the gantry sides to mount them to the lower gantry cross-members: ...and here is what the gantry looks like (minus the Y-Axis assm. and Z-Axis): (You can see I got excited and mocked it up before drilling the rest of the holes in the sides...) Just have to get the Y-Axis assembly mounted up, then I can start on the fun task of making the Z-Axis!
Unbelievable record of your success!! I subscribed just for this thread. Looking forward to more progress! Thanks for taking the time to show us all!! Danno
Superb work!!! keep it up. was just wandering where you got the plans/schematics for the project? did they cost anything? when do you intend to start playing?lol
Indeed. Where did these plans come from? Sorry... I jsut read through the entire thread Ignore the above stated... I must say i am now a registered member on CNCZone.com and am purchasing stuff soon... You have made this look Doable, not easy but doable and i have committed my self now.
Simple really Unlike Steel Alu is easer to get in a retail enviroment, you can cut it with common tools, it's many many times lighter and most of all it does not rust and is immune to most chemicals. The side effect is that Alu is not as strong and more prone to vibration and flexing.
And on top of that, it's excellent thermal conductor, so you can easily use it for cooling purposes, too.
Exactly, although steel is cheaper - it just doesn't make sense on a 'small' machine like this. Now, if I was doing a 6' x 8' CNC machine in a garage - then yes, it would be square-steel tube. On the flexing issue, the deflection over the lengths I am working with is many times less than the accuracy of the router I am using (which is still pretty good) - so it is a bit of a non-issue.
Just want to let you all know, my ISP is having a problem with the personal storage space I use for hosting pictures. My FTP access has been down for the last week+, but it is supposed to be fixed soon. As soon as it is, MASSIVE update time. I hope they don't notice that I am 160Mb over my 10Mb "limit".
ah, nice work man. Definitely a project id like to do some day. I wonder what happened to (spc)kuhnkejer... be sure to pm him once you've finished No doubt this will be 'frontpaged' once its done, too... just make sure you write a guide + have a million links to cnczone etc, because you'll be flooded with pm's and emails
i work with up to 11kv at work, running 200amps. now at 240v thats over 9000amps. i have seen a goanna which shorted out a 11kv line on a transformer and no joke only its head and tail were left stuck to the conductors, the rest of him was gone. i know that can kill me
Its all about the big time juice, now i know this is nothing like the KW's your talking about but i had to measure the running currents on a 415V 3 phase supply today, the damn thing was pulling 110Amps when it was running. I don't wanna know what it pulls on start up!
yeah i was amazed when i saw one of our pumps stations which has 4 415v 3phase pumps in it which run at an insane 400 AMPS EACH . when an electric motor starts Direct online it can suck up to 7times the running current, thats a possibility of sucking 7x400=2800AMPS the wires we are using to power these beasts are 1" diameter and two for each phase, which is 6 1" cables. just insane isnt it
