routercnc_MK3

[routercnc]

I thought I wait for decent progress before posting again.

Finally mounted it to the wall and wired in the stepper motors. At 72V it jogs around much faster than the previous machine!


The monitor will mount to the door, probably on a small pivoting bracket.

I've swapped out the Z axis stepper driver to another DQ860MA and am running it off the main linear power supply. This meant I could remove the 34V SMPS power supply. I've also added a 5V PSU to run the breakout board (next to the invertor).


I decided after much thought to put both X axis stepper drivers on the same fuse and up the rating to 10A (Y and Z are on 5A each). I was worried that if one fuse blew the gantry would quickly twist and do some damage. This way if one goes they both stop. What has everyone else done?


Recently I managed to machine the front panel and offer it up as a trial. Fits OK but was a pain to machine. It is 3mm aluminium 1050 grade which is very soft. Didn't help that I'd not paid much attention to the 6mm bit I ordered recently and it arrived with 3 flutes. In the end I had to machine it very slowly (120mm/min at 1mm DOC) otherwise it stuck to the cutter.


It should look like this when finished:


Still need to wiring up all the buttons to the panel, add the POKEYs board to the back, wire in the external e-stop, the machine limits and proximity home switches . . . . .

Can't come soon enough to be honest as I managed to jog the machine into the (non-functioning) micro-switches on the X axis and smash them to pieces, plus bend the end stops a bit. Those motors have some power now on 72V !

Another problem is this afternoon the PC just switched off without warning (wasn't cutting just doing a bit of CAM). When I switched it on it said there was a keyboard error and would not start !! More to sort out - but it will have to wait for my next session.