Joe's 1000x600x200 steel and aluminium router started

[JAZZCNC]

Nice work Joe!
I see you are milling small slots to locate perpendicular sections to each other...... I enquired about doing just that in another forum with almost no reaction.
It seems to make sense to me ( no expert) What better way to ensure components are aligned correctly?

How have you found the process? A good idea or problematic?

I'm considering doing the same thing...when I eventually start my own build.

I see you have maximised the distance between your x rails, by placing them top and bottom of the Gantry.
Did that make things excessively more difficult?

Steve

Got to be careful here because it can and often does actually does make things harder for your self and not always more accurate by milling slots etc.? Reason is unless you can accurately machine all the major areas of the machine accurately then you will need some room for adjustment.

If you have read the forum you'll see I've said it many times that at DIY level the key to a great machine is to build in as much adjustment as possible. Nothing as changed in this statement.
Groves etc that are fixed will limit your ability to adjust out any errors coming from other areas that haven't been done to the same level. This is when you regret doing it.
The larger the machine the more this adjustability comes into play.

A better way I find at DIY level is not to limit adjustment with slots etc but use dowel pins that can be drilled and reamed after the machine adjustments have been made. This locks the machine in place but doesn't limit adjustment.

I would only consider milling slots etc if you can build the whole machine to the same level.! . . . . If not you will regret limiting the adjustments.

[devmonkey]

Got to be careful here because it can and often does actually does make things harder for your self and not always more accurate by milling slots etc.? Reason is unless you can accurately machine all the major areas of the machine accurately then you will need some room for adjustment.

If you have read the forum you'll see I've said it many times that at DIY level the key to a great machine is to build in as much adjustment as possible. Nothing as changed in this statement.
Groves etc that are fixed will limit your ability to adjust out any errors coming from other areas that haven't been done to the same level. This is when you regret doing it.
The larger the machine the more this adjustability comes into play.

A better way I find at DIY level is not to limit adjustment with slots etc but use dowel pins that can be drilled and reamed after the machine adjustments have been made. This locks the machine in place but doesn't limit adjustment.

I would only consider milling slots etc if you can build the whole machine to the same level.! . . . . If not you will regret limiting the adjustments.

Wise words about infinite adjustment.

I've built 4 machines in the last 20 years and milled slots in all of them for plate-plate, albeit these were all done on CNC not a manual mill. My approach has always been to make each sub-assembly locally square/aligned and only adjust between sub-assemblies (usuallly by shimming bearings). For example my gantry end plates are squared to the gantry and X bearing plates in 3 dimensions helped by milling the slots, this complete gantry/Y assembly will always be locally square assuming I can setup a milling machine properly to take a straight cut which I can. However the gantry itself could be twisted, unlikely but wont be known until final assembly, in which case X bearing interface with X plate will need shimming.

Sometimes you can't accurately determine a location for a joint until assembly in which case I estimate it and drill the pilot holes for the bolts then spot through to the joining plate with a centre drill once assembled, this was the case with the upper Y bearing plate on this machine. I don't use slots for this type of joint. However the slot in the bottom Y bearing plate guarantees that the two Y bearing plates (and therefore the Y bearings) are exactly the same distance behind the Z axis.

If I was using a hand router to cut aluminium as some brave chaps on here do then I definitely wouldn't be milling slots.

[devmonkey]

Once I fit the gantry end plate assemblies to the gantry I wont be able to mount the Z assembly without removing one of them, therefore I think this it is time to align and tighten the Y rails to the gantry in their final location.

For this I have just machined some precise setting tools, they were machined as a pair to ensure they are identical.



Here they are attached to the gantry, they bolt into the T-slot. Plan is to snug them up, the milled faces should then act as a reference surface to match up the reference edge on the hiwin rail, they will be moved along for each rail bolt. Note that I made them long enough so they extend across two of the high points that are on the reference plane on the face of the gantry extrusion.



First gantry end assembly bolted in place, I used countersunk M8 bolts rather than cap head to reduce the amount of material removal for the counterbore, meant the countersinks had to be done on the mill as there is very little adjustment vs a cap head. As well as the 8 M8 bolts into the end of the extrusion there are also two M6 bolts bolting up through the X bearing plate into the two T-slots on the bottom of the gantry.



Bottom view showing bolts fixing up into extrusion:


Plate-plate joint using the alignment slot:

[JAZZCNC]

I've built 4 machines in the last 20 years and milled slots in all of them for plate-plate, albeit these were all done on CNC not a manual mill.

This is my point unless you have the tools and knowledge to use them then it's better that you don't limit adjustment and instead lock it down when setup.

As you probably know Mr. Enstein comes into play when setting up a CNC machine.? Any adjustment usually an equal and opposite reaction somewhere else and you soon end up chasing errors around the machine. This is when you appreciate the adjustment you built into the machine, esp on large machines because small errors get big very quickly as it gets wider and longer.!