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

[Desertboy]

I do like Fusion's renders they look lovely, when you downloaded the Hiwin models were they coloured already?

If you can make a working CNC machine in Fusion I'd say you must be better than average at Fusion ;) Anyone can place models but making them align properly is a different matter.

[Chaz]

I do like Fusion's renders they look lovely, when you downloaded the Hiwin models were they coloured already?

If you can make a working CNC machine in Fusion I'd say you must be better than average at Fusion ;) Anyone can place models but making them align properly is a different matter.

Ye, its fairly hard, I managed to get Thor moving on axis by rotating ballscrews on the Y. Once you understand it, its not too bad however I found it complex dealing with all the assets and knowing how to manage them across different drawings and which become 'grounded' and which not. Watch some vids on joints for Fusion.

[Desertboy]

I don't use Fusion will check it out when I upgrade but will probably stick with turbocad platinum with cam and furniture maker plugin.

I build everything as blocks in turbocad and blocks within blocks it's the only way to build this sort of thing in turbocad without going crazy lol. The main drawing is then made of blocks and you normally edit the blocks not the main drawing.

There's is no mechanical/animation capacity so everything is static in Turbocad.

[Zeeflyboy]

desertboy - I think I ended up adding the colour, but I'm not entirely sure.


Small bit of progress today.

First up the main bed needed trimming down a couple of mm in width... decided easiest way was to use a hand router and guide rail. I finished by just popping a 1.5mm chamfer on all sides and giving it all a little tickle with some 240 grit on the orbital.










And 3d printed the Y-axis sensor mounts










Also designed and now printing a drill jig for the bed plate corners. I'll make the brass drill bushing on the lathe.

[Chaz]

Those mounts are nice. Willing to share the STL (or whatever format you have)? Might use it for inspiration to improve my proxy mounts.

[Zeeflyboy]

sure, just shoot your email over to me via pm

Got my 1.5mm end mill today so finished off the shoulder screws - chuffed with these little bad boys as my first lathe project!






And this is what they do - in theory the X-axis slider plate is now constrained at all 4 corners, and should be in pretty much perfect alignment with the rails

[Zeeflyboy]

Couple of jobs done today, nothing overly exciting sadly!

I made my drill jigs after a few changes to my design to allow me to use it in multiple places.






Stage 1 in trying to get a nicely aligned machine, I laid it down on the ecocast bed plate and re-assembled with that as my flat reference.




Flipped and inserted spring T-nuts for retaining the bed. I also plan to drill through into the long extrusions once the machine is assembled for some alignment pins that will allow the bed to be removed and replaced without losing alignment.




With the machine now right side up, I had a first go at my method for aligning the rails to the bed reference and thus hopefully each other. I used a 1mm piece of shim brass and using a clamp I moved along the rail tightening as I went. I'm wondering if it is worth making a DRO setup to read divergence from the bed in Z to verify.




I've been thinking about the easiest way to verify that the rails are equidistant along the whole travel to a suitable level of accuracy. I'm thinking that one the motors and rail mounts are hooked up I could make a piece that spans the gap between the two side mount plates that can float in X. Fit a DRO to that and take measurements at each of the cross support points, shim if necessary. Thoughts?