Scratch Build – In Progress The Elite Modder - CVRIV_CNCRTR_001

Hello everybody! It's been awhile! Again! Anyways,... i'm trying for a slow come back here Your probably all wondering what happened!?!? Well,... I'd rather not talk about the details. But,... in a nutshell. I dont have a place to do my work. All of my gear is in storage. Thats the bad news. The good news on the other hand is that my girlfriend and I are planning on getting a house in the next few weeks I'm actually suppose to be browsing through hordes of real estate listings now but,... ehhh, I'd rather post this worklog

Anyways, this house is either going to have a nicely sized detached garage already waiting for me or it wont and I'll just build A BIG one A REALLLLLY BIG one Yes. It's going to be big It's has to be big because I plan on building 3 CNC machines as soon as possible. A router, and laser, and a plasma cutter. They are going to be huge. The router im design now is going to have a footprint of about 6' x 10'. I'll be able to feed this router 4' x 8' shets of material easily. Laser and plasma cutter will be just as big. So yea. I have a lot going on right now.

I have been learning CAD and soon I start learning CAM and everything else involved with CNC. The only stuff I can post right now is the progress of my machines in CAD. Eventually I will bring them to life like I did everything else in the past

So yea. Let's get started.

 

cvriv_cncrtr_001_05-04-2009

Here's basically where I started with my cnc router. I've never built one before so I didnt really know where to start. I decided that starting from the inside and working my way out was the best way to go. So I started with the spindle. I know what spindle I want so im going to build off of that. Even if I wasn't sure what spindle I wanted, I'd still start with the spindle or the spindle brackets. Start with a basic shape and go on from there. You can always go back to make changes. Fine tune the machine To the pics!

Now im just playing around here Here's what I approximately what I want for the spindle brackets and the z axis carriage plate. I'm going to make changes to it but it is close.


This side of the z axis carriage plate, is threaded. I want to try and cut down on the use of nuts Notice there are 8 bolts installed.


This side the holes are not threaded. Notice you only see 4 bolts on this side I forgot to get a pic of it but the other 4 bolts are on the inside of the spindle brackets. They are holding the spindle brackets to the plate with the threaded holes which is mounted to the other gantry. So if I remove the 4 bolts you can see in the pic,... that plate will come off but the spindle will still be attached to the other plate. Reason being that I'm going to have two gantry's. This way I can seperate the gantry's easily. The spindle will still be attached to the main gantry. The 4 bolts you see in the pic pass completely through the spindle brackets, pulling the one gantry towards the other, sandwiching the spindle and brackets. I'll get pics of this another time.


Here's a top shot. You see the 4 nylon washers? This is so you cant tighten one side of the bracket significantly more than the other. The nylon brackets can be compressed a tiny bit which is more than enough to firmly mount the spindle. 4 nylon washers for 4 bolts


An orthographic shot.


Some more shots,...


Renders,...


This machine is going to be BIG and very HEAVY. I'm using mostly 1/4" thick steel. Very heavy. Till next time.

 

Yay! You're back! (And in disguise.) I can't wait to see what you come up with for the carriage.
I've been toying with the idea of making one of these too. I'd like to make one that can wet-cut.

 

Thanks dude It's will be a slow come back but I am coming back.

Me too. But more like mist-cut. I dont want to much coolant. Just enough to keep the bit cool and lube just a tiny bit.

 

cvriv_cncrtr_001_05-07-2009

Ok, here's my gantry idea. This is the y axis. It's about 7" tall from point to point. It's about 2" wide. Lastly,... it's 66 inches long. 5'5",... thats almost as tall as me There will be two of these that will sandwich the spindle. Thats a lot of welding:\


Renders.


Till next time. Let me know what you think. Again, this isn't final. I will be making changes to it. Peace.

 

first i was tl;dr

then i saw cheapys "youre back"

then i saw the "elite modder" on your pics

then, everything was clear.. its YOU

i better hope youll start building, my droolbucket is dried out

i approve this, get startet

 

FROOP! What up man! Long time Yes yes,... im going to get started soon. I actually just got done looking through a massive list of houses. Can't say I am fully satisfied with what I saw. But we'll find something soon.

 

of course you wont be satisfied, thats why god gave you a brain and two hands im not saying that you should build your own house (which i bet would have looked cool under uv light) but building your own workshop in your garden would be.. enjoyable to watch

 

The shop is going to look cool under UV light Seriously. Im going to hang the huge shop lights above,... half of them with normal light and the other half with UV. This way when I am showing off a UV part,... no more farting around with UV flashlights trying to get the right glow.

 

About D A M N time! Not getting any younger here.

john

 

LOL. I miss you guys

 

I'm not sure if it is disguise but i'm sure it's our "......." (i didn't say ).

Welcome Back!! (Subscribed nick hard to remember )

Jeaaahh i missed You too !(your work also!!!)

 

Im gunna watch this closely hope it all works out witht the house mate

 

Thanks guys. We're going monday to see houses. Atleast this is what my girl said. I have no idea what houses we're going to see. I made a list of houses but theya re all blah. She's going to make a list and give it to the realtor to make arrangements for viewing. We'll see. Maybe i'll take some pics of the garage if it has one. I'm like stuck between wanting to find houses and wanting to model this router. I will have more pics either today and tomorrow.

I'm currently working on the z axis assembly. That will lead to the y axis and then the x axis. Once I finish one axis the others will come quick because I will just copy the parts and just alter to fit. So myabe my next update will be all 3 axis's working This router is going to be bad ass. Performance and looks. yum.

