EPCOT CNC

Well I went on vacation at disney world in Florida for 10 days
and I just couldn't escape CNC. I found a jewelry booth in EPCOT
with a neat cnc engraving machine made by a jewelry company in
Orlando.

I posted pics in the files area of egroups. look under the
EPCOTCNC folder. read the readme.txt file for more info.

interesting features: ( can be seen in the pics)

Acrylic plaques are made 12" square 1/2" thick . engraved from the
back with high speed
carbide cutter surrounded by a circular brush. The brush does not
rotate. It just scrubs the chips as X and y motions occur. A vacume
cleaner sucks up the swarf into the center of the brush.

Workpiece is held upright in a "window frame" that can translate
left/right, up /down. Milling head plunges (Z) from the rear of
the work to engrave it.

Stock linear V ways are used with some SKF # on the guides. The
X way has 2 ways, one in front (say 2ft long) and a split rear
way that is 6-8" long. This limits X trave to 6" or so. The ways
are bolted to the 1-1/2 thick aluminum base via stand offs. It looks
a bit precarious, but it seems to work. The y axis uses a similar
set of ways to translate the "frame" up and down.


Ball screw on X and Y (1/2" diameter??) . Z is hidden. Probably
servo driven since
I see and encoder on the motor which has fins like some servos I
have seen in books. They use the bearings in the servo to support
one end of the lead screw. The other is running in a bronze bushing
pressed into the machine frame. A flex coupler is used as well. very
simple!!!

A tool changer is mounted on the window frame. It holds 6 or eight
carbide cutters. .125" shaft on the cutters I think. The mill head
must have a collet release mechanism.

It takes 11 hours to finish one plaque. feed rate apears to be 1-2
inches per second. Fast feed might be 3 or 4 times faster. Lots
of detail in the workipiece.

The machine is very "pretty" having a high tech brushed finish look
and lots of rounded corners. All wiring is hidden. This is a
machine designed for public viewing. It was behind a plexiglas
kiosk so some photos have reflections etc. The whole machine base
rotates 180 deg slowly while milling so the "audience" can all get a
good look!!!


The pics might inspire someone to design something like it.

have fun
dave