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

[Nr1madman]

It's so beautiful that I think I'm gonna cry! ;)

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[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 -_-

[Wal]

That's very cool..! Any links to the laser you bought? What are you doing for extraction? I ask because the ones I've used in the past have had pretty expensive filtration set-ups attached to 'em - and given the smoke they generated on some of the jobs they really needed them too...

Excellent work though, man and best of luck to your wife in her new creative endeavours..!

Wal.

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[JOGARA]

Would like to know what machine that is.

I have the K40 and the steps are quite visible when engraving anodized aluminum.

[Zeeflyboy]

It’s a Glowforge Pro... finally arrived after buying one during the Kickstarter over 2 years ago. Thankfully that was at 50% the price that they are currently asking!

I have to say I thought that despite the marketing blurb of custom tubes etc it would be a mediocre laser but with an easy user interface for the non-technical missus to get to grips with, but first impressions are that it is actually a high quality bit of kit capable of some stunningly detailed results AND pretty easy to use.

Extraction wise, they have some fancy activated charcoal and hepa filter unit thingy but that is even more delayed than the laser itself and won’t be ready until the summer. It has pretty effective (and noisy) extraction fans and a hose connector on the back for drier hose. Currently that just gets shoved out the window to kill the squirrels.