Small rigid router - Design advise needed

[mitchejc]

Hehe, yes silyavski call me for the help on the spaceship design just make sure you buy big rocket engines as the ship might be a bit on the heavy side :-)

[mitchejc]

@Jazz
Thanks for the cling film plan, it works great and is a lot less effort than the release agent. Yesterday I was mating the surfaces where my x sides bolts to my frame and I already laid down the epoxy when I realised I don't have enough cling wrap left and had to make a plan in a hurry so I ripped a page out of a magazine that was lying there. That glossy paper worked remarkably well. The paper obviously stuck to the epoxy side but I removed it with a wet cloth afterwards. Funny thing is the ink remains so you end up with an inverse print on the epoxy surface of what was on the paper.

[mitchejc]

I really want to put sand in the three sq tubes in the gantry but I'm getting worried about the weight of my y and z. I'm not actually at the point in the build where I'm going to put the sand in but I need to decide now if I'm going to as it affects other choices. I know its a bit late in the process but I'm a bit shocked after actually totaling the weight of my y and z components. Comes out to +- 128kg. The sand will add another odd 20kg's. I'm willing to sacrifice performance for cut quality but maybe I've taken it too far. Not sure if I completed everything correctly but for my X calcs the motor calc spreadsheet turns red (margin of 2.5x instead of 3x) when I fill in my specs but I don't think its accounting for the fact that I have two motors? Will I be ok with this or should I rather reduce weight and not put sand in?

[mitchejc]

Sorry, realised above was a bit of a daft question. The spreadsheet does not allow for dual motor but obviously I can just half my weight for the calcs if have dual motors, so after redoing the calcs all looks fine and I'm doing to fill the sq tubes with sand.

[mitchejc]

Some progress photos. The base was done a while back. I figured its a good place to start to learning welding.

Started with a flat work area and made a jig to get the legs square





welded lower frame



welded upper frame




lower and uper frame done


spot welded legs into place using the jig




welded in braces after the top and bottom frames were welded to the legs.




basically done apart for some diagonals

[mitchejc]

Building the x sides with I-Beam and laser cut parts.

Cutting the i-beam. Thought this was going to be a huge issue because the beam I got is much larger than my cut-off saws capacity but it was done a few minutes later using two cuts and the angle grinder for the remaining bit in the middle.




I got all the holes lasered way oversize and made alu inserts for them. Just figured its a lot easier to ream alu bushes should I need some adjustment later to align things


welded in ball skrew mounts



welded in motor mount


some test fitting just to see how these parts goes together



I think using i-beam for the sides were a good plan and really easy to assemble and I can recommend this kind of approach for other newbies.

[mitchejc]

More work on the x sides. Drilling large dia holes by hand in the thick I-beam turned out to be a mission so I made two mdf boxes and drilled it on my small bench drill.




For basic alignment of the x-sides I used the centres of by ball skrew mounts

Once aligned I welded in tabs to make re-alignment easy


Used steel epoxy putty as per Jazz's suggestion for shimming. Worked like a dream. I can't imaging doing a steel home build without this stuff as there's just no way a beginner is going to weld something of this scale together and end up with perfectly square mated surfaces.






x sides almost done.

[GEOFFREY]

Looking great, and your "shed" is to die for. G.

[Boyan Silyavski]

Looking great, and your "shed" is to die for. G.

I noticed that too. Lucky man. Great development!

[mitchejc]

Thanks gents. The shed was actually build years ago as sort of an entertainment area which I started using as a workshop as there's just no space left in my garage. The tiled floor is a bit of a drawback because its not very flat and my wife still treats the area as hers so she does regular inspections for paint, glue and weld marks on the floor :-)

Have to say I did not realise that building the router was going to this much work! Everything is taking much longer than I thought but I'm enjoying every minute of it. Ahhh well ok not every minute but most of them.