Joe's 1000x600x200 steel and aluminium router started

[devmonkey]

Making some minor improvements to my machine so thought I'd report them here.

I've been using an mdf spoil board with t-nuts, I have hated this solution from the beginning but have been avoiding tapping 250 M6 holes in the alu bed plate.

I decided to just do it, I wasn't going to tap them by hand so I purchased a thread cutter for M6. The bed is made of 20mm cast aluminium plate, since there was only one chance to get this right I tested all the feeds and speeds on some scrap identical plate first. This was the first time I have used a thread cutter and you must dial in the toolpath first to get the type of fit you want on the bolt (basically change the diameter by 5 microns until happy). I'll give some details of the feeds and speeds to help anyone else processing similar material with a 2.2kw chinese spindle on a job that cannot be messed up.

1. Drilling was the main concern with the chinese spindle as it has not much torque at the rpm drill bits need. I found the sweet spot to be the spindle slowed down to 5300 rpm, feed rate 700mm/min, 2 pecks each half depth to total depth of 19mm. Less rpm or more feed and spindle would stall, more rpm or less feed and chips would melt on the tip.

Sprayed some WD40 on it for each hole. This created nice shiny round holes, bit was still like new afterwards, not bad for something that probably cost a few pence.



2. Chamfered with a 6mm 45 degree bit.

3. I blew out the holes, then sprayed WD40 over each.

4. Thread cut bottom up with this bit at 16000rpm 250mm/min:
https://www.shop-apt.co.uk/metric-si...60480N1.0.html





Result was a perfect grid of blind tapped holes on 50mm pitch, very pleased.

[devmonkey]

New spoil board machined with thru holes to reach the threaded bed holes. Missing corner is for vice and 4th axis which sit on their own registration plates. Sometimes I need to cut jobs that use the whole bed, when I next need to do one i'll make another spoil board without the missing corner, they only take a few minutes to swap and surface.

Next improvement will be replacing the standalone ddnc 3.1 controller with UCCNC and their ethernet motion controller. I need the ability to write custom plugins / macros which is missing / hard with the ddnc.

Does anyone know if there is stock of these in the UK, I vaguely remember someone, Jazz?, may have been a distributor?

[Clive S]

New spoil board machined with thru holes to reach the threaded bed holes. Missing corner is for vice and 4th axis which sit on their own registration plates. Sometimes I need to cut jobs that use the whole bed, when I next need to do one i'll make another spoil board without the missing corner, they only take a few minutes to swap and surface.

Next improvement will be replacing the standalone ddnc 3.1 controller with UCCNC and their ethernet motion controller. I need the ability to write custom plugins / macros which is missing / hard with the ddnc.

Does anyone know if there is stock of these in the UK, I vaguely remember someone, Jazz?, may have been a distributor?

Yes. Jazzcnc is a member of this forum. https://www.jazzcnc.co.uk/