CNC 3020 Enclosure/Upgrade

[Pointy]

This is a continuation of this thread. My idea was to build and enclosure for my Chinese 3020 cnc machine, I purchased from Ebay. The top part of the enclosure will house all of the electronics and PC and simply sit over the actual cnc machine. The framework will be made from aluminium profile with perspex side panels and aluminium panels for the top box and back. I have an old 17" touch screen LCD monitor laying about, which will sit on top of the enclosure. For the time being I am going to reuse most of the control electronics, but I have built an opto-isolated addon board, to allow me to connect limit/home switches and a probe, as well as control the spindle from within Mach3. I also plan to have a custom HID controller to allow me to have basic control from the front panel. Lastly I will add some form of led lighting to light up the working area.


The Frame

I won’t go into too much detail about building the frame as it’s pretty easy, I'll just give a quick overview.

First off I made a sketchup model which helped me visualize things and calculate sizes.

After pricing everything up I decided to go with the cheapest 4 slot 30mm aluminium profile, as this was my first time of working with aluminium profile, I wasn't sure how easy it would be. To start with I drilled the 8mm clearance holes for the torx tool, this was bigger than the recommend size but it would give me a little extra room to move things to square them up if needed.

Although I bought the self-tapping screws, I ended up tapping them anyway and once everything was drilled and tapped, it was simply a case of bolting it all together. That's when I realized my first mistake. In my haste, I had already ordered the Perspex based off the size from the sketchup model. While this was, in a way correct, I had forgotten to allow for the 3.7mm thick end caps, which meant I was 6.4mm out in the height of the panels. I was hoping I would get away with them, but when they arrived I tested them and they were no good. Having learnt from that mistake I checked, checked gain and then checked once more the sizes for the top panels. I managed to find a local company to cut them from 3mm thick aluminium. The cover and reduction profile said it was for panels 4mm to 6mm but in reality a 3mm panel is a nice tight fit, and apart from the cost, thicker aluminium obviously becomes heavier and harder to work with. It would probably have cause problems for things like the front panel switches and buttons too.

Lastly I got some of the black plastic cover to fill in the slots, and some uniblocks to mount the top panels. Here's some pics of the enclosure assembled.

You may notice that I went for a single support for the bottom of the electronics enclosure, as apposed to the 2 in the sketchup model. The 3mm aluminium panel was stiffer than I though it would be and a single support is plenty. As you can see I have ended up with a nice size area, which is plenty big enough to house the electronics and PC, 440mm x 500mm x 100mm.