Quite an Unusual one

[Boyan Silyavski]

Now comes one of the last parts. I frankly admit i was quite indecisive there, from the beginning of the design. So it was time to sit on my arse and make some calculations and think the things clearly.

The working area / table bed. May be it a theme for a whole new topic. i see many people are wondering how to do it differently than plywood, especially if they mean to cut aluminum and cool it.

Now lets be clear i am not talking about the machine bed structure nor the sacrificial board. I am talking about the working bed/fixing area and method which is in between the frame and the sacrificial board and which is water/coolant resistant and is strong enough for moderate aluminum milling

So lets see the options. prices are Spanish, but may be more or less the relations will keep in different countries. Some thickness prices are not known but can be extrapolated. 1kg of steel is ~1 euro, 1kg of aluminum 6082 is ~5euro,

-phenolic 10mm thick 65euro/m2 so as i see it needs to be minimum 20mm best 30mm thick ...
-marine ply wood 15mm thick ~36-50 euro per m2 , i see it needs to be at least 30mm thick.. so its good for a spoil board but expensive for top
-marine ply wood with phenolic top for truck flooring, now this is a good one, but its even more expensive and the phenolic will be very thin to surface

Now instead of writing here i have made some drawing with data for the better options:












I have spent all morning in calculation and last days rethinking the things. So for me its clear:

My choice will be UPN140. I have the bed clearance for it. It is cheap and very strong for the money. Like the last photo, 2 welded together, with T channel and DIY Tee nuts as per drawing. So i will drill a lot of holes and use them for fixture and big sheets will be fixed with clamps that will pass trough the channels. It will be screwed to the table with nuts that pass between the connection of 2 of the UPN. I will have to find a resistance welder from somewhere for clean job.



Note: Moment of inertia is x axis cause its in C position when measures are given, so a bit misleading. Anyway, its in the good for us direction.

last thing that i have not clear is if i will machine it both sides and machine the bed bellow, so all is flat when mounted and dismounted if needed. I am seriously starting to think to somehow mount a grinder on the Z or surface all using small bit, slow speed and coolant. i said before no steel work with that machine, but its quite tempting. And from what i have seen people have done it with much weaker designs.

One thing i know is that on top of that UPN140 i will use then thin phenolic sheet or even better scrap pieces, for sacrificial board. At leats on some part of the machine. On other i will use cheap expanded PVC sheet.

I hope that these calculations money/material/ strength will help people to evaluate properly what exactly bed they need.

Notes
-UPN profile can be cast filled with cement which will make things even better. Non crack cement for table tops and garage floors is enough for that.
-aluminum T channels are damn expensive so i did not even consider them. Even steel channels are very expensive, crazy.


PS2.
One question . For the the threaded holes to be closed to keep them clean , what is the name of the screw that is like a grub screw but is for flat screw driver?

[toomast]

PS2.
One question . For the the threaded holes to be closed to keep them clean , what is the name of the screw that is like a grub screw but is for flat screw driver?

I believe it is called SLOTTED GRUB SCREW.

[Boyan Silyavski]

OK. Some development.

Did i tell you that i plan to add plasma to the machine. Front half for machining, back half of table for plasma. Or whatever life commands,

I know, old China HF plasma no good, combined machines no good... I can say yes, shoot 2500 euro and tomorrow a brand new Hypertherm Powermax 45 will be at my door.

First i have to know if that will pay off where i live, for what i do and so on. However instead i decided to start with what i have at hand, slowly make my way around. I did not skip the THC though as i believe it will be extremely important especially on a combined CNC table like mine.

I did my research and decided to go with the Neuron THC. I skipped the simple THCs where there were no advanced controls. Vietnamese and similar were out of question due to lack of support or support in some strange language.

The ones who are into plasma cutting know the choice is not so big money wise and feature wise. Razordance THC is only for Hypertherm, then there is the Proma, mini THC that looked promising, Cadcnc and Neuron. Or you pay big dollar. Cadcnc and Neuron seemed the most advanced. I as many times at the point of buying something from Cadcnc but the fact that he is in USA, his stuff works bundled together, some of his ridiculous policies mad em not do it. So the Neuron it was.

I will make a separate review when all is working, but i would say the documentation and the support from Andrey till now is outstanding. And to tell you the truth that the most important thing when you start doing something that you do for first time and you don't know nothing about.

So the Neuron THC lite came at home after customs delay /Russia is not EU you know /.

Thats the Plasma, tig, arc. German controlled Chinese machine with 5 year warranty.



First thing i changed the cover screws cause i decided i would open it quite frequently :-)



Then i twisted some pairs of wire for the voltage divider /1mm2 >600v wire, as per recommendation of Neuron manufacturer / :





Then i blowed the dust of the insides, by the way on the box says to do that 2 times per month


Here is my DIY drier for the plasma, painting and for blowing dust. No body would want to blow some drops of water on electronics, right. 10" filter box and 1/2kg of desiccant. Black plastic tube in the middle with a lot of holes so air can pass. On the right is a last stage lubricator outlet for air tools. Thre dry air outlet is in the middle



The insides, with the Neuron mounted, arc ok mounted , RJ45 ethernet communication cable. meanwhile i bout and learned to use cable connector making tools. as it seems Ethernet is the future.



