New build with recycled parts on a ridiculous budget 120cm*60cm work area

[Zeeflyboy]

A fairly skinny 15mm if i remember correctly.... the new machine I'm building has 25mm.

I would go with 20mm as a minimum personally.

[Desertboy]

20mm I will heed that advice ;)


I will use 2 of these for my z axis slides and a 20mm ground ballscrew. I have another 2 of these coming as well not sure what I will do with them but maybe make a spare z axis as one of my first projects ;)

just playing with the gantry at moment but I do wonder if I can fit the gantry like this?

I would worry that the ballscrew is balanced properly I would think the ballscrew needs to go dead centre of the slides? I have come up with 3 choices for the gantry

1. Mount it like pictured with ballscrew at top, hiwin sideways on
2. Double up the extrusion so I use 2 pieces one on top of the other then the ballscrew can go in the middle with hiwin either side.
3. Put the Hiwin on the top and bottom of the gantry and have the ballscrew sideways on. This is my favorite choice but added complexity in the z axis mount. I would think this would also keep the slides cleaner orientated this way.

Or I do have this


But would rather not cut it if I can as it's 3.5m length and I have 2 5 ft lenghts so I only need 1 more and I can build a frame with working area just over 8*4.

Was worried as the bearing was not sitting straight on the supported rail but tried a different bearing and all is good then realised someone has been playing with my bearing (Joys of sharing workshop space with my dad's monkeys as I call them) and tightened the grubscrew.


Something I considered was filling the cavities inside the gantry aluminium extrusion with epoxy resin something that's stronger than steel but lighter have a friend who knows a lot more about epoxy's and has access to stuff I couldn't get easily so will have to have a chat with him.

[Desertboy]

Hopefully I can recover my extra extrusion today as I would like to start moving the project into the build phase ;)


Need to get the ballscrew fitted so I can take measurements for the plates, couldn't find a decent cad model.

[Desertboy]

Wanker guy had sold the machine so I can't get the extrusion :(

As it happened the Hiwin style slides were siezed and the ballscrews looked worse for wear to so I was only interested in the extrusion but gutted.

At least I know now so I will continue with original plan and bolt the SBR25 on sideways, no excuse not to start assembly now (Well need to wait for the A2 bolts to arrive but tomorrow) so I can measure up and start to think about the mounting plates.


Lesson learnt though next time strip the machine the day it arrives lol.

[Desertboy]

one dodgy bearing so far not checked them all yet but buy the cheapest chinese bearings you can and you're going to get a lemon occasionally lol. I am going to complain see if I can get replacements sent over but I have 5 that are perfect (I haven't checked 2 of them yet) and I only need 4, glad I bought 8 ;) £4.50 delivered for each one I can't complain too much.

If you try to straighten the wonky bearing it binds so it's basically scrap.

I was was very annoyed about losing the aluminium extrusion but today I had a score so you win some you lose some ;)



So got the stop button sorted & some flexible pipe (I think is for compressed air), I also got 2 very strong steel bases (2 legs per base with adjustable nylon feet) from a conveyor belt style machine to mount my machine one, price was free ;)

And lastly my box of freebie t nuts, bolts, corners

Got another box full to the top somewhere but it's buried.

Ironically I haven't got enough bolts and T nuts as I need M4 and M5 T nuts (Everything I have is M6 or M8) and my M6 bolts are too long to fit the track but perfect for the ballscrew mounts.

I did manage to bolt one of the SBR tracks on today so took a step in right direction and it was a real bastard lol was king of glad I ran out of bolts for the other side but unfortunately I managed to buy some today lol so no excuse.

I have no energy chain or plans on how to fit energy chain, I can recover it for free but it's far too large for my purposes but unsure what size I will need. I was thinking that the water in/out feeds and air feed won't go through the energy chain the air I'll use a black air line from a truck (It feeds a cylinder on the fifth wheel) as I can get them for free and they should be more than up to the job. I will probably just suspend the water and airline feeds roughly in the middle above the cnc with enough slack to move to all extremes comfortably for now.

When this is working need to save up some cash so I can buy my own commercial printers to scrap next time ;) I have a good contact but it's very sporadic then all of a sudden manic a lot like buses lol.

[Desertboy]

This was a real bastard lol bolting the SBR25 into the aluminium extrusion with T nuts but now both rails are bolted on finally. They are both bolted very tight against the extrusion I'm hoping the extrusion is straight ;)

Also spent a few hours today ripping apart a machine and recovered

A working compressed air solenoid,
One of these http://www.solenoid-valve.world/coil...FXAA0wodbK8FfQ
Quite of a bit of aluminium plate 10 to 20mm thickto play with when the machine works and maybe make motor mounts.
Loads of A2's (I like recovering A2's as it gives me a large range of sizes to try and then I can buy the correct length in new if I don't have enough A2's for the project.)
Loads of push fit air fittings

The best things in life are free lol.

[Desertboy]

Going to need 2 plates to mount to bearings and ballscrew mount for each side of the gantry.
I had to use some M6 standard bolts for now just to get an idea of how it will work, will be missing one bolt from the mount. The bolts go through the extrusion T slot corners with a washer to space everything out properly.

The angle bracket is only there so I can mark the centre point of the coupling to have nema mounts made properly.


I'm thinking of buying some cheap ass T6600 stepper drivers so I can deliver the full 3 amps to my motors (Only at 24v) but I will still use Gbrl and Arduino for now with some creative wiring to the cnc shield.

[Desertboy]

been taking measurements with some scrap ali I will use the thicker of these piece to make the 2 ballscrew (It's wide enough to cut in 2 and still cover the ballscrew mount) to supported rail mounts like pictured for the bottom axis.


If the triangular bit had been twice as thick and I had 2 of them then that would have been my gantry mount but I guess I need to spend £90 on ecocast instead ;)

The scrap plate, bolts and ballscrew mount lined up perfectly (Pure fluke) which makes taking measurements a lot easier.

[Desertboy]

Finally worked out how to print to 1:1 scale ;)

When I pumped out to printer it's the correct dimensions, a friend is going to make these parts for me from recovered 6082 aluminium (We like free in case you didn't notice) so I will only need to have the gantry mounts and Z axis mounts CNC'd.



From Left to right
BF12 mounting bracket (4 bigger holes bolt into the t slot extrusion)
Nema 23 mounts to line up with the BF12 mounting brackets for the 2 lower axis (This bolts into 2 rows of extrusion with T nuts)
The last 2 connect the DSG16 ballnut mounts to the gantry mounting plate for drive of the lower axis.

I ordered the Spindle today, so next thing is the Ecocast ;) Toying with going with 25mm thick for the gantry and embedding the extrusion 7mm into the frame.

http://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/181806514041?

Think I will get 4 TB6600, use the cnc shield/arduino and a 480w 24v power supply so I can get the full 3 amps out the stepper motors.

[Desertboy]

I suppose I should start to think about power for the machine, I realise a 13 amp socket is not going to cut it lol.

2.2kw for the spindle
350w for the 24v power supply
100w's for misc
20% leeway

I thought sound this will be ok from a 13amp socket until I realised I need to power a vacuum cleaner at the same time. Also of course I need 1kw to boil the kettle for Tea ;)

So I have 2 choices
1. Run a 2nd 13 amp socket to the machine from the board.
2. Run a dedicated 32amp 5 wire 3 phase socket from the board (This is what I will do) and then tap 1 of the phases with a junction box to power the machine.