Aluminium Extrusion CNC Router Build

Hi everyone. Thought I'd throw up my build log on here. Ready got a build log on CNCzone you might have seen if you go there but I thought why not post it here on these forums as well.

I started this build around the end of 2009 and "finished" it at the beginning of this year. It's still a while away from being complete. I built a lot of parts for it with the plan of building better parts with the CNC machine itself later on. Got to love making parts on the CNC for the CNC.

So some details about my machine:
- Cutting footprint is - X: 490, Y: 840, Z: 130
- Gecko G540 with 270 oz-in steppers on all axes
- Kress 1050w Spindle
- CNC Router Parts carriages
- Trapezoidal (Metric Acme) 2 start, 12mm diameter, 3mm pitch leadscrews
- HDPE bearing blocks
- Dumpster CNC anti-backlash nuts

I built this machine for mainly cutting guitars and doing wood carving but I hope to also do jobs in aluminium, plastic, PCB's.

I'm quite happy with the router, I think it came out really well considering my last machine was a real nasty MDF job.

In the past year I have created an electronics enclosure, HDPE mount for my Kress and a dust shoe. I'll put those pictures and info on them in posts below. But for now here are some pictures and video of when I first completed my router.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ywpde5Vmj1Y

EDIT: Also check out my new website: www.cnc4everyone.com

Cheers,
Joshua

So first up is the electronics enclosure. I had a look around for an affordable case but wow for the most part they are incredibly expensive. So I thought what the hell, good first project for my CNC. I had heaps of left over 50x25x1.5 aluminium 'L' shaped extrusion and a big sheet of 3mm thick HDPE I didn't end up needing.

So I went and brought a cheap rivet gun and went to work. I CNC'd the front case door out of 5mm PVC, the rest of the case was CNC'd out of the 3mm black HDPE. It came out bloody well I reckon, my fabrication teacher would have been proud.

Anyways here are some pictures of it and some of my cyclonic dust collection setup.

After I got the electronics enclosure done I wanted to get right onto getting rid of my temporary MDF mount and get atleast an HDPE one on there. So I drew up a design in CAD. I've got a small hole in the mount where I'll mount a cross laser for zero'ing the machine, plus they just look cool. The mount will also have some tapped holes in bottom where the dust shoe will mount.

So I got out some 25mm thick HDPE and let the CNC go to town on it and here is the result:

Lastly my dust shoe. I never imagined the amount of swarf and dust that would be ejected during cutting. It still amazes me everytime I do a cut on the CNC, I don't think I'll ever get all the HDPE chips out of my work shed!

So a dust shoe was the top priority. I saw the Kent CNC dust shoe and was quite impressed with the whole shoe and skirt design and how they easy connect/disconnect with magnets.

The dust shoe is made out of 10mm acrylic and I'm using small 5x3mm rare earth magnets. Six magnets in the shoe and six in each skirt which attaches to the dust shoe.

Very impressed with the end result. I wasted a fair bit of acrylic on failed attempts, I had to do double sided machining for the skirt, one side needed pockets for the magnets, the other side an 8mm slot for the flexible brush strip to press in to.

But I got it done and here is a quick video and as always the pictures. (Sorry the pics aren't in order, can't figure out how to order them correctly)

Plus theres an extra little video of my CNC I put in there. I've got myself a new HD camera so I'll be sure to put up some new higher resolution videos of the CNC doing some proper cuts soon.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=l7M4uWDyjJM

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=je_mx0j-06E

Do I spy a DIY cyclone bucket vacuum thingy there?

Awesome work all round, looks really good!

Quote:

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Originally Posted by chip

looks a tidy machine josh,:wink:its the sort of design i wish id gone for but using profile rail,would love to see some guitars being cut when you get round to it.
im hopeing to do a few vids myself in the next few weeks.

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Thanks! Yea I'll definitely be using round profile rail for my next build. I'm still in the design phase of getting the guitar together but I'm hoping I can film a good deal of the cutting and post a nice vid up and a quick overview of the process and then finally me playing it! :wink:

Quote:

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Originally Posted by Rogue

Do I spy a DIY cyclone bucket vacuum thingy there?

Awesome work all round, looks really good!

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Thanks! Haha yep thats a DIY cyclone bucket, threw it together quite quickly. It catches all the big swarf but a lot of the fine particle stuff still makes it to the vac and clogs the filter. The bucket is just too small and the intake port is too close to the port going out to the vac. I'll be building a larger one eventually which I'm sure will do better, but my current one does the trick for now.

Cheers,
Josh

Josh,

What kind of cross laser are you using?

How stable is the HDPE motor mount, has it proved to work well.

Dust shoe looks great!

Adam

Quote:

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Originally Posted by Villacherman

Josh,

What kind of cross laser are you using?

How stable is the HDPE motor mount, has it proved to work well.

Dust shoe looks great!

Adam

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Hey Adam, do you mean the cross laser I mentioned for zero'ing the machine? It's just a cheap little laser off ebay, I haven't installed it into the spindle mount yet. If you type "cross laser" into ebay.com you'll see the exact same little lasers as my one.

The HDPE mount is a huge step up from the temporary MDF one I was using but it does flex WAY too much, I thought it would be more sturdy being 25mm thick but seems not. I really need to make an aluminium version.


Just for a quick update, I've made a new dust skirt for my dust shoe. The flexible brush strip doesn't allow me to plunge very deep and has quite thick bristles which don't help it move around well so I've made another skirt from clear flexible PVC type material.

I've made a nice video of me cutting out the new dust skirt with my fancy new camera. Well it's not that fancy but it does record 720p HD video so go enjoy some high-def CNC'ing.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0YHAqdXDTdM

Cheers,
Josh

Recommendations/suggestions please for UK suppliers of flexible brush strip in various lengths and various brush heights. Intention is to copy the idea of having different dust extraction shoes for different jobs.

Thanks

Karl

Anyone tried b&Q brush draught excluders?