Sweet dreams CNC - more than one step beyond...

[sweetdream]

The CNC is primarily steel box section,welded AND bolted! There are some new thoughts on the design, assembly and set up. I've not followed the classic route for a gantry CNC, I believe that there are major improvements that can be made to the 'normal' design which improve strength and accuracy both on the Y and Z axis. The X axis is probably the easiest one to strengthen.
On the Y and Z axis, the ball screws sit between the profiled rails, with the trucks outside the rails of the adjacent axis.

The Z axis is 20 mm ECO plate aluminium, built into a small but very strong arrangement. We had a large 4x4 parked on it at one point without any effect.

[sweetdream]

The cooling system is mounted onto the Z axis and all contained on it. Standard arrangement to the spindle but one side fed from the 12v pump which gets the coolant from the clear reservoir. the return side heads to the twin fan cooled radiator and the radiator feeds the coolant back into the reservoir via a bubble trap. a couple of chunks of styrofoam give a visual that the coolant is moving as it should. The radiator and fans are mounted on the back of the Z axis, making it a very compact solution. total length of the pipe work is less than 4 feet.

Other bits about the Z, the trucks are mounted top and bottom, side by side, giving maximum load carrying in each direction that the forces will be applied. Ballnut is through the centre and in-between the line of the trucks.

[IanS1]

This thread definitely needs more pictures.

[sweetdream]

Phew... been a busy couple of months there..

If anyone is around the Lemington Spa area, the beast (must be 400kgs... F.heavy!) is on display and making large bits smaller at the model engineering exhibition from Thursday through Sunday, 16th to 19th October.

If you are going, come and say hello.. Full tours available! :-)

EDIT:
Forgot to mention there is at least one other CNC there, CNC lathe and I understand some 3d printers and laser cutters too... During a brief wander around earlier I also spotted some reasonably priced end mills and nice chunks of alloy I shall be revisiting. :-)

[GEOFFREY]

Hi sweetdream, thanks for mentioning exhibition at LS. I have just booked tickets on line for tomorrow, so will probably see you there. G.

[Clive S]

+ one ..Clive

[sweetdream]

hi guys, it was heaving in there today... you couldn't get near some of the stuff on show. They were 3 deep most of the day!

I did meet a couple of lurkers from here, (you know who you are! lol...) They'd read this thread and were going anyway. Thanks for stopping by and saying hello, really nice to chat and thank you for the kind words gents.

As always, there's lots of interesting people who want to talk CNC stop by and one or two luddites who don't get it. One of the more eclectic conversations this morning was with an old boy who recounted that when he was an apprentice, his boss thought that no apprentice should be allowed to use "powered" machinery until they had done 6 months on a treadle powered one! LOL, brilliant....

Clive, Geoffrey, look forward to meeting you.