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

[Snapper]

I wouldn't hold your breath waiting for Autodesk to implement such a feature, there are some rather basic things people have been asking for for years (lathe back chamfer on part off, stick text engraving etc) that still haven't been done.

Great work by the way, love watching this machine come together.

[Zeeflyboy]

I wouldn't hold your breath waiting for Autodesk to implement such a feature, there are some rather basic things people have been asking for for years (lathe back chamfer on part off, stick text engraving etc) that still haven't been done.

Great work by the way, love watching this machine come together.

Cheers.

I certainly won't be holding my breath!

Just one final update for today with an assembled shot of the v2 Z-axis so far. Coke can for scale as I find the HGR25H carriages and 25mm rails make it look smaller than it is in pics when you are used to seeing 20mm.



Not quite sure what will be done next.... either the side plates or the top counter bearing plate depending on what I can find in my aluminium stock pile. I think I'll need to make an order for more plate to complete the front plate and tramming plate.

[Zeeflyboy]

Little bit more progress made during the week.

So first up I made a little extended collar for the ballscrew bearing mount. This is just to allow the pulley base to clear the top of the bearing mount.






Next up I printed off a set of jigs for the sides of the Z-axis. I also made some bushings in silver steel and experimented with hardening (heated up till cherry red then quenched) to try and get some nice long lasting bushings that I can use for multiple projects... seems to have worked well.





Sides all drilled, tapped, deburred and quickly tickled with some sand paper to remove any high points (with the side plates mounted these edges serve as the reference edge for the carriages).




Unfortunately my 3d printer is too small to make the side seals in once piece so I split them into two instead.




Next up was machining out the side plates from 5mm plate






Machining the seal retaining slot on the back side. Out of interest I noticed Fusion has a new option on adaptive clearing which is "machine both ways" so I tried that out on this slot... basically it just climb mills one way then conventional mills the way back with a slightly lower axial engagement. Works nicely and means you aren't wasting time with a travel move where you have a lot of back and forth like this slot.




Finished parts:

[Zeeflyboy]

Seals are a beautiful press fit into their slots:






All seals done and fitted:




I think next up will be the top counter bearing plate, then I'll move on to the face plate and tramming plate.

[routercnc]

Nice work there. That 3D printer is proving to be very handy.

[Nickhofen]

Jewlery...I can't wait to see it finish!!!