More cutting

Using the router to rebate multiple lengths of timber at once.

New shelving for the shed.

Some decorations for a friends wedding.

cutting

Having a go at 3D profiling.

Roughing pass on polystyrene foam for part of a rudder mould.

Finishing pass

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Finished profile.

Motors are stable at 60°C

Another crash.  At least we know we can cut at full depth and rapid speeds.

Cutting some panels.

First full panel cuts

Cutting MDF to make a dust collector box.

The cyclone was pretty effective.  Very little dust in the vacuum cleaner, 95% in the bucket. 

Cut panel with tabs left over.

Clamping method.

Putting the box together.

Lining the muffer for the vacuum exhaust with old towels and foam.  The idea is the reduce the noise level in the garage with the vacuum running.

Foam in the box with the vacuum.

Cyclone sits on top and drops the dust into a bucket on the left hand side with the vacuum lives in the right hand side.  This will slide underneath the machine.

New spindle and fitting the bed.

New 2.2 kW water cooled spindle (0-24k RPM)

1/4" Tee nuts used as work holding points on the table,

Using the machine to drill its own holes in the spoil board and base.

tee nuts installed.  Oversize plywood sheet already varnished (3050x1550x18mm)

Cleaning down the frame before applying high strength construction adhesive to secure the base sheet to the frame.  In hindsight this may not have been the best idea as the paint will be the weak link in the bonded joints.  Time will tell. 

Machining the perimeter of the spoil board surface.

Cyclone dust extractor set up.

Surfacing the bed of the machine.

Dust extraction

Our first solution to our dust extraction problem.  Worked a treat, not great having to accelerate the mass around all the time though.

Next step was a simple shop vac cyclone.  about $30-40 on ebay.

Some corrugated tubing, plumbing fittings and a bucket.

Note:  Don't use hard corrugated tubing.  This is the stuff used for irrigation and has a stiff wall.  The hose howled lack a banshee with air flowing through it.  The turbulence from the corrugations must have lined up with the resonance of the wall or something.  The noise was loaded than the cheap router running at 30,000 RPM.

We ended up buying proper soft walled vacuum hose from a woodworking shop that did the trick.

First crash. 

First useful parts.

Monitor stand for my laptop.

Coming together

Simple bracket to attached the X-axis ball screws to the gantry.  Stiff in the X direction, but allow some movement in the Y direction to allow for some miss alignment

3D printed limit switch brackets

First cuts

Cuts acrylic nicely.

Gantry Assembled.

Putting together the CNC router cut aluminium panels to make the gantry.  The CAD design was based around everything being a bolt together assembly after it came of the router.

Testing out the router by pushing it around by hand on the linear rails

Was pretty stoked that we could have a go at aluminium.

More assembly & table levelling

Marked out and manufactured the Z-axis motor bracket by hand.

Z-axis assembly trial fit of parts.

Here is a handy hint for tapping straight holes.  Usually hand taps have a ground taper or a centre drill hole on the back of them.  You can use a drill chuck to rest on the ground taper, or place a spike in the chuck to hold the centre drilled hole.  This especially works well if you can set your table height so you don't need to move the table when you locate, spot drill, drill, chamfer and tap.

Finally found a reason to change the angle on my drill press.

I was thinking about cutting some holes to reduce the weight of the 20mm plate.  But after drilling the first hole I deemed it not worth it.  I'll just use the machine to build a new plate later on.

I used end mills in the chuck to make counter-bores.  I couldn't justify the money on a set of piloted counter-bores, particularly since I can use the cnc machine in future.

Assembled Z-axis and Y-axis plate.

To level the table we attached a water level with plumbing to all four corners.  This allowed easy adjustment of the feet.  I looked into laser levels, but for the price the accuracy of a manometer was far superior of that distance compared to a cheap laser level.

So my garage floor wasn't too even.