Brian,
Congrat's with the new member of your Carpentry crew.
I am sure you will find that the standard way you build flats and stepunits will soon change. A unit of plywood and some creative thinking has all but replaced every piece of 1x spf material in our shop. The designers will love you for having a CNC in the shop. Good luck and break-a-leg.

Great Build. Fast Build. :)
Congratulations Brian.

Brian,

Congratulations. You have built a great machine in record time. You should be very proud of your accomplishment!

You guys that whip through these builds really provide some motivation.

Happy cutting!

Jeff

Well done guys!

I'm truly impressed. Congratulations.

Great job, Brian! I look forward to see some of the things you build with it!

Well done and yes, please keep the pictures flowing onto our forum.

How did the tapping of the 1/8 steel go?

Thanks for the kind words everybody, I wouldn't have stood a chance at doing it so quickly without the great plans and supportive forum.

I'll definitely post some updated shots when its all fine tuned and sitting in its place (the reason for the missing braces.)

Domino, I ended up doing the clamp strip on the x axis, which was plenty easy. the thinnest wall I ended up tapping was 3/16" on the z slide.

Builder's Log Update
 

Brian,

Great job! And, a NEW RECORD for fastest build.:) Congratulations!:)

The updated Builder's Log is here.

Aw, C'mon. There are two of them, theatre pros in a scene shop. That's 2 people x 2.5 the output of a normal human x 3 weeks = a 15 person week build.

Just kidding! Congratulations, great job, and a nice illustration of what a couple multi-talented folks can crank out in no time. Now that you've got it down, shoot for two weeks on the next one ;)

Brad, flattering, but I insist that the real help is the plans. If we were building like we are used to we would have been nearly done and then Gerald as the designer would have decided that the whole thing was wrong by about 6 inches and the color was off too just before we were finished then we'd make all the changes and a director would decide to not actually use the x or z axis and we would have spent a bunch of time building something twice that only gets used for about 30% of it's potential.

Brad & Brian, you two guys have given me a whole new perspective and appreciation of the theatre world's backstage guys. Why, oh why, do you allow the public face of your industry be represented by the prima donnas? :D

Here's a suggestion; sell backstage tickets for the husbands while the wives go on the other side of the curtain. I think that would make a wonderful night out for a couple! :)

Today I built and installed the y-stops, installed the spoil board and moved the machine to it's new home. I'm headed out of town in the morning so I won't be able to deal with the finished control box until I get back, but I'll be sure to update when I do. I'll also post some pictures of the wall treatment we are going to route with the machine once that's done.

Here is a picture of it moved to it's likely home, and a new link to the profile cut video since apparently I did 2 links to the yacht video in the last post.

Video of profile cut here.

Here's the machine (looking small and distant again) to show why it didn't get cross braces along the x axis, so far it has seemed stable enough for our needs, but as I mentioned before the table it's straddling is rigid enough that we can use it for stability if necessary.
http://i158.photobucket.com/albums/t...1250832777.jpg

Another pair of motors and you will a huge 4-axis machine! (Took me a while to spot the MM in the pic) :D

Those brooms are going to be very handy :)

...Personally, I am interested in that Hossfeld bender in the lower right corner of the photo. One tool I had that I now miss dearly in our shop. The Ironworker can't do everything!

The theater world will have another machine to play with in the spring when I start build #3 for the University and their shop. It will be a student build - so it won't be nearly as quick as "seasoned" Brian @ the Rep.

Great Job and have a nice vacation.

3 WEEK BUILD ???????????? :eek:

It took me 3 weeks just to have new X rails machined.

Nice work guys. Look forward to seeing pic's of some projects produced from the new MM. :)

Yeah Sean, I noticed that bender too. Lots of cool tools in that shop. I see a MIG (or plasma cutter) suspended overhead and either oxy\acetylene bottles or inert gas for another MIG\TIG. Great place to work.

