Self Propelled Automatic "Bartop Arcade" Extrusion Machine (or, my CNC build)

[Typefighter01]

Its been a while since my last update, but there has been lots of activity with the CNC. I won't go into great detail right now, but Yvan and I have been exchanging code and Sketch-up designs for CNC cutting time, it is turning out to be a nice arrangement.

Anyway, I want to use dowels to assemble the bartop cab as I don't like to see the fasteners or battens. The problem with dowels is, how to line up the holes with opposing panels. Yvan had a great idea on creating a drilling, or dowelling jig to accurately locate holes on all our cross pieces. Yvan will design all cross piece holes to start same distance from edge of material and same distance hole to hole. This way, all I need to do is remove center pieces from CNC, lay drilling guide over sides, drill my holes and they will always match the side panel hole spacing.

Yvan designed them in Sketch-up and coded them in his G-code program. Here is some pics of them on CNC bed and then fully assembled. They work fantastic

Thanks for all the help Yvan

[Yvan256]

Nice to finally see an official update on your CNC thread even if I already know everything.   

For anyone wondering why there's two guides, the small one is for very narrow panels and the holes are positioned at 0.5" and 3.0" from the edge. On the longer guide the first hole is positioned at 1" from the edge and then the subsequent holes are at every 2.5".

The longer guide has 8 holes, allowing to put dowels up to 18.5" from one edge. If you rotate the guide and use it at the other end of a board and if you allow 2.5" between the two middle dowels, it means you can add dowels on the side of a panel up to 39.5" long, which is longer than what Typefighter01's CNC can cut.

The holes in the guides use these things to insure perfectly perpendicular holes in all directions.

If anyone has any question, feel free to ask Typefighter01.