Aluminium Framed Router

[lucan07]

First chance to do any work on build today half a day off so made a start, first job decide what to do about the steel and cast iron base I intended on using, top has been ground flat and its ready to go but Base weighs in above 3Cwt and Top just over 4Cwt all to be carried upstairs.

For time being I am going to put base into my lock up and try a different base to as all work in flat is likely to be lightweight, I will be selling my flat and buying a property with a workshop so the base will either be used then with this machine I originally designed for it or with version 2.0 which I have no doubt will be built.

So alternate base? As welding out of question in flat I have gone for simplicity, two sheets of 25mm MDF to make my base, bed laminated 75mm MDF whole base sealed glued and screwed, it's solid, time will tell if its solid enough, I cannot see any problems with type of work it will do whilst in the flat.

As base was drying I decided to drill and tap side rails which are 6"x4"x1/4" Ali box I used M6 with 30mm washers to attach rails to bed, M4 to mount external supporting ribs 300mm 38x38x6mm T section, M4 again to mount 20mm supported rails quite happy with the afternoons work, rails have a little adjustment available and I intend on locking them down with either loc-tite or epoxy when final adjustments made, currently as close as I can measure having just dropped them on and pinched up they are within 0.5mm over 1000mmm on the parallel.

Couple of pics below showing latest design and progress.

[lucan07]

Grabbed a couple of Hours this afternoon again and made a start on the X axis, by far biggest lump of aluminium thats been machined on the Seig since conversion, think I upset it when I put the fly cutter on to true and parallel top and bottom to accept rails, it started spitting needlles at me with a vengance!

635x150x30mm 5083 Plate backed by two lengths of 3x1X1/4" angle which was drilled and plate drilled and tapped for M4, top and bottom trued, paralleled, drilled and tapped M4 again to mount rails.

Stomache was thinking throat had been cut so stopped now to eat, just two ends of crossmember to machine true and parrallel and it is about ready for ends/gantry sides to be mounted, I am thinking pocket the gantry sides 1/16" to accept crossmenber for strength and ease of alignment doing so also positions them nicely to centre of Y axis bearings.

Spindle and VFD just arrived got a good deal on these £146 delivered and they look ok, now I'm cooking with gas.

Build is going OK a good start with 9 hours in its starting to take shape, if you sort of squint and look sideways that is, as my old dad always said "a blind man would be glad to see it"!

[sinnsvak]

Thats a solid piece of gantry! Must weigh a bit?

Have not tried a flycutter yet, but I suspect the same thing will happen when I do :)

Have fun with your build!

[lucan07]

Have a Y and now almost an X and I have a few spare hours over the weekend to come up with working drawing for Z and start machining. Impressed with Fusion360 so far simple to use and with a little tinker of the code before running mach3 the little seig conversion goes about its business with little complaining, nice to get some decent size lumps on it to cut eventually and make some decent chips.

Ended up pocketing 4mm each side to centre the gantry raiils onto Y axis bearings. the work area I will be able to use now confirmed as minimum 780x450x100mm

[lucan07]

Managed to get a couple of hours in over the weekend, and made some progress with Z axis, now have three smooth free moving axis and screws mounted for Y and Z still waiting on delivery of some parts so limited to working with parts already available. Time to start thinking about motor sizes required, being a novice I was surprised by the weight accumulation with the 20-30mm 5083 plate, rails, ballscrews etc used so need to work out totals and ensure adequate power from steppers drivers etc.,

[lucan07]

Progress being made not been able to keep up with posts as everything has been done in snatched moments as and when the free ones occured, all wired and connected ready for a test run tomorrow work permitting. Went with 5 axis BOB, 4 x DM542 4.2a drivers, 4 x 425oz Nema 23, 2.2kw HY VFD and Spindle, linkage I used 2:1 ratio from motors to 1605 ballscrews, power supply a pair of 36v 9.7amp units I had, option to swap in a pair of 48v 10.4amp will be available soon if it will be beneficial.

[JAZZCNC]

Why would you go with 2:1 ratio on 5mm pitch screw. This will be far too slow for router.

Also to make matters worse your only running 36V which means your your steppers are under performing by far margin, even with 48Vdc they will be running slower than they are capable of doing.

With 36v you'll be lucky to get 1000rpm and have any torque left. With 5mm pitch screw at 1:1 ratio that would only give Max feed rate of 5000mm/min. This halfs with 2:1 ratio. 2500mm/min is way to slow and this is Rapid speeds. Your actual cutting feeds will be in the 2000mm/min range which is way to slow for router.

Dump the ratio or better still swap the Pulleys around and go with 1:2 ratio. Up the voltage to 48v ASAP.