Ready Steady Eddy

[JAZZCNC]

Hellermann H050 Yellow Letter Cable marker, Wire Ident, Wire Marker bag 1000 TWL | eBay

Cheers but they only sell letters and I want letters and numbers.

[JAZZCNC]

Cheers Eddy I've actually just ordered from that Ebay site you've posted.

[EddyCurrent]

I use these

PARTEX PA1 Number Cable Markers | eBay

or there's a kit

Cable Marker Kit with Numbers 0 to 9 containing Partex PA1/3 Cable Markers | eBay

also these but I don't use this type

Partex PA2 Compact Disc Cable Markers NUMBERS - Colour Coded | eBay

[firetrappe]

I used these for my panel : Buy Cable Markers HellermannTyton Assorted Clip On Clip On Cable Marker, Pre-printed with 0 to 9, Pack of 200, HellermannTyton 561-05030 online from RS for next day delivery.
Not as cost effective if you want loads of them, but it cost less than a tenner to do my panel.

BTW Ed, your machine is looking great. I still can't believe you managed to cram all your electronics in that enclosure! I'm using one the same size and gave up trying to get the VFD inside as well as everything else.

Si.

[m_c]

I use the size down (rs part 408-4490) from the ones firetrappe listed, as I find they fit most normal wiring in control cabinets, without sliding up and down small wiring too much.
I prefer them because they clip together and you don't end up with the markers randomly moving along/around the cable.

[EddyCurrent]

I know this doesn't really count but the VFD has a built in fan. I ordered one of these;
New 90~250V 10A Digital Temperature Controller Thermostat -50~110℃„ƒ w/Sensor UK | eBay

it will control the 2 fans, if I see the temperature increase above what seems reasonable I will modify the cooling setup.

[Neale]

Picking up on your earlier reply to a question from me - you said that you would bolt the mounting plates to the top beam rather than weld them, to avoid distorting the beam. Does that mean that you would not want to weld the beams directly to the upright supports, even though you are using epoxy to level the top surface afterwards? I had been thinking of tack-welding the whole frame, then carefully running full welds in progressively.
Maybe once I've started welding less critical bits of the support frame I shall get an idea of how much distortion to expect, but at the moment I'm trying to learn from the experience of others!

[mekanik]

Hi Eddy
I have been having a think about the distortion problem, did you weld all round the pads ? perhaps if the weld was just on the long sides it might not have distorted as bad.
Just a thought
Mike

[EddyCurrent]

@Neale, If you intend to weld the top beams to the frame instead of bolting, that's fine, you will of course have to use the epoxy routine. The reason I wanted to bolt them was to avoid the epoxy bit but in the end I still had to do it.
Another reason I had to use epoxy was due to the top beams leaning out slightly. When I tacked and welded them I had two pieces of wood between with perfectly square ends and the whole lot was clamped together with two long sash clamps. I thought this would keep them vertical but unfortunately it did not.

@Mike, Yes I welded all round the pads, you might be right about just welding the sides.

[EddyCurrent]

More progress, getting there now.
If anyone thinks the energy chain looks big, I still have some 8mm pipes to put in and at least one more cable.
Junction box on the machine, the cables from the panel will festoon down to allow movement of the machine but they will probably have some spiral wrap around them eventually.
On the right, inside the junction box, you can see where I've just passed the spindle cable directly through the box, this is to have no additional terminals between the VFD and the spindle motor,


Energy chain now arrived and fitted, note the grey plastic curved piece to transition the cables form the tray to the junction box. This was made from one of my favourite sources of material, soil pipe offcuts. The 110mm soil pipes are made from plastic that can be shaped with a paint stripping heat gun, just cut it lengthways and slowly heat until it lies flat, you get a piece over 300mm x whatever length you cut.
I used Dexion slotted angle iron for the energy chain trough mainly because I've had a load sitting in the garage for years. With energy chain it's advantageous to have a trough that is open because it allows debris to fall through without collecting in the bottom causing all kinds of problems.


A small aluminium box just fitted nicely under the energy chain bracket to allow connection of limits and home switches.


Just a view from the front. Unfortunately my great set up is no good now because the energy chain crashes into the keyboard and monitor bracket so a bit of rearranging will be required.


Got it going to it's home position today but there seems to be an issue with the slaved A axis, I might have to fit a switch on this after all. As it is with just a home switch for X, it reaches the switch and just comes to a halt, unlike with Z and Y where it backs off slightly. I tried unchecking the home limit selection for A in Mach3 but that made it worse. Will have to read up tonight about options for that, further reading on this subject here http://www.mycncuk.com/forums/gantry...is-gantry.html