Yea I did, they are a little pricey for me right now. They use the carbide cutters like metal lathe tool holders use. I think it's a good idea and in the long run I would come out a lot better. All in time :D. Thanks for the suggestion.

I wish I could turn another fresh face when I get dull! :eek:

Life needs to be convenient ;). This is why I made changes in the dust foot.
Dust foot 5th gen:
Attachment 2555Attachment 2556
Most of time I had to raise the Z so I could drop the dust foot to do a bit change :( ..... no more :D.
The black knob is spring loaded and keeps the front half in place until pulled about 1/4", to replace the front you just push it back in until it clicks :cool:.

Dust foot 4th gen here:
http://www.mechmate.com/forums/showt...&postcount=258

Vacuum hold down system here:
http://www.mechmate.com/forums/showt...&postcount=281

Attachment 2557
I also added another blower to create more vacuum for hold down.
Didn't cut anything yet so I'm not sure how much more it sucks, will report later. 1 was working good so I know 2 is going to be even better :rolleyes:.
Thanks Gerald for recommending that I keep all the blowers.

Nice work J.R.,

It's interesting to see the different methods/styles individuals come up with for the dust foot.

At one time, I was all excited about the Z zero device. With the Shuttle Pro and a piece of paper, I can zero the Z in under 20 seconds. It's all personal preference. :)

Yea, it is interesting to see how many ways there are to accomplish the same objective. I like the way yours works. How did you make the hinge? Are you a skype member?

Yeah the hinged one reminds me of that truecnc one (do I dare mention that here?) JR great work what material is the foot made out of?

Brian I made it from PVC 1 X 8 fascia board like Lowe's or Home depot sells. It cuts good and it's light weight.

The hinge is a round outer profile with a step cut into it. A hole is drill thru the two half's for a #10 screw.

Yes, I'm a skype member.

I meant to respond last night, but I was playing with some inlay work. This MM is amazing. The detail is phenomenal and the ease with fabricating inlays is almost too easy.

My machine is doing a lot better, it's not making near the number of mistakes it did when it was younger. Several months ago it was making moves that were totally unexplainable. I tried not to place blame. I reasoned that G-code is a new language to it and it will eventually understand it. Well after several months it seems it has pulled itself together and is acting much more responsible, remarkably fewer mistakes.:eek::rolleyes::D I think it just needed some time to sort things out, or perhaps ... it ... has ... finally ... learned ... G-code.:cool:

It is amazing how these machines learn by themselves as times go by...:p

I resurfaced my table again. I used a 1" cutter taking a single pass of .070" X .75" @ 1374 ipm with no problems at all. Smoooooooooth:cool:

:rolleyes: no video?

Brian watch this and imagine it running 224 ipm faster ......... that's what it looked like. :p:D

http://www.mechmate.com/forums/showt...&postcount=430

hi there, nice gearbox plates you have there.

got a question/suggestion. wouldn't it be better if the gearbox/motor mount rotated 180 degrees so that the motor would be farther to spring, and this will change the center of gravity and helps the spring rather than adding load to it.

Hi Nikonauts

your question was addressed in post #354

http://mechmate.com/forums/showthrea...&postcount=354

In summary, it makes very little difference which way the motors are mounted.

JR do you still have the reduction files available? My machine is not yet complete and already I want to change it :)

Great thread by the way, lots of usefull information, just takes a while to read it all.

Regards,

Jayson

This was one of my most recent jobs. It has 110 pcs. It is communion cup holders for mounting to the back of church pews. These were made from 5 pcs of 5/8" X 6" X 96" red oak. The holes are 1" in dia. and were cut with a 1/2" bit. The profiles were cut with a 1/4" bit. I used 60 screws to hold them down. Each part had 2 tabs. No screws were damaged during the cutting of this job :cool:. How many of you guys can hold your breath for 51 minutes :D.

Nice job J.R.
Looks like a giant gameboard.:)
Why so many screws?

JR,
That last pic reminds me of a really large cribbage board. :) The job looks real good though. Are you staining them or is the customer finishing them?

Greg the tabs are attached to the 1/4" of wood left between the parts. My reasoning was if that don't move everything will be alright ......... it worked :).
Heath the customer took them just like they came off the router.