The shed in front of the garage, the welding table and the machine bed arrived. I alsmost finished all till today, though run out of gas, otherwise i would have been welding right now. Will take more pictures when ready. the rage saw cut the UPN 140 like a charm. I was for worried for a moment when all arrived cause i forgot to check if the saw could do that wide



i need a welding table to make my welding table, isnt that funny

[D.C.]

OK. Some development.
Will take more pictures when ready. the rage saw cut the UPN 140 like a charm. I was for worried for a moment when all arrived cause i forgot to check if the saw could do that wide

Amazing build Boyan, those rage saws are quite the beast aren't they.

Do you have an update and more pics of how the build is progressing, this has got to be one of the best build logs I've seen, it would be shame for it to stop before we get some video of the finished thing in action!

[Boyan Silyavski]

HI,

yes i have an update.

First one of the piles of steel at the previous photos now is welding and fabrication table, the other pile with the long pieces now is a shed in front of my garage where the machine is. At the link above you could get idea how to fix the UPN to the bed









Now about the machine itself. Cables mounted and ready to run. I had some problems fitting the cables cause i made the error underestimate how big cable chain i need. I had some serious cable chain but it seems i needed even bigger.
Some of the encoder cables were shorter so i had to invent here also. Most cheap was to use HDMI cable, i hope it lasts some time.

Now the biggest problem. I can still not make run the machine. Reason being that although all is connected and programmed from Mach 3 side and from Galil side it would not move.

So i read 10 times the servo and the Galil manual / each 400 pages/. At the end frustrated i started trouble shooting. Checked 1 by one all cable connections cause the servos were tripping, cleaned contacts...this took a couple of days. At the end i discovered that when programming the servos somehow i missed to program correctly the motor name of 2 of them, hence the problems. So more or less all is ready here, still have 1 enable wire to 1 of the servos not working well so i have to rewire that.
Jogged the servos from the software and tuned them for a second.
That servos are incredibly fast, smooth and silent. The machine moves like crazy fast super silently. I directly jogged the Z assembly left right on the gantry 10-15m per min. Its scary.
Good that the frame is balanced horizontally. yeas i have 10 cm deviation on the floor so i used 30-35 square wood pieces leveled them and the machine is on top of them.

So the machine should be running any minute but 2 weeks i couldn't manage to make the Galil board work. Yes, it works communicates, switches signals and so, but still not able to make it speak / pulse/ to the servos. And on top of that i burned the COM port from changing cables. So i could not now change the servo type of signal expectancy. GRrrrrrrrrr!! Now have to wait for new COM board cause where i live...

I asked about help with the Galil at Mach forum, Galil forum, nobody... So after 2 weeks i discover that i have to issue MT command to change the type of pulse it sends. It may be the greatest board but with nonexistent support, no schematics of connection... maybe i did a mistake not contacting directly support, but from what i saw in their forum-please read the manual its explained there. yes its f***ng explained but its 400 pages manual and i am reading 3 of them at once and on the way learning new terms that i had no idea yesterday what that even means, so a bloody connection diagram for every application example and step by step instruction would be great for stupid people like me and the 20 engineers that asked the same questions...

So i am still stuck, last effort these days, then it goes off the machine cause i will receive 2 Pokeys boards, so one goes there. Will leave the Galil apart, mount it in another box , study it and use it in another machine. And then bloody sell it :-)

So any day soon it will be fully alive, then i will move the gantry around and mount and level the ready UPN140 pieces for the working table bed to be level, Thats why i need to move the Z around so i measure and shim where necessary.




Here where is the PC, the VFD and so on, at the entrance. Switch on the machine,mount piece, Mach3, program run, then go out and close garage door. The garage=Big enclosure for the machine

[toomast]

Looking good!
How did you end up mounting UPN140 for the bed? I mean how did you get it level? Or you just have them laying on the machine for the moment?

[eurikain]

I honestly think anything you touch turns into gold ;)

[Boyan Silyavski]

Looking good!
How did you end up mounting UPN140 for the bed? I mean how did you get it level? Or you just have them laying on the machine for the moment?

Drilled the UPN, soldered oversized nuts to form a bed, drilled machine and fixed with bolts. Same as what i did here http://www.mycncuk.com/threads/8600-Welding-bench



Thanks for the kind words :-)


Have not updated it long time. Its almost finished, now rectifying some design mistakes. Will speak about them later.

Here is a video i made yesterday of test runs at 10000mm/min acceleration 3000, gantry weights 180-160kg or sth like that. Its scary. Its snappy, so object achieved so far.

Waiting for the new cable drag chains, last were a bit small so now i bought bigger from Russia and should be any day here

Enjoy: