Re: [CAD_CAM_EDM_DRO] Linear Slide Components

Hi Lee:

Your kinda answering your question in the question. Its all about
accuracy. How much you need and how much you can afford.
V-Grooves and skate wheels are fine if you can accept the deviations it
will create. Many can. My first table was a hack of many components which
were bad, and many that were good. The results were fine for what I was
doing at the time. Personnally, I'm all for hacking something together for a
particular purpose and the cheaper the better.
But the second system is stronger and tighter and give faster and more
accurate responce. My third system (in the works ) will be twice as heavy
and have twice the power, which means more expense and higher quality
components.

Bashing a lower end system would be kinda silly. (My first Car was a
horrible mash of mechanics, but from that I progressed.). The same is true
of doing CNC stuff. Screw, bolt or weld anything that will do the job. On
the next system, you'll know where the mistakes were. There's lots of
advice out there from those who have made the mistakes, but since everyone
has different needs, don't take any advice as the bottom line. Guage it
against how picky you are and what you want for an end result. I've
conversed with those who have spend $1000's of dollars building their first
system only to find the money wasn't spent in the right places to make a
huge differance, and those who have spent a couple hundred bucks and are
delighted with the result.
Each time I build a new table, it costs more, but its significant to note
that the low end one still runs fine and turns out good work. The experience
is worth more than the system usually.

As to squaring, I just built the router table out of 2x6's and leveled it
well, then put a sacrificial plywood sheet on it. Then told the table to
plane it with a 1" router bit. Then had the toolhead cut 1" squares over the
whole thing. That way you know the table is flat to the workpiece, and you
can layout on the squares which are square to the mechanics. (Worked well
for me at the time.), if it gets innacurate, I'll just plane it again with
the 1" router bit.

Just my thought.
Art
Master5 Software
http://users.andara.com/~fenerty/master.htm