CNC Router How-To's

Pardon e'moi, I tweaked the subject to help follow-on's.

On Sun, 9 May 1999 13:25:41 EDT, Jonty50@... wrote:

>Yeah, the thing is outtahand.

Hee hee, yeah, unlike the hobby itself, eh? :)

>The parts aren't really such a problem. The Bishop Wisecarver V wheels, wheel
>mountings and track were around $600 for the lot.
>...
>The V bearings run around $20 each, it basically takes 4 per axis. I've found
>that the B-W track is not necessary, the wheels do very nicely riding on 1/4"
>diameter hardened steel rod ( I use music wire) that can be just pressed into
>a 1/8" deep slot milled in an aluminum bar or rectangular tube. Very smooth
>motion, even smoother than the B-W track.

Huh, neat trick! This is actually wunnerful news on the pricing front,
too, specially for guys that wanna route stuff where they're not
necessarily looking for Bridgeport resolution.

Jonathan (do you go by that, or is Jon OK?), lets peel the next layer
off the onion if yer willin? What are you using for axis translation:
rackNpinion, lead-screws, what? And WHERE on earth did you source the 8'
dimension on the Y axis trans. from?

Also, given your structure and your axis hardware, roughly what
resolution are you hoping for?

One of the other nice attributes about this type of guide is that it
doesn't require surface friction lube'ing like shafting or ways, eh?
That can be a problem when routing things like wood and especially foam
or plaster. This fact was brought to my attention somewhat "late" in my
own project plans, by a fellow who sent me some in-progress plans for a
big router table he had built outta "rollers on tubing". I'll get his
reference out if anyone's interested (actually be surprised if he wasn't
in the group already, but I've forgotten his name, and his plans are in
storage, sigh). He mentioned his design goals were to avoid having to
continually worry about cleaning linear bearings and keep the
shafts/ways wet with lube. I thot that was a pretty important point I
had missed when planning me own, so I mention it to "the wise". B)

[SpeakinOplaster and milling/routing/machining it, I got a cool lil
dollop I'll dribble out in a separate post about a new USG product y'all
might be interested in.]

BTW, I saw a V-guide based system for CNC plasma cutter positioning in
some pix somewhere, and was pretty impressed with how robust that 2-D
system was, especially in such a harsh environment (plasma cutters
product TONS of fine particulate dust, donchaknow). Of course, there the
resolutions allowed using steel angle for the guides, so I mention it
just as a 'similar' example (if the guides don't have to be lube'd, you
can SWEEP the guide clean with a brush arrangement on either side of the
roller). The availability of nonspendy precision V-bearings, and also an
even lower cost way to build arbitrary length guides with that neat
trick of Jon's sure sounds like a nice way to get started experimenting
with these systems. Oh well, I guess if I'd waited, I coulda changed
horses in the middle of the stream, but hey, that's science, eh?

Gar