CNC 3020 Enclosure/Upgrade

[coroander]

I've been following this thread for a while. Really great work here Les. I'm borrowing many of these ideas. One thing i wanted to do was to have doors on the front. I'm also putting a radiator for the water-cooled spindle inside the enclosure and a small air compressor (aquarium pump) in as well. This will all generate heat inside the enclosure, but i'm hoping the vacuum will pull enough air out to prevent warm air from building up. With everything inside and sealed up, noise should be minimised.

I hope to get a decent seal on the doors (made using aluminium profile and polycarbonate panels), though not sure how i'm going to do that yet. I've built a base that the enclosure (using the same aluminium profile and polycarbonate) sits on. Here is a photo of the underside. The holes hopefully will allow air to be drawn in around the radiator for spindle cooling, the air compressor and the y-axis stepper. In addition to the holes in the photo, a hole for the air compressor intake has been added and a slot that allows all the cables to run through:


I plan to use an almost identical system through the enclosure for the vacuum attachment. I will likely add a small hole on the inside connector to allow a small amount of air to be pulled out from near the top of the enclosure. That should help keep things cool inside. Hopefully i can pull air out faster with the vacuum than the air compressor is pulling it in :-)

Anyway, looking forward to seeing more of your build.