Joe's 1000x600x200 steel and aluminium router started

[devmonkey]

Milled the Y bearing plates, just need to counter bore them. Lower plate wraps around the rails on the Z front plate to reduce coolant splash up inside the Z assembly, it is also recessed to accept the rear Z plate press fit so that it is easy to line it up with the upper Y plate. The row of 4 holes that will be used to bolt the lower Y to the rear Z plate are undersized as I want to use them as a drill guide for the tapped holes in the rear Z. The Z is too tall to stand on my mill so these will have to be drilled on the pillar drill or with the cordless.

Also the spindle mount arrived from Canada, very nice bit of kit.

[devmonkey]

Got the rails mounted on the milled gantry, worked really well. I've tightened them down but not yet aligned straight, for that I will mill up a couple of precision setting tools.

I then finished the Y bearing plates and bolted everything together. Everything slides very smoothly with bolts tight, very exciting! The Y bearings have the same smooth action across the entire length with no hint of any variation so I presume the gantry milling was sufficiently parallel.



One thing I need to do before too long is hit the corners of these plates with a sander, they are razor sharp and I keep bleeding all over the lovely shiny parts.

[devmonkey]

Happy new year everyone!

Small progress update, I have finished the gantry end plates and X bearing plates.



I have about 6 small plates to make for stepper and bk mounts then finished with the manual milling.