Building My First CNC Router, Looking for Advice & Other Info

[AlexDoran]

She's looking real good there! What are you going to use as a bed? I'm going to use MDF for now but limits my ability to use oil misting if I cut aluminium. It's a cheap solution of course but I mostly want to process woods, mdf & ply down the line once I've bought some decent compression bits from USA. I see where you corner mounts are (Where the nema's mount on the Y axis) you left a little overlap which means whatever material you use for a bed if you cut it to the correct size will fit snugly in on gravity alone. I'm going to make mine a vac bed so I'm not going to bother to bolt my bed in T nuts in the extrusion but you could do for extra strength.

Are you going to mount her on the table in the picture?

Hi Desertboy, recessing the gantry extrusions into the side plates sounds like a solid idea, maybe i could incorporate it without changing too much as i have already ordered most parts (except the ally plates).

In terms of the bed, i was expecting to use two types (or maybe even 3), like you say - using MDF as a spoilboard for wood cutouts will likely be one of the methods. I had planned to use a similar method for cutting with misting / coolant, our vacuum pods on our bigger machines here use a Phenlolic Plywood and Bakelight / Tufnol ( Link ), its an expensive material and awful to work with but is very resilient and will be immune to blowing out like normal MDF / Plywood when exposed to moisture. I was planning to use 18mm thick, and machine for those hammer-in threaded nuts to give flexibility in terms of mounting clamps / vices etc.

My 3rd method might be to make a basic vacuum table for machining the 1mm thick interdens / intumescent, however i think a few strips of double sided tape will more than suffice.

Yes you are correct i left those angles to help align any bed i fit easily, i will probably fix it to horizontal extrusions but nothing overkill just 2 or 3 bolts per length.

You say you are ordering quality cutters from the states?! Are there no suppliers here? We use cutters from a host of manufacturers, Calibre, Titman, Trend, FUL to name a few. Our main supplier for most of our tooling is a company called Littlehampton Cutting Tools, their MD is a nice guy called David Viney, excellent service and usually get the standard 20% trade discount when buying Trend cutters etc.

Right now im kind of at a standstill while i try and figure out some more fine details and source some more parts, im looking to get new spacers to mount the Nema23's, however struggling to find M5 x 25mm Threaded Hexagon Standoffs, RS Components sell them but only in bags of 50 (I only need 12).

I also had a price back for the ally plates from a company called Berry & Escott Engineering - The final price was £2624 Inc VAT!!! Does this sound about right? I was only expecting them to be around £1000, and i had left off a few small items that i thought 3D Printed parts would suffice for, and that i would run them myself once the machine was going, i am still looking for the chap on the forum here who had made some plates for another build, still cant find it, if anyone could point me in the right direction that would be great.

PSU's & DDCSV1.1 Controller turned up today, i thought the controller was advertised with a PSU but it hasn't arrived with one so i will need to find a cheap 18 - 32v one to power it.

Thanks

Alex

[NB70]

I also had a price back for the ally plates from a company called Berry & Escott Engineering - The final price was £2624 Inc VAT!!!

You could try posting a request for a quote here - RFQ. I know there are a few people here who have helped out others by making the aluminium plates for gantry sides & z-axis.

[Clive S]

i am still looking for the chap on the forum here who had made some plates for another build, still cant find it, if anyone could point me in the right direction that would be great.

Is this what you are looking for:- post 119


http://www.mycncuk.com/threads/10880...4311#post94311

[AlexDoran]

You could try posting a request for a quote here - RFQ. I know there are a few people here who have helped out others by making the aluminium plates for gantry sides & z-axis.

I will make a post, thank you.

Is this what you are looking for:- post 119


http://www.mycncuk.com/threads/10880...4311#post94311

That must be the one! Those plates look fantastic, i guess i will approach Chaz and see if he would be willing to give me a quote. Thanks for the link Clive.

Out of interest, i wondered if some of you more experienced members might have 5 minutes to spare, to take a quick look at my drawings and the the quote that was provided and see if you think it is reasonable?

Drawings & Quote

Thanks Again

Alex

[Desertboy]

What electronics have you decided on?

Also did you consider mounting the Hiwin's sideways on? I might be wrong but I went with sideways on because it simplified the build, the less complex your parts (And less part numbers) will reduce your cost but also less complex is easier to troubleshoot and fix potential problems.

My original design had a crazy amount of plates in it before I stopped to think about how to actually make it rather than what looked good in cad lol.

[AlexDoran]

So electronics wise, i have:

4nm Nema 23's
Leadshine AM882 Drivers
DDCSV1.1 Controller
2 x 600Watt 68v PSU's
1 x 23Watt 24v PSU (for the DDCSV1.1)
2.2kw Water Cooled Spindle & Huanyang VFD
Will be using Mechanical Endstops / Microswitches

Had forum member Leadhead pop down today which was great, he had some great tips and recommendations on the build, especially the Nema mounts he suggested which will drastically improve how well they perform (no twisting when stepping).

Got some more bits to sort out but carrying on dry assembling and finding tweaks.

Also gearing up to get this done with the controller:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0ivxcOnEBBM

Thanks

Alex

[AlexDoran]

Made some progress on the electronics enclosure over the weekend, few people have already mentioned about cooling and moving the VFD out, i got some methods to try and reduce EFI and there will be ~4 fans in the case for cooling.





Starting to think about my wiring in general, how would it be best to run my Nema23's in Bipolar Parallel or Series? Considering i have 68v PSU's? Also, can anyone point me in the right direction of the name of the 8 pin twist a lock connectors i see commonly used?

Thanks

Alex

[Desertboy]

Made some progress on the electronics enclosure over the weekend, few people have already mentioned about cooling and moving the VFD out, i got some methods to try and reduce EFI and there will be ~4 fans in the case for cooling.





Starting to think about my wiring in general, how would it be best to run my Nema23's in Bipolar Parallel or Series? Considering i have 68v PSU's? Also, can anyone point me in the right direction of the name of the 8 pin twist a lock connectors i see commonly used?

Thanks

Alex

Nice! Very neat there, I'm going to use a mini tower case for my PSU, steppers drivers & breakout board.

I'm mounting the VFD directly onto the T slot aluminium frame.

[Clive S]

Starting to think about my wiring in general, how would it be best to run my Nema23's in Bipolar Parallel or Series? Considering i have 68v PSU's?

Bipolar Parallel is the way.