Excellent, thanks Ross.

I have another quote in progress for pinions, well have sent an email anyway. The part about TEA's pinions is the 4 week wait, I am not a good waiter :) I'll go looking for the other bits in the coming week.

Whatever size machine I eventually build will be a bolt together design. I know for a fact that we will be moving in the future - we rent so that is inevitable.

Cheers

I am now committed to a full size machine. Yea I know I said I was building a smaller one but the prices and difference between the two was small enough to sway me. Pay for my 200 and 75PFC tomorrow, will hopefully pick that up later this week.

Will also be paying for my racks tomorrow so they will be under way too. I'll also see if I can fit in buying the SHS for the lower table as well this week and then will have pretty much everything to build the base and the gantry. One more motor to get plus a toroid and I will be all go. Then all I will have to do is find time to put it all together :)

200 PFC (2 @ 3000mm) & 75 PFC (6 @ 1640mm) ordered, pick up Friday (depending on work) or Saturday. Will probably have to take the passenger seat out of my car to fit them in :) I have a length of 75 PFC here that I will cut to size when I get the rest giving me 7 in total as per my design. Full size Mechmate here we come!

Hey Bruce,

Here's a tip for you. If you want to get cheap M1 rack and pinions in OZ, go where I did. CNC & cupcake world out of Melbourne. Look them up on Aussie Ebay. I think you'll be pleasantly surprised.

Hi Chris

Yup, know about them. About to order 3x 2m and 2x 1m racks from them. Gonna try 4 of their 30T pinions too to get me going. Will be pulling the "Buy it Now" plug on these tomorrow :) $341.55 including shipping for all that is absolutely brilliant!

Cheers

I now have all my steel apart from the replacement 65x50x6 for the X (2 @ 3.3M). Anyone want 2 pieces of 65x50x6 2.4m long? :)

That 200 PFC for the main beams is damn heavy, weighed down the left side of my car pretty good. Lucky I took the passenger seat out, the 3m pieces just fitted within the confines of the car. My wife was not impressed helping me carrying it down the driveway :)

Lots to do now instead of lurking around here 24 hours a day!

Added pic

What all that steel is for :)

Good Luck, Looks like another blue beast is underway.

Thanks Hurshy, I am really looking forward to the build.

First test layout, long way to go before I can weld this up, its just I wanted to see if my drawings translated into real life :)

Gosh Bruce I don't think my Mini Cooper could carry anything near that amount of steel, the largest anything I've put in it is a tightly rolled-up 4 x 8 sheet of counter laminate. Oh and a 32 kg dog. Best of luck on your build!

Dont use the wife for manual labour.
All ammo for the divorce.:eek:
Thats a lot of steel for a Robin Reliant.:)

Good luck with your construction.

Ya, you can get your dog to help, but never the wife!!!

Hahaha, tis all good guys. My wife is very receptive to this machine and she actually offered to help, no insisted. Her complaints were the weight only not the job itself :)

Sounds like a keeper.

Bruce
 

Power on brother, you look like you are going to have your base completed soon. Looks like you are making it rock steady. I need to have my base portable so I had brackets welded to all intersecting spots. I see some of the bases being built using far more steel in the lower sections. I wonder if I need to beef mine up. My base is still setting out in the driveway and I try bumping it to see if it moves and it doesn't. It may be due to upgrading from 3/8 to 1/2-13 bolts and using bevel washers and lock washers. I guess I will find out.

Hurshy, its nice to beef up the frame, but not essential.
Don't get paranoid :)
& stick to your plan if you wanna finish your build.

ok I will skip the second floor and the pool

Yea, I just decided to make it as stable as possible, the steel required didn't cost much so I thought why not :)

The brakes are on in my build, looks like I will have to get rid of my current CNC machine before building the MM. I mocked up the table in the driveway this morning and my minds eye concept of the size has nothing to do with reality!

Wait until you turn it over, THEN the real reality sets in. Ha ha:D

You will find that it gets very big and very heavy very quickly.:)

Think I have figured out a way to still go ahead with the MM :) So today I spent the hours cutting up steel, taking a break every so often to get out of the 37C heat we had today. Still got a bit to do and maybe, just maybe, this weekend I can spend welding up the base sides. Lotsa drilling, tapping and welding coming up!

Sweating
 

you got to love that sweating grinding, drilling, welding, sweating. it makes for great memories and you got to appreciate all those who have done it before.

Finished up all my cutting today, I now have all the sections of the base. I made a jig on my current cnc to make sure I got everything inline and square.

I changed the configuration of the sides to make it easier to cut and build. Each panel coming out of this jig will have 3 legs attached, one at each end and one in the middle. These panels will be welded to the legs, the end plates in the photos were a previous idea but they make a good square end point - they won't be welded.

Off to buy some drills so I can drill the legs for tapping and hope to get them drilled some time today. After that the welding will begin :)

Couldn't resist - today I started tack welding the frames. One down, 5 to go then on to drilling and tapping the legs.

Another one bitten by the MechMate bug.:D

And boy, does she bite hard! :)

I started to weld up the base last weekend and then got called to work. Real annoying when work gets in the way of one building schedule :) The only positive thing this week was my racks and pinions arriving today, one more piece of my puzzle solved. Hoping my upcoming 3 day weekend will be fruitful and that I can get more done on my machine.

What is this 3 day weekend you speak of? :confused: