Design Study: Rail Inline With Ball Screw

[Neale]

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I am surprised to read this. Granted, my machine is a little on the small side compared to many I see here, but it will fit on an 80" x 40" machine. The going shop rate is $60/hour near me, so I am counting on all the machining work coming in just a few hundred $. Given how much money people invest into designing and building their own CNC routers, I would thinking have the rail surfaces and mounting pads machined would be easy to justify.

It's an interesting point, and I wonder if there is a difference between UK and US here. I have no idea where I would go to find a jobbing engineering shop anywhere near me, let alone one with that kind of capacity. My own machine top rails are roughly 1.8m long, 1m separation, on a floor-mounted machine. It would be great to have had that machined but like most (UK) folks on this forum, I ended up with an epoxy bed instead. My background is IT so I have very few contacts in the engineering world - I wonder if anyone else knows how likely/easy it would be to find machining capacity like that, available at an acceptable cost, in the UK?

[Bravin Neff]

My current machine uses something similar. I was trying to get the gantry sides as stiff as possible, and make a good connection to the rails. Fitting the ballscrew in there as well was just convenient.

Haven't seen that before. Great job!

[Ger21]

I am surprised to read this. Granted, my machine is a little on the small side compared to many I see here, but it will fit on an 80" x 40" machine. The going shop rate is $60/hour near me, so I am counting on all the machining work coming in just a few hundred $. Given how much money people invest into designing and building their own CNC routers, I would thinking have the rail surfaces and mounting pads machined would be easy to justify.

In nearly 15 years of reading a majority of the DIY forums daily, I can count on one hand the number of people who have had their welded frames machined.
The reasons, as stated above, are probably that most people don't know where they could have it done, at a reasonable cost.

[Bravin Neff]

It's an interesting point, and I wonder if there is a difference between UK and US here. I have no idea where I would go to find a jobbing engineering shop anywhere near me, let alone one with that kind of capacity. My own machine top rails are roughly 1.8m long, 1m separation, on a floor-mounted machine. It would be great to have had that machined but like most (UK) folks on this forum, I ended up with an epoxy bed instead. My background is IT so I have very few contacts in the engineering world - I wonder if anyone else knows how likely/easy it would be to find machining capacity like that, available at an acceptable cost, in the UK?

I am sure regional differences apply, and not just between countries. Where I live and work, there are over 800 CNC machine shops within a 50 mile radius of where I live. I also have colleagues elsewhere in the country that have to travel 500 miles in order to reach fewer shops. I am sure there are hot spots in the UK for manufacturing.

[Bravin Neff]

In nearly 15 years of reading a majority of the DIY forums daily, I can count on one hand the number of people who have had their welded frames machined. The reasons, as stated above, are probably that most people don't know where they could have it done, at a reasonable cost.

I am sure you are right. I have also noticed there seems to be very little overlap between the DIY CNC world and the commercial CNC world. I have worked and operated CNC machines my entire working life, but only have discovered the DIY world a few months ago. And now that I'm excited by it, I talk about it all the time with colleagues and customers, and I have yet to come across a single one of them that knows anything about it or who dabbles in it. I find that remarkable.

[cropwell]

I am sure regional differences apply, and not just between countries. Where I live and work, there are over 800 CNC machine shops within a 50 mile radius of where I live. I also have colleagues elsewhere in the country that have to travel 500 miles in order to reach fewer shops. I am sure there are hot spots in the UK for manufacturing.

Every little job that I have deemed would benefit from machining (generally milling or surface grinding) I have received exorbitant quotes for (I believe they are known as 'F**K OFF' quotes). The main reason given that setting up is the bulk of the work (£200 ish min) and so a one-off job is not economically viable.

If I wanted 1000+ machining, then I would guess the set-up would be amortized quite magically.

Basically, finding a small machine shop in UK that is struggling for work and prepared to talk sensible pricing for small jobs, seems to be difficult.

[zvon]

I'm looking for your comments please. This would be a gantry style CNC router. The Gantry is 150mm x 75mm steel rectangular tube, and the frame is 75mm x 75mm square tube. 1610 ballscrew, 20mm Hiwin HGH20 or similar.

The point of this design is to put the ballscrew directly above the linear guide, with the gantry mount sandwiched between the ball screw and linear guide carriages. I do not believe I have seen this before.

you're on to something there but as the otehr members said the weak point is the upright plate with no bracing for side to side loads. here's the same concept with one form of bracing added to what you initially drew
i like the idea it's very clever & done right could be quite sturdy

[zvon]

I'm looking for your comments please. This would be a gantry style CNC router. The Gantry is 150mm x 75mm steel rectangular tube, and the frame is 75mm x 75mm square tube. 1610 ballscrew, 20mm Hiwin HGH20 or similar.

The point of this design is to put the ballscrew directly above the linear guide, with the gantry mount sandwiched between the ball screw and linear guide carriages. I do not believe I have seen this before.

The motivations for this:

1. Ease of machining of the frame. The ballscrew mounts/motor mounts will be machined in the same plane as the linear guide rail surface. Alignment made easy.


2. An attempt to "hide" the ballscrew from inadvertent movement. This doesn't really achieve this, but it gets it away from the outside of the frame.

3. I think it looks cool.

Thanks for your comments.


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