Not the avarage aluminium router

[samsagaz]

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Enviado desde mi ASUS_Z00AD mediante Tapatalk

[Sven]

This is my second router, to replace a 950x550x240 self made.
There were some design and construction issues in the first one I wanted to get rid of, but that would take a serious amount of work and quite a lot of time.

As I can not be without a router for long since I use it to make parts for my business, I thought I'd better make a new one, which then would be bigger.

The lay out from this new one was handed to me by a gentleman who builds machines for a living and for his business he built his own 2500x600x350 router that he uses for high alloy steel if needed.

He did not approve of my plans to build a epoxy concrete gantry and then offered me his help in designing and if need building mine.

In the end I copied his layout but used tooling plate instead of steel.
I bought some tooling plate and box section aluminium from a scrap merchant and bought new tooling plate if I could not find a bargain.
All copper and ball bearing was bought through ebay and the PC is scratch build for linuxcnc.

I'll start with the pics in the next post.

[Sven]

Start of the frame assembly




Arrival of the new tooling plate


Not the easiest of jobs, getting 175 kilo slab of aluminium up a 10 degree ramp


The first bonding session for the gantry beam, using bog standard epoxy with cotton fibers


First time I made a cut on the table saw. It is to use ...


... for the plates that become part of the legs.

[Sven]

The legs have been bonded/bolted.


The frame horizontals are milled to their size on the router that is the template for mine


Frame is ready.
The legs are 100x100x5 mm, the horizontals are 20x150


With the bed on top of the frame, it is time to bond all gantry beams together.
In hindsight it would have been better to bond the 6 box sections first and then bond the tooling plate to the box sections in the second session.

This way might not require milling the gantry flat for the rails, if the bed can be set up very flat.


First rail mounted


Gantry being milled. We ended up at about 0.02 mm flatness over 1450 mm


As we needed to mill more of the gantry beam than anticipated I needed a new surface to mount the bearings for the Y-axis ball screw to...


Squeezed in epoxy/quartz flour mix


Very happy with the result...


... Flat to 0.01 mm

[JAZZCNC]

Squeezed in epoxy/quartz flour mix

Why Quartz flour.? . . . That's new one on me.!

[Sven]

After a lot of hassle because of a defective power supply PCB, I finally got some movement today.

@Jazz:
Quartz flour because it gives a nice and compact mass, resistance to pressure, with good filling of the smallest of voids. And it is still sort of drillable.