New Member Introduction

[RobC]

Welcome Mike, I built my machine without doing any drawings just rough sketches. I used a pillar drill and a set of calipers, it was fairly accurate but not totally(current tollerance of under 0.5mm). Avoid steel plate where you can and indeed linear rail or hiwin rail if you can afford them! Aluminium plate and extrusion will be your friend, trust me I've rebuilt a lot of mine from steel plate.

Rob

[Hulksmash]

Welcome Mike, I built my machine without doing any drawings just rough sketches. I used a pillar drill and a set of calipers, it was fairly accurate but not totally(current tollerance of under 0.5mm). Avoid steel plate where you can and indeed linear rail or hiwin rail if you can afford them! Aluminium plate and extrusion will be your friend, trust me I've rebuilt a lot of mine from steel plate.

Rob

Thanks Rob.

Do you suggest I avoid steel plate completely ? What about steel box section ?

Or just stick with aluminium plate and extrusion. ?

Mike

[Neale]

Aluminum or steel box - your choice! My machine is all steel box section, welded, including the gantry (which is relatively uncommon). I also used a fair bit of 20mm aluminum plate for brackets, mounting plates, etc. I wrote it up - have a look at "AVOR". However, many excellent machines have been built from aluminum extrusion. My choice was influenced by having a MIG welder and small angle grinder. The thing that would have helped was a decent saw for accurate cutting; a hand-held angle grinder is not really good enough. Same goes for using extrusion, which arguably needs even more accurate cutting - an angle grinder and welder can create and recover from a surprising number of small errors (don't ask me how I know...)

[Hulksmash]

Aluminum or steel box - your choice! My machine is all steel box section, welded, including the gantry (which is relatively uncommon). I also used a fair bit of 20mm aluminum plate for brackets, mounting plates, etc. I wrote it up - have a look at "AVOR". However, many excellent machines have been built from aluminum extrusion. My choice was influenced by having a MIG welder and small angle grinder. The thing that would have helped was a decent saw for accurate cutting; a hand-held angle grinder is not really good enough. Same goes for using extrusion, which arguably needs even more accurate cutting - an angle grinder and welder can create and recover from a surprising number of small errors (don't ask me how I know...)

Thanks Neale,

That has definitely convinced me to use steel as I too weld.

Your design is great too, do you have the measurements or the cad file for the final design, its just I would like to know what the distance was from tool tip / bottom of z Axis to work piece. Also the sizes of the Z and various other sizes on your design.

I could always make a list of questions :0)

I have limited space, I have to have the gantry 1200mm and both rails or Y axis 800mm. This is due to the location in my garage.

any help appreciated

Many thanks

Mike