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

[AlexDoran]

The vacuum pods on our smaller machine are made from Tufnol / SRBP (Use the stuff from DirectPlastics), i think its absolutely horrible stuff to work with, stinks and iirc some types can be carcinogenic. On the larger machine the vacuum pods are machined from a dense type of Phenolic Plywood, much nicer to work with and doesn't appear to be affected by moisture, the stuff we get is 80mm thick.

On a separate note this machine is epic can't believe i only just found it! That Z Axis is a thing of beauty!

Alex

[Boyan Silyavski]

Tufnol is a great stuff to work with. The same settings you use for hardwood just slow feed rate to 1/3 and machines perfectly.

[Zeeflyboy]

Thanks chaps.

Alex - the attwater SRBP msds seems pretty benign.. I would be surprised if it was any worse than MDF for you anyway! http://www.attwater.com/downloads/sr...lth-safety.pdf

I think as with all these things it's best to avoid inhaling any dust anyway.


Made the front plate today, bit more of a challenge to hold down as it doesn't have sufficient through holes... instead I had to spilt the operations up a bit.

First setup - machined the ends and the back side for rail mounting holes, HD16 mounting pattern and some temporary alignment block holes to make sure the first rail is straight to the edge of the plate.



Then re-clamped and ran the side machining:






Drilled a few 6mm dowel pin holes to butt the piece up to when flipping for top side operations:








Unfortunately I don't have any correctly sized m5 bolts for mounting the rails. Amazing - seems no matter how many screws I have on hand, I never have enough of the correct size!

[Desertboy]

Of course you don't have the right sized bolts that's because I have the right size ones that you want and you have the ones that I want ha ha ha.

Because god hates CNC builders otherwise he wouldn't have let them design 15mm hiwin greasing points lol.

[routercnc]

I hear you Zeeflyboy and Desertboy.

That sinking feeling when you realise the only screws you have in the draw are too long and they have to be cut down and the ends dressed. Still, it beats being too short and the job not progressing until the postman has arrived.

Maybe we need some sort of online swap-shop !

[AlexDoran]

Just to follow up with the Phenolic Plywood, tested it by leaving some water on it for a few hours but it didnt seem to absorb much - if any. I suppose a layer of lacquer would totally seal it.





Thanks

Alex

EDIT: Not sure why the site keeps rotating my pictures 90Deg -_-

[Zeeflyboy]

good stuff :)

So another day another part... the Z-axis (or should that be Zee-Axis? ) inches closer to completion. At this rate I may be finished by mid 2018.

Today is the turn of the tramming plate.

[Zeeflyboy]

Fitted to the existing parts of the Z-axis ( needs a shoulder bolt in top right and eccentric bushing in top left) and showing full up and full down travel positions:










So next up really I need to get around to making the eccentric bushings, and I also need to knock up a little adjustable Z-limit trigger piece. Then it'll be the turn of the side plates to finish off the Z-axis completely.... I decided to allow myself a little "pointless" flair on the side plates and will try to make some inset CF pieces just for aesthetics.

[Edward]

Now that I can see where you've placed the motor mount, it gives an idea of the total height allowed from the nut to the base.

This is the one thing where I have agonised when messing about with my design. It's difficult to see in yours because the pic is not head on, but it looks like the spindle nut base falls about parallel to the edge of the extending plate, maybe slightly lower. One thing that I am sure you have thought about is that the clearance of the sliding plate is above the holding clamps for the part, in cases when you are cutting something deep using the full flute length, you don't want the sliding plate to touch the clamps.

Edward

[Zeeflyboy]

Actually that's just the angle of the pics, I designed it with the idea of having the bottom of the spindle nut approximately 1cm below the bottom of the mounting plate for that very reason. Obviously it's fairly easy to adjust to taste simply by moving the spindle slightly lower/higher in the mount.

So I had a go at creating my first eccentric bushing this eve. Seems to have come out quite nicely given that I have no idea what I'm doing!

I started off with some hexagonal stainless steel stock, and installed my 4 jaw chuck on the lathe. First job was to turn down to a diameter I could measure off to calibrate the scales.



Then turned down to 11.99mm




I was designing it to the specs of a specific commercial product as before I got the lathe I was intending to buy them. So I had to copy the slightly odd offset of 1.07mm from centre:




Then drilled out the bore, flipped and faced the top side.




End result: