Hello

[Clive S]

Welcome to the forum Dave and it goes to show what can be done with £500 if you could put better drivers and a 70V PS it would be a different machine (AM882) altogether. How about sticking some pics up?

[Neale]

I agree that it's possible to build a machine from (in my case) MDF and have a lot of fun with it, as well as doing some useful work. You just have to accept a lot of limitations in cutting speed, depth of cut, and so on. Great learning platform, though. Out of interest, what did you use as leadscrews? My machine is based on something like M10 threaded rod, which limits max speed on the X axis to about 900mm/min before the leadscrew starts whipping excessively.

[davo453]

Thanks for the welcome, a couple of corrections, the usual write in haste repent at leisure....

The steppers are Nema 23 (simple typo but big difference) and the router is a POF 50 (rather underpowered and soon to be replaced with a 1.5kw spindle).

The leadscrews are Trapezoidal 14x4 with 2 on the x axis and home made Acetal Nuts which have proven to be surprisingly effective with no backlash even after several hundred hours of use. The X axis is 1600mm and I don't get any perceptible lash, but it's not running at a particularly high speed, 1300mm a min is ok for my purposes.

I agree that wood (in this case plywood) is not the best material to use but at the time it was my only option. I now have several contacts and the budget to make one in metal but at this time this suits me so why fix it if it's not (yet) broken. However all of the upgrades I have done are done with an upgrade to steel in mind.

The machine is in the main used for carving in wood.

This picture is the only one I have of it in it's first incarnation, it was set up for testing and not totally finished but you get the idea. It doesn't look very much like that now though. I'll take a photo of how it does look now later.

[Clive S]

If the budget will allow go for the 2.2Kw water cooled (air cooled are noisy) as they are very quiet and if you intend to build another machine then it can be used again.

[davo453]

If the budget will allow go for the 2.2Kw water cooled (air cooled are noisy) as they are very quiet and if you intend to build another machine then it can be used again.

What about the weight I read somewhere that the 2.2kw weighs in at 11kg!

[Neale]

I'm using the usual 2.2KW water-cooled spindle on my MDF machine. Yes, it's heavy, and in my particular case way over-powered for what the machine can take, but it's going on the next machine which will be able to make use of the power. The big advantage is the ER20 collet which takes up to 1/2" shank cutters rather than the smaller ER collet on the next size spindle down. And as Clive said, the water-cooled version is relatively quiet and you don't need anything very complicated to set up the water cooling.

[Clive S]

What about the weight I read somewhere that the 2.2kw weighs in at 11kg!

I think the weight of the 1.5kw is about 5.5Kg but you can run the 2.2Kw without water for about 20min before it starts to get warm and with a small fish tank pump and 1 ltr of water it will run fine.

[davo453]

I think the weight of the 1.5kw is about 5.5Kg but you can run the 2.2Kw without water for about 20min before it starts to get warm and with a small fish tank pump and 1 ltr of water it will run fine.

Oh well I had already ordered an air cooler 1.5kw so will just have to stick with it for now.

An ER16 collet will be ok as I only really use 1/4 inch bits at the moment and can use an extender collet should I need to use a 1/2 inch.

The other concern I had was power my Garage has a 20 amp feed so 8 amps for the PSU + 8 amps for a 2.2kw Spindle and then the dust collector/vacuum at I think 2 amps puts me up there a bit. All peak rates I know but none the less...

Was hoping a 1.5kw Air would be quieter than my current router but not sure now.