Greg,
That's because you were too busy chasing rattle snakes! :eek:

Sean,
Or they were chasing HIM! :)

Fine tuning and some basic projects
 

After I returned from my vacation I re-wired the whole control system and tidied up some loose ends. Since then I've had time to find and iron out some wrinkles in our system.

The first few pieces I cut the machine behaved well, but once in a while a line wouldn't quite get cut where it was supposed to. I discovered (by asking here and having a quick response from Gerald) that my Y-axis motor's pinion was slipping. I have since tightened all of my pinions, Z and one of the X were pretty loose too. I still need to get in there and put in some loc-tite.

I've also had some issues with the Z pinion hopping off of the rack when the router tries to plunge to quickly with a bit that's not meant for it, but I've started to make the cuts ramp in and use a slower plunge rate.

I have added the proximity sensors to the setup too, but I haven't been able to set Mach3 to let me override them when they get tripped as a limit. I need to look more closely into that when I get a chance, I find that the hard stops and good reflexes work well, but now that I'm not the only operator it would be nice to have the machine watch out for itself too.

This thing makes LOTS OF DUST. Dust collection is a top priority for the machine right now, but sadly the machine is not a top priority in the shop, we'll get the dust collector ordered and then the first down time we have, we'll get it set up.

Here is a picture of the fist actual "product" to come off the machine, they are some 2d banisters for a set at Seattle Childrens Theatre, down the street from us.
http://i158.photobucket.com/albums/t...uska/photo.jpg

I've also put a video of the machine cutting some of these parts on YouTube.Here

Overall I'd say the machine is a great success. I look forward to working out the dust collection and building a Z-zero touch plate and a corner finder in the near future. I also look forward to potentially adding an indexer, vacuum hold down and additional toolheads further down the road.

Thanks for all the inspiration and help in building this. I still check the forum at least a few times a day for new ideas and to see how other people are building their machines.

There are plenty of things an Ironworker can do that the Hossfeld wouldn't even know where to start on... wanna trade? The Hossfeld gets used plenty, but our real savior when we need it is our tubing roller, it's amazing how many ways you can used curved steel tube when you have a machine that spits it out. I've worked in a few shops with Ironworkers and if we had the budget for one I'd be championing it's purchase wholeheartedly, for things like little brackets or angle brackets there's no other way to go and that's just the everyday things, I really really like them. We could also use a mill or even a mill/drill crossover it's one of those tools that you can live without but once you have one you don't know how you ever survived before... kinda like a MechMate :D

Sorry for the triple post but I've just thought of a question. There is talk of the proximity sensors being a good idea because if your z-slide lifts the gantry off the rails the machine will stop. That implies that the z-slide would lift the gantry before the pinion hopping over teeth in the rack. How tight are you guys putting your z motor spring? I used the same spring as the other motors with a spacer added because of the longer distance, but I could shorten the spacer to get more tension against the rack.

Brian, here's a different scenario: if you chucked up a 3" piece of 1/2" rod, placed
your Y car at Y0, put a C-clamp on the edge of the table, and rammed the rod into it sideways with a move in the X direction, I think you'd find the near side of the gantry stops, and the far side keeps going. That will cause the gantry to twist and climb the rails without ever putting much up/down force on the z-slide.

Some of us have effectively performed this test using rather more expensive bits in our collets; you might want to take our word for it :)

Brian, nice to see a productive machine and hear your comments. There is a settling down period when the machine gets tuned and tweaked and it sounds like you over the big hump now. :)

The pinion gears should never jump out of the racks. Sometimes it sounds like that has happened, but it is usually the motor slipping steps internally (without causing damage). A pinion slipping over rack teeth would be nasty.

Brad, thanks, I think I'll not try that and instead take your word.

Gerald, it is indeed the pinion hopping the rack, I can see that the spring is letting it ride up and out, I will snug it up a bunch I think. I'm sure it's better to make it stick and let the motor do the slipping.