El Beast - Initial design phase, comments and critique welcomed!

**Zeeflyboy** · 14-01-2019

Cheers!

So got a chance to make the new belt guides today.or simplicity I just 3D printed the bodies in my XT-CF20 - in this new design they don't take any real force as they are supported by the gantry arms so no need for anything stronger. Had some Acetal rod which I used this time for the rollers.

Making the rollers on the lathe

3mm axle rod, printed body, turned roller:

Wash, rinse, repeat:

**routercnc** · 14-01-2019

Interesting design feature. Looking forward to seeing it in action.

**jarjar** · 15-01-2019

Just a question:
Did you measure how flat the milled Misumi extrusions are?

**charlieuk** · 16-01-2019

after a year or more of not being able to see the pictures on your thread for some reason I think due to something with our internet connection they have suddenly started working! The machine looks fantastic and a huge amount of progress since I saw those few bits sitting on your floor way back! would love to come take a look again sometime, the anodising setup looks like the icing on the cake!

**zepiros** · 25-02-2019

Thats one of the most beautifull designs i have come across as it comes to a diy project.
waiting to see how the final asembly will look like and how its moves/cuts.

**Lee Roberts** · 25-02-2019

Originally Posted by Zeeflyboy

I just 3D printed the bodies in my XT-CF20

Great work, what 3d printer are you using?

**Lee Roberts** · 27-02-2019

Since my last post your roller idea/design has been playing on my mind, I really enjoyed seeing your innovation on this and what you had come up with, that has led me to thinking about it more and wanting to share my thoughts with you, obviously it's up to you if you implement something or not but here goes!

What about if you added a spring to the rollers, milled a slot along their length, then took some thin copper sheet and made some finals for the ends of the belt, so cut to size, fold over and crimp to the belt ends, this strip of copper could then be a sung sliding fit into the recess/slot you made on the rollers, so it would be spring loaded, under tension and want to roll itself back up.

Then you wouldn't need to run the belt through the gantry and would end up using less belt.

Think of a roller blind on a house window, without the draw cord of course.

**Voicecoil** · 27-02-2019

I thought about this one a while ago and it's kind of 6 of one and half-a-dozen of the other.... Sure a spring loaded roller assy. uses less belt, but it's likely to be a lot more bulky potentially in a spot where "a lot more bulky" may not be cool. You can buy ready made spring roller blind units made for machine guarding, but for narrow widths all the ones I've seen are a bit cumbersome, whereas running it back through the extrusion the bulk of the belt is all stored in what otherwise would be dead space.

On another subject Zeeflyboy. what kind of % power do you find is best for laser "engraving" stuff on your anodised bits please?

**Lee Roberts** · 27-02-2019

Originally Posted by Voicecoil

I thought about this one a while ago and it's kind of 6 of one and half-a-dozen of the other.... Sure a spring loaded roller assy. uses less belt, but it's likely to be a lot more bulky potentially in a spot where "a lot more bulky" may not be cool. You can buy ready made spring roller blind units made for machine guarding, but for narrow widths all the ones I've seen are a bit cumbersome, whereas running it back through the extrusion the bulk of the belt is all stored in what otherwise would be dead space.

On another subject Zeeflyboy. what kind of % power do you find is best for laser "engraving" stuff on your anodised bits please?

All good points, I get what your saying about potentially bulky...

Yea that reminds me, the other question/thought I had, your home anodising results are some of the best I have seen, it would be great to see your setup/procedure for doing this..

would be a great addition to the Metal Finishing Techniques sub forum.

**Zeeflyboy** · 01-03-2019

Sorry for the lack if updates and replies, I've been busy doing other things recently but hoping to get back to it soon. I've managed to run an external air line to the Man cave and mostly finished building the big CNC enclosure, just need to re-wire up the CNC machine and get things rolling again.

Lee - to answer your earlier question I use a Makergear M1, with an e3d v6 hot end and an e3d titan extruder.

I must admit I hadn't considered doing the belts in the way you describe, so cheers for the idea. Having pondered it for a bit I think that would work better in a design that had a bulkier gantry arm for the roller to sit inside. Certainly would have been better than the v1 here where the belt running behind the front plate might have compromised it's attachment to the extrusion, but since switching to the thicker extrusion which allowed running through the dead space I think it's a relatively simple design with few drawbacks.

Voicecoil - that's a difficult question to answer, as the glowforge I got for the wife doesn't really work that way. It is a 45W CO2 laser, but the power scale runs from 0-100, and then full power. The full power one is easy enough to figure out but the 0-100 is not a percentage value (obviously, since full power is not the same as 100), but a seemingly arbitrary scale. Equally speed is an arbitrary 0-1000 which does not directly correspond to any unit such as mm/min etc.

It's generally fairly forgiving though. Start on the lower end and if the engraving isn't sufficiently defined you can run over it again without moving the part... I have found different colours (ie the red and the black) respond slightly differently due to the propensity to absorb/reflect the IR laser's power.

If you do it too many times/too much power you completely burn through to clear aluminium which for me had a slightly gold tint. I actually took advantage of this on the side plates to create some differentiation between grey/white/metal.