El Beast - Initial design phase, comments and critique welcomed!

**Zeeflyboy** · 27-05-2017

New spindle arrived already... looks/sounds good spinning up, but as per camera's experience it wasn't earthed at all.

Swapped over the connector while I was at it, added an earth and made sure I had continuity to the main body too.

Fingers crossed the spindle was actually the problem!

**Zeeflyboy** · 07-06-2017

So managed to find a bit of 20mm plate that was big enough to make another part from, not for the lower frame which I had intended to build first - this is the Z-axis mounting plate but given that I don't have the plate to make any other parts at the moment I thought I may as well crack on!

Few little design tweaks before I made it, I've added a fillet to the risers in order to help fold the brush strip out of the way in a controlled fashion, and I've made one bolt on each of the carriages into a DIN7 shoulder bolt so that the thing should have no choice but to be aligned square with the rails.

forgot to take a setup pic, so here it is getting started after the first drilling ops:

Top side done:

Drilled and inserted some dowel pins to align for rear machining, it just needs a pocket to clear the motor mounts cleanly and while I was there a threw a little chamfer around the contour:

Finished part:

**Chaz** · 07-06-2017

Lovely ----------

**charlieuk** · 07-06-2017

very nice indeed!

**Zeeflyboy** · 04-07-2017

No news on the CNC front, apart from that I've just ordered a big fat stack of aluminium, which is enough to do pretty much all of the remaining parts (just the spindle mount and the extrusion for the gantry missing). Hopefully that'll arrive sometime towards the end of the week.

However I haven't been totally idle, I have just installed my newest toy which is going to be a bit of a distraction! I haven't used a lathe in many moons, probably not since I was 16 at school, and I have pretty much no idea what I'm doing so it's going to take a bit of time to learn it all. Intentions are to get to grips with using it manually then think about a conversion to CNC.

Wabeco D4000 with DRO's:

Playing with some test scrap:

Mmmmm... complicated....

Anyway, hope to have the aluminium by the end of the week and apart from finishing off the BBQ project, carrying on the new router is top of my list so should see some progress soon.

**routercnc** · 04-07-2017

Lathe looks really nice, well done. Colour scheme matches your decor !

I was in the same place as you - hadn't used one since school and had plans for a CNC conversion. But I've been running the lathe for a while now, and made some nice parts, and most operations are pretty intuitive and you can get up to speed with the general stuff quickly. DROs are so handy, I have a colleague who still uses the dials on his lathe and is happy, but I couldn't go back to that system now.

So what I would say is use it for a while before thinking about CNC. I've found that it is pretty quick to make the parts 'by hand' if they are one-offs, and for me at least the CNC conversion idea is now on hold. If I do ever go CNC then I'd look to keep the handles in similar places as MPGs and have the easy option of semi auto operation.

**Desertboy** · 04-07-2017

Originally Posted by Zeeflyboy

No news on the CNC front, apart from that I've just ordered a big fat stack of aluminium, which is enough to do pretty much all of the remaining parts (just the spindle mount and the extrusion for the gantry missing). Hopefully that'll arrive sometime towards the end of the week.

However I haven't been totally idle, I have just installed my newest toy which is going to be a bit of a distraction! I haven't used a lathe in many moons, probably not since I was 16 at school, and I have pretty much no idea what I'm doing so it's going to take a bit of time to learn it all. Intentions are to get to grips with using it manually then think about a conversion to CNC.

Wabeco D4000 with DRO's:

Playing with some test scrap:

Mmmmm... complicated....

Anyway, hope to have the aluminium by the end of the week and apart from finishing off the BBQ project, carrying on the new router is top of my list so should see some progress soon.

Could this end machine ballscrews?

**Zeeflyboy** · 04-07-2017

routercnc - Haha yeah it does go rather nicely doesn't it! Happy accident!

Yeah it has occurred to me that certain jobs are much quicker and easier to do manually, but I think threading and complex shapes like balls/curves are certainly going to be easier on a cnc'd version, especially for someone of questionable skill such as myself... Ideally I would be able to use it both manually and automatically, which I suppose should be possible with a nice pendant. Definitely intend to use it manually for the foreseeable though so we shall see how things go.

Desertboy - In theory, the bore is 20mm so it can certainly physically accept a 16mm ball screw for machining. I believe machining them is a bit of an art though. Probably somewhat depends on the screw and how hardened it is. I think everything I have seen suggests that you need to grind off the case hardening before trying to end machine them.

**Zeeflyboy** · 08-07-2017

So been a bit busy with work, but this afternoon I had a bit of a play with the lathe.

Trying to make some nice snug shoulder screws for the alignment of the X-Axis mounting plate. I've just been getting the hang of it all really so only made the one so far.... Think I need a slitting saw to make the slot on the top.

I've tried both brass and stainless steel. Brass is certainly easier to work, but not sure what to go with.

Test fit:

Figured out this threading thing... seems it would be much easier to do this sort of operation if it was CNC'd up. The change gears are a bit of a faff.

Fits nicely: