Wobblycogs CNC Mk2

[Wobblycogs]

Another weekend comes and goes with much work on the house and little on the CNC, sigh. Anyway, after getting a tick for the gantry I've been going around the design putting in all the bolts. I figure it's better to find bolt hole collisions at this stage rather than when I come to build the machine. It's a really slow process even (even using the hole wizard) but I think it's worth it. For example I thought most holes would be using M5 bolts with some M6. In reality it's turned out most will have to be M4 with some M5. Also the thread depth on the linear bearings is surprisingly short so some careful counterboring will be required. The Z-axis stepper has grown a bent metal box cover. I'll probably end up adding a hinged flap on the front at some point - there was a front originally but I realized would wouldn't be able to fit the stepper through the hole I'd left!



The X-Axis is still has quite a bit of work to be done on it. As you can see there's no stepper, pulleys etc. The rails and screws are in the final location though as this is dictated by the rails. After reading this thread I'm toying with the idea of designing in the ability to use liquid coolant when cutting aluminium, I suspect that might be biting off more than I can chew at this stage though. I think I'll keep it in mind as a potential future improvement.

The rails, fingers crossed, should be with me fairly soon. Parcel Farce reports that they are in the country awaiting customs clearance. So far my first purchase from the far east seems to be going smoothly. Phew.

I got to thinking over the weekend about whether I would manage to finish this project (actually when because I'm going to finish it if it kills me) and it occurred to me that a lot of projects don't seem to make it past the planning stage and a good few seem to fail in the building stage. I wonder what percentage of people who want to build a CNC actually finish the task and end up with a machine that works (at least reasonably well).