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

[Nr1madman]

Nr1 - Cheers. Thing with that suggestion is that the ball screw and mount is actually taking up more depth than the rails and carriages, so would need to do something totally different with the ballscrew arrangement.

I've been very happy with the pokeys57CNC - setup was easy, the mach4 plugin is great and support has been quick to answer my occasional stupid question.

You are of course right about the ballscrew placement! So nevermind about that :)

I'm glad you like the pokey's, might be that Im gonna place an order.. but mach4? Is it working alright as well?

The new Zaxis is looking sweet, what material are you planning on using for the "seals" in red?

[Zeeflyboy]

Red silicone strip for the flat seals and not sure yet for the shaped stuff, either I'll laser cut some thicker silicone strip or 3D print in a flexible rubber.

Yeah I'm very happy with mach4 - it generally feels much more modern and clean than mach3, and it's far more responsive in terms of reacting to your manual inputs or feed hold etc.

It is probably a case of burning money somewhat if you've already got mach3, but I just wanted something a bit more future proof since I'm on a new pc running windows 10 pro. I believe that the pokeys57cnc is better supported on mach4, so that's certainly something to consider as a potential extra expense if going the pokeys route (although even the pokeys57CNC + mach4 is cheaper than the smooth stepper + BoB I had).

If getting mach4, I recommend looking at the pdmx site - even without a joint purchase its slightly cheaper to the tune of 10 bucks or so.

[Ross77]

Looks nice. If you move all 4 z axis blocks down you will gain more travel, or move down the lower ones to increase rigidity at full extension.

What CAD programme is that?

[Zeeflyboy]

Looks nice. If you move all 4 z axis blocks down you will gain more travel, or move down the lower ones to increase rigidity at full extension.

What CAD programme is that?

Cheers,

Won't gain more travel by moving them down - it can already travel the full length of the rail so it's limited to rail length minus 2x carriage.

However it's been pointed out that moving them towards the bottom does put the "fixing" point closer to the work which would reduce the lever arm and increase rigidity. I will probably slide them down a bit and slide the tram plate up to match.

I'm using fusion 360 for everything these days, the built in cam is awesome.

[routercnc]

For raised X axis I mean something like these where the gantry is mounted directly on top of the X rails, which are themselves raised well above the level of the bed. The raised X axis can then be reinforced and made as stiff as you want. Often they are steel box section, which is x3 stiff as aluminium (like-for-like sizes). This avoids having the long drop down gantry side plates which will not be as stiff.

It is very difficult to overcome offsets by beefing up/reinforcing the connecting structure. Much better not to have the offset in the first place.



or



The example you choose still had gantry sides and the X axis rails were level with the bed so no real advantage and not what I would call raised X axis design.

Z axis swapped around looks good. I'm adding a pair of tram plates to my new machine so good to see it used on yours.

[njhussey]

Hi!

I can recommend the high (X or Y axis depending on what you call it!!) rail approach (my machine is the bottom photo) to give stiffness. My machine munches aluminium and I've even cut (I'll say tickled really) 6mm steel plate. I presume you're the same person who frequents (or possibly did as I've not been on there for a few years now) RcHeliAddict forum, I think the last time I was on there you were just testing your small FPV Quad you designed?

[Clive S]

(my machine is the bottom photo)

And mine is the top one. I to was recommended to go down that route