MDF and alu sandwich router

[Tom]

Happy New Year!

I've spent part of this holiday getting my router into better condition. I'm surprised at how much time it takes to go from a machine that moves, to one you can walk away from during a job. I still have to pounce on the E-stop too often!

There are some photos of the latest changes.
Major one is that the new gantry is now fitted. This is now 18mm MDF (was 12mm), and it has bracing round the corners which improves the rigidity massively! It's fixed problems 1 to 3 in my earlier post. I think the aluminium skins are still worth adding, but that will be in a few more months when it's earned some money!

A smaller change is that i've added flexi conduit to control the cables. This has tidied it up immensely, and is a major step towards the day when I can sit in another room with a cuppa while the machine's running! lol Unfortunately it's two steps forwards, one step back - it doesn't bl***y work any more because of electrical noise issues which keep tripping the limit inputs during a run.

I shouldn't be surprised - the motor and signal cables are both unscreened, and they're now running in the same conduit in some places. There's some lovely screened motor cable on it's way to me now. For the screened signal cable I'm going to butcher a network cable, which is an idea I've pinched from Robin's Mill Build Log

Lesson learned - make it bombproof from day one!