RE: What do we want?

Gar,

This is not a heavy duty machine. It doesn't have to be for what I want to
do with it. I made the gantry out of a reinforced plywood box for rigidity
have the z axis mounted on 1 1/2 inch electrical channel. I forget exactly
what it is called but it's the stuff with the oval holes along the length
and accepts the electrical accessories that hold conduit and stuff. It is
cheap and versatile and there are a bunch of standard "erector set" type
accessories for it. My router setup is like the Shopbot (tm)on steroids. I
made y with 60 inches of travel and only made x have 30 inches of travel.
to expand the beast I only have to use longer rails to extend x and build a
longer base to put it on. I currently use threaded rod for the movement but
on another machine I built I used aircraft cable and I like the aircraft
cable better in many ways. The cable drive machine is totally immune to
sawdust but the threaded rod machine hates sawdust on the threads. I try to
keep the threads clean but sawdust is terrible to keep out of anything. I
get .00025 inches resolution per step with this machine. 1/2-13 threads
direct driven with 192 step motors half stepped. It is too slow for my
liking but it does work. With the cable drive machine I get .001 inch
resolution and rapid movements of 90 IPM. It is strong enough to bend a
router bit left in the work with the router not turned on. (How do you
think I know this?)

I made some masonite baffle rings 15 inches in diameter for a telescope with
the lighter but bigger machine and they are round to within .015 inches I
don't know if the masonite changed sizes or the machine was off by the 15
thousandths or both but that is well within the tolerances for that type of
job. I'm pleased with its performance.

The other machine I just finished making it cut its own R-8 collet system.
It is underpowered for that task but it did do it with lots of protesting!
I'm pleased with the results.

I now have two machines and one AHHA controller. EMC is looking good to me
but Linux is messing with me. I will triumph however.

Clint Bach

> -----Original Message-----
> From: Gar Willis [mailto:garfield@...]
> Sent: Monday, October 18, 1999 6:04 PM
> To: CAD_CAM_EDM_DRO@onelist.com
> Subject: Re: [CAD_CAM_EDM_DRO] What do we want?
>
>
> From: garfield@... (Gar Willis)
>
> On Mon, 18 Oct 1999 18:30:14 -0400, "Clint Bach"
> <clintbach@...> wrote:
>
> >I built a gantry router with
> >a 30 inch by 60 inch work area. I can expand this machine to 60
> inches by
> >ten feet easily (Well sorta easily!!!) in the future.
>
> I'd love to hear at least a sketch of how you can achieve that amount of
> expandability; the mechanisms you've used to allow such expandability.
> And also what resolutions you will likely get at those various sizes.
>
> >I would like to be able to take a project
> >from the doodle stage to the machined parts without an extreme amount of
> >conversion.
>
> I dunno about the metric on "amount of conversion" but have you looked
> at Rhino3D as a modeling environment where you can "doodle", create a 3D
> solid model of your creation, and then output directly CAM-compatible
> G-code?
>
> >I can also see EMC used as an animation controller! But that is another
> >story...
>
> Sounds plausible to me! After all, positioning is positioning (mostly :)
>
> >PS. Why not push the envelope as far as we can?
>
> Sure, especially when it's likely to be ghastly fun. :)
>
> Gar
>
> > Welcome to CAD_CAM_EDM_DRO@...,an unmoderated list for
> the discussion of shop built systems in the above catagories.
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>