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CNC-2116 - Up and running, sort of (2015-03-21)
Yvan256:
--- Quote from: kahlid74 on January 14, 2013, 10:03:23 am ---No thread yet, I'm procuring all of the parts now. It's a 5 feet by 6.5 feet totaling a cutting area of 4 feet by 6 feet. I wanted to be able to mill a side of a regular arcade cabinet or as close to the standard size as possible while still being mobile. The base is 11ga steel 2" square tubing welded together. There are two cross beams that will stabilize the whole getup.
The design I'm using is on Joe's CNC board which you have to pay to join. Here's a picture of the guy's machine I'm modeling mine after:
It's Dkohfeld's CNC machine and he is actually a frequent of these boards as well including Mountain, whose CNC machine is the stuff of legend.
--- End quote ---
That's a pretty neat idea to have it fold that way, takes a lot less room when not in use. :cheers:
Mine is going to be big enough to make desktop cabinets yet small enough to carry by myself. It won't be lightweight but not heavy enough that I can't carry it and get it in the back seat of my car.
Yvan256:
Yesterday's panel now has a slightly modified clone... the holes are for #10-24 bolts.
A third clone should be completed in a little more than four hours.
You can see the precision in the second photo, with the two panels inserted into one of the test assembly plates. I can't even slide a thin sheet of paper vertically between the two parts. ;D
edit: it's triplets!
Yvan256:
I needed to modify the plate holder and make new clamps to hold the bigger 17x11 cm panels. Here's a photo in case someone else with a Roland MDX-3 needs to see how I've done it. There's a part bolted at the bottom that holds the panel in place since I'm leaving the whole holder in the machine at all times. Two bolts+washers+MDF spacer assemblies are on the sides of the panel to be cut, I simply tighten those to hold the panel in place against the holder.
Back on topic, the MDX-3 is now cutting the plate that will hold the X-axis motor (Sketchup screenshot shown below, second image). It should be ready by the end of the day tomorrow. I'll update with a new photo once it's completed, assembled with the two smaller plates shown above as well as the motor itself with the coupler and the threaded rod, as seen in the third image.
After three days of cutting I'll be happy to see some progress!
edit: even if I have to go extremely slowly to cut MDF with the MDX-3, I'm beginning to understand the feeling of owning a CNC. ;D
edit2: I really under-estimated the cutting time, so I had to stop it for the night. The CNC always returns at the same position when starting, so I'll just send it another file to cut the outer edge. Attached is a photo of the progress so far.
edit3: I added two bolt holes for another plate in my design, so I cut those two extra holes before cutting the outline, which is what the MDX-3 is doing right now. It was already half-done so I would expect to have the plate ready before lunch, in roughly an hour and a half.
Yvan256:
Talk about slow... it takes about 5 hours and 30 minutes to cut the outer perimeter of a big 14x9 cm panel. :dizzy:
I don't want to push the MDX-3 to cut faster and deeper, however, because of the noise and the risk of breaking the machine.
It's currently busy cutting a 4th small panel with tabs as shown above, but for the moment here's two photos of the completed panel that holds the stepper motor for the X axis of the big CNC. I still need to drill holes into the small panels with tabs to be able to bolt those panels together but that will come later once more panels are ready for assembly.
The first photo is from the "outside" and the second photo is from the "inside" with a home-made fuel line coupler.
Yvan256:
I started building the Z-axis today, the MDX-3 is busy cutting the outline of the top panel, right below the motor, shown in the assembly below. It should be done cutting the panel in less than two hours. The motor is a NEMA17 from an old floppy drive. The sticker says 1.8 degree but manually I count 50 steps. I'll need to test it to know more, once this whole assembly is completed.
The first two images are the 3D models of the complete Z-axis assembly, apart from the missing bearing for the threaded rod in the bottom plate and the plate that will hold the RTX.
The third image shows the MDX-3 cutting the top plate of this assembly.
I just calculated the cutting speed at roughly 3.4 mm per second. :laugh:
edit: the plate is cut. The fourth and fifth images show the finished plate, and the plate upside-down with the motor, bolts and 8 mm rods. I should be able to cut the bottom plate tomorrow.
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