Re: [CAD_CAM_EDM_DRO] 'Get the Message Out' & Western Canadian Robot Games

Doug,

You really hit on something with the industrial applications where
existing solutions by the big boys are too expensive.
DIY CNC has enabled me to crawl out of the gutter and pretend to be a
real machine shop. What I like is that small shops like myself willing
to learn something new, can multiply our abilities. I liken this to the
old days in machining where clever folks would invent tooling and
fixtures to allow making something with what they had.
In particular, that sawing application! Sawing anything in production is
a loser for me. I have a huge double reduction gearbox/motor setup that
turns about right for cold sawing. I've been thinking about building an
upstroke cold saw with material feed. Compared to some commercial auto
cold saws I've seen with air logic, a CNC setup would be easy and
trouble free.
However, I would reconsider advancing the material with a rubber roller.
If there's any slippage at all, it'll start cutting scrap. If he's going
to consider that, then I'd look for a program that would allow writing
some sort of macro to feed until a limit switch is tripped, then proceed
with clamping and sawing. I looked at a large cutoff band saw that did
this with feed rollers right in the clamping jaw.
Alternatively, -if- the parts are not too long, use a linear feed device
to clamp and feed the stock. Longer lengths could be accomodated by a
double feed cycle, I've seen this feature on commercial auto saws.

Jon