New build with recycled parts on a ridiculous budget 120cm*60cm work area

[Desertboy]

I've used and abused my big evolution sliding mitre saw over the last couple of years and it's still trucking, I've been very happy with the value for money. It's a little... agricultural... certainly not a precision tool and despite my best efforts I've never been able to completely square it up but it chomps through everything I throw at it, and I use it a lot for chopping up 20mm alu plate but have cut paving slabs, stone tiles, steel, alu, PVC pipe, copious amounts of wood. it's never complained!

Build is looking good!

The saw bit is great on my evolution it's the table bit that's crap lol, I to cut 20mm aluminium plate on my table saw and the table saw still has it's original blade. The mitre blade is the one I blunted trying to cut SBR but guess that's hardened. Screwfix sell evolution copy blades for ~£10 each they're pretty good.

Never could get my mitre square either lol.

I should chop the end of the Hiwin's to make it flush but it feels a sin to chop 20cm off original Hiwin's and if I swap the gantry round the shortest way and buy new ballscrews I can get another 10cm of travel out of it.

I already know if I keep this for any length of time will change the ballscrews to 2510's and swap the gantry round.

I tried to increase the chances of making a reasonable machine by outsourcing the manufacturing which I think was the best decision I made in my life lol. All I have to do is get the cad right ;)


I've already made 2 mistakes lol, I missed a counterbore but this is a non issue I can sort myself, one of the ballnut recesses is not long enough this is more of an issue but think we might solve it with a hand router and a jig.

[Chaz]

Lovely gantry parts you have there Desertboy. They look awfully familiar.

[Desertboy]

Lovely gantry parts you have there Desertboy. They look awfully familiar.

They do there don't they lol, a big thanks for Chaz helping me out here couldn't have done it without him ;) Was leaving the big reveal for when the machine moved ha ha ha but confidence is a lot higher that it will all be good.

This is my first CNC machine and I designed it myself with a vague idea how my reprap moved lol, the best advice I got so far I think was using 20mm tooling plate for the gantry ;) Then ditch the SBR for the Hiwin's.

Very happy with my plates from Chaz and the only issues I have come across come from me not measuring everything out properly! After mentioning exactly that in Zeeflyboy's thread I should be super embarrassed lol.

What happens when you don't bother modelling everything and use some lines and data from the engineering drawings lol.

And let me say Thor might look impressive but when she moves the earth moves with her lol.

[Desertboy]

PC is on it's way, got GFX card need SSD yesterday ;)

Next stop Fusion lol.

[Zeeflyboy]

looks like Thor's done a lovely job on those plates!

[RobC]

Looking good!

[Desertboy]

Got PC and ran into problems but nothing too severe but like always nothing works first time.

Need to swap the motherboard to a new case so I change the PSU as the existing case has a weird small power supply and I'd lose 2 drive bays if I fit gfx card in this machine. Have old mini tower pc's kicking round so not a biggie just hassle.

The other problem my 700w power supply I bought the other day only has 1 6pin pci connector and the card needs 1 6pin and 1 8pin so had to order a dual molex to 8pin adapter which will take a day or 2 to come and that's annoying.

Nothing's ever easy when you're budgeting lol.

The original 300w power supply is one of these
http://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/FSP300-60E...gAAOSw3YJZO4uT

which I believe are very good quality power supplies so will keep for some future project or maybe just flog it it is 80 plus certified.