StrikeCNC Machine - My Retrofit

**Shinobiwan** · 01-03-2013

Now there's some hours on the machine and things are bedding in I decided to spend the day stripping down and removing all the ballscrews and nuts carefully putting them back together getting everything tight and aligned as possible. There's virtually no bind anywhere now and it shows in the speeds and acceleration it can achieve. Those Leadshine AM882 are awesome! I could have gone past 16.5m/min but Mach was limited by my max 45k PP speed so I went and whacked the acceleration all the way up to 4000mm/sec^2 instead lol

Ps. Don't run at these speeds or accel as its overkill but its nice to see the effort from careful setup confirmed with a speed increase. I run at 10m rapids and 5m on the Z. That's more than enough for me but its nice to know there's lots of head room there.

**Shinobiwan** · 06-03-2013

Had another go at making a dust shoe and after picking up some cast acrylic this attempt came out much better. A week or so ago I did try to cut the same parts out of extruded acrylic and that stuff melted no matter what I did. Lesson learned - go with cast if the finish quality matters.

Thanks to M.Marino for the advice on feeds and speeds. 3.5m/min with 3mm DOC and 14000rpm worked a treat.

**Tenson** · 06-03-2013

Looks good :) I've been struggling to get a good finish on cut acrylic for a little while and although I'm doing pretty well with it now I wonder if I also have extruded sheet. I'll have to check!

What vacuum do you have? I made my dust shoe suck up directly around the spindle rather than just to one side. It works nicely no matter what direction I'm cutting, but I do wish I could get a stronger suck!

**Shinobiwan** · 06-03-2013

Its one of these.

Buy Numatic NVD750 Workshop Vacuum Extractor from Axminster, fast delivery for the UK

With two 1200w motors there's plenty of suction. The bristles keep the stuff thrown by the cutter contained and the vacuum does the rest.

**Ricardoco** · 06-03-2013

Magic Videos, and great Job. It occurred to me the videos would make a great advertisement for Strike-Cnc if they start up again as they have no Video Titles on them

Great Job.. Rick

**Shinobiwan** · 08-03-2013

Not normally worth posting about replacing the bed but I picked up a sheet of Trespa Athlon from a friend and have to say this is makes a great bed. Plenty of mass, well damped against vibration, dimensionally stable, tough and still easy to drill and set up fixtures. The construction is a fibre reinforced resin with a laminated finish. I've had a quick go with an offcut made when sizing the sheet to fit the bed and it machines really nicely.

I got this sheet for nothing and I'm not sure on pricing but Performance Panels : Home stock it.

**Shinobiwan** · 19-04-2013

OK here we have my first go at cutting aluminium. I had so much fun with these. Wood seems boring in comparison and you've got to be so much more mindful with how you go about cutting it. Oh and the engraving was an absolute frigtastic nightmare as well. Broke 3 cutters before I finally hit the g spot. Admittedly the cutters are uber fragile since they're pretty much needles sticking out of a 3hp spindle spinning them round at 24000 rpm. Even getting it slightly wrong would break them. There's a strong chance I'll end up getting a laser cutter/engraver at some point because its a painfully slow this way. Looks cool though and that's what counts.

I finished them up with fine brushed effect and then sealed with a couple of coats of clear because without either that, etching or anodising then natural aluminium is a finger print magnet.

As an experiment I'm going to have a go at filling the text with black spray on the One.10 plates. Once the excess paint is sanded back to the aluminium leaving only the lettering black it should look alternatively awesome. I choose not to do it for the Apollo as I really like the way they're looking straight out.