 

Welding the gantry assembly might work against you. There's a high chance the welds would warp the angle bar.
For houses: boring is OK. You should be more interested in what condition it's in.

 

Well,... want to try and not let the angle bar heat up to much. Dont want to weld to much at one time. Plus I might just tack weld the ribs in place. Not sure yet. I have to test things out before I go ahead full force.

I'm actually working out a lot of the tid bits of how this thing is going to be. I have have lots of pics today.

 

I'm thinking that there are several things that I can do to keep the angle irn from warping. First thing first is to decide on whether or not I need so many ribs. I'll ask what you guys think once I have a good amount of the model done and posted here.

Another thing I can do is heatsink the angle iron with some other metal such as another piece of angle iron. I can clamp them together and only release them when they are completely cooled.

I will check a welding forum and see if anyone there has any tips. I have to get this done and done right. The rails have to be straight than straight. The angle iron I'm using is 1/4" thick. thats a good thickness. If I have to I will use a thicker angle iron. The ribs are all 1/4 too. Each rail is going to weigh a ton.

 

After fabrication you'll have to take the rails to a machine shop for surface grinding
to ensure flat, straight surfaces as well as a true 90 degree's and parallel opposing
rails.

 

Right. Well, lets see how it comes out first before I have do that. I am hoping that I can customize everything to work together the way it is first. I just got done figuring out the sizes of the rails for the y and z axis. I am to tired to make up some photos right now to post. I was up all night at work,.... working on this And since I got home I havent slept yet because,.... I was working on this. I cant put it down!!! LOL. So addictive. really. So pics later.

 

cvriv_cncrtr_001_05-10-2009

Ok, here's what I got right now. Not as much as I thought I would be posting but it's better than nothing. I just kep t redoing stuff because of uncertainty. But I have a lot of the siving figured out for this machine. I serioulsy had to sit down and think it through hard. Because it's that important.

Ok,... here's one side of the gantry. THis is just a sizing up phase. There's so much missing. I'm just trying to get a feel for how big things need to be. The Y axis rail you see here is 10" tall rfom point to point and 5.5' long. 10" tall to insure that it can hold the weight of the spindle, the Z axis stepper motor, etc without dipping down when these components make their way to the center of the ganrty. This Y axis rail is also 2" wide to insure that is wont flex back and forth. 2" in width really has nothing to do with the actual width of the gantry when it comes to strength. You probably thinking 2" of steel. By having a 2" wide gantry of this style, I am able to use a 1.5" x 1.5" angle iron that has a thickness of 1/4". This angle iron is the most important part. It's does most of the work, at least when it comes down to prventing flexing forward and backwards. Hard to explain.


Here's the Y carriage I think its callled. I call it the sled For whatever reason. It has two jobs. It carries the spindle across the Y axis and provides a rail the the Z axis sled which isn't shown in the pic. Just the Zaxis bearings. The bearing are everyday 8mm x 22mm x 7mm skate bearings. Why skate bearings? Because their cheap!!! The v-groove bearings I wanted to use are $10 each!!! I would need 34 of them!!! You do the math.


Here comes the hard part to explain. I wanted the bearings for the Y axis sled to be as wide as possible to promote rigidness. I was shooting for about 12" from bearing center to bearing center. Right now I am at 10". Which is the minimum for the gantry and 10" from point to point. 10" x 10" is a square. Thats good because that square can move in any direction without losing rigidness due to an uneven size. So lets say for example I have the gantry at 10" from point to point(tip of angle iron on both sides) and the length from bearing center to bearing center for the sled moving on the Y axis was only 4". It's hard to explain but the ends would kind of drag. Now,... the distance between Y axis bearing centers is 10". That doesnt mean the Z axis rail from point to point is or has to be 10". It cant be actually. For this design,... the length of the Z axis rail cant be any longer than the overall distance from the very top of the top Y axis bearing to the very bottom of the bottom Y axis bearing. Reason being that I plan on adjusting bearing tension with very thing shims. So, that over distance is about 11.75". So I made the Z rail 11.625" long. Now you figure out how much Z asix travel you want for the spindle to move. I want 4" total. 11.625" - 4" = 7.625" left. I rounded down a bit to be safe. So I have 7.5" MAX for the Z axis bearings. THe bearing are .86614 in diameter, I rounded them up to 1" for reasons of simplicity and clearance. So of the max space of 7.5" you subtract the radius of each bearing which is .5"(half of the forgiving 1") so that leaves us with 6.5" from bearing cetner to bearing center. So now I know how wide my Z rail should be,... around 6.5" I made mine 7.5" which is obviously larger than 6.5". I would of loved to have a perfect square like the Y axis bearing are to the Y rail but 6.5 x 6.5 is getting kind of small. I gave the width that extra inch because the area is small enough to the point the dragging ends and flexing isnt all that bad. So yeah. But do you see how the size of one things totally affects another? Did you guys understand any of that? LOL. I hope so. I tried to explained.


Her's and orthographic shot of the side of this assembly.


An orthographic shot of the top.


Here's a shot of the front. 5'6" across! This thing will be able to chew up 4'x8' sheets of whatever! I think I'll get one of the warning signs about watching your fingers. You know the one where the finger is like brutally cut with some kind of blade signifying danger! This is thing is a finger guillotine!


Here's the Y sled and Z bearings alone.


Renders,... I have to practice my rendering skills.


Till next time. If you guys have any questions. Please ask. YTou can add me to skype if you like too. Skype = cvriv.charles. I need skype friends.