Thanks

JR, glad you found the time to take pics! Wonderful job!

You sure like living dangerously with those screw approaches :eek::D
(I would have done the screws in the larger scrap area - mirror the cup holders to face away from each other)

You are a very brave man to lay all 5 planks down with one file! :cool:
I would have chickened and done one plank at a time :o

Nice Job JR...just show you that if a man knows his tools he can risk it like that. By this time you know where and how the machine will cut, therefore putting in screws is no problem. What I do is lay out all the cut pieces on my cam. In the uncut portions I put small circles to drill holes for the screws. Fix the wood on the sides with a clamp or to. Tell the machine to DRILL those holes first. Screw it down, remove the clamps and cut the rest....the machine will never cut into the hold down screws.....no holding your breath for 51 minutes..:D

What would the big boys with alu topped vacuum tables have done for this job?
.
.
.
wouldn't have accepted it!

JR....tip-top job, nice of you to share trick of the trade Kobus

Nice work JR!! They look great. You have solid brass ones let me tell you - you're playing with fire there cutting that close to screws. I agree with others I would have arranged these so that I could safely screw the blanks down even if that meant using more material. I try to screw down blanks and leave min. 1 inch extra over the toolpath to put my screws. Material is cheap, tooling isn't. Plus customers don't pay for broken/chipped router bits. However from someone who has cut through pan head screws before when not paying attention I can say after you do so you never want to get so close to them again. Again thanks for posting the work it looks great!

The easy way to know where the screws are is to clamp material down then make a tool path for screw placement in the waste material which will be left over, run that tool path and place the screws then run the g-code file to cut out parts.

Thanks everyone.

Kobus and Joe I use "Sheet Cam" and this was 1 job file with 3 processes, 1 for the cup holes, 1 for the screw holes, 1 for the profile. Since sheet cam will allow turning on or off processes I did saved it as 2 cam files, the first file to drill the screw holes only with the other 2 processes turned off, the second file to cut everything else with screw hole process turned off. I clamped down the boards by the ends, then drilled the holes (file 1) and inserted the screws, removed the clamps and ran file 2. For most of the cutting I wasn't even looking at the machine. I was just being funny about holding my breath ;). Sooooo Kobus & Joe looks like great minds think alike :rolleyes:.

When you have a machine that cuts within a few thousands of an inch whats the difference in missing a screw .005" or 5" :D

hear hear !!!;) I can see you trust your machine to do exactely what you want...well trained...sit...down boy and the rest.

The reason that I want to try and avoid precision machine drilled holes is because the staff in the shop must execute this job in between others. So they would get an instruction to screw a plank to the table, anywhere parallel to z , with screws along the centerline at x= 1, 7, 13, ,20 inches etc (relative to start of plank). Planks to be pre-drilled during previous jobs. Then typically they would run only one file with one 3/8" cutter, for each plank. The files 0,0 would be at the corner of the plank. (They would get a rough sketch and markout with a tape measure).

JR's way is nice and methodical, but our staff ain't. :(

Gerald I am a 1 man shop :o and you are correct about staff, I would not trust anyone doing what I did until they have proven themselves many times over.

By the way JR have you played with carpet tape much? (the fiberglass reinforced stuff) Works really well for small parts like that has a very strong initial tack. I've had great success with it.

How do you use it, is it double sided or what?

I have used that thin double sided tape as well....works well but cleaning it afterwards is more work than removing a few screws...also on thin MDF is sticks so well you could break the part when you lift it off the table...my 2c worth.

J R,

The carpet tape is double sided. So you just have to put it down. It is used to hold two pieces of carpet together.

Kobus,that tape works well I stick to it.

Hi J.R.,

I have made a reduction gear box similar to your design. Please send me details of the parameters to be set in Mach ( more helpful if screen shots are provided)

Vishnu

Vishnu meant the motor tuning snapshots :)

Vishnu and Irfan the only way this would work is if everything is exactly the same. The motor degrees (1.8), the rack and pinion, the tranny gears. If you think it's all the same let me know and I'll send the info.

the motor is the same - we have 1 module rack, 24 tooth pinions and the same timing pulley config - think Vishnu figured it out using the excel sheet of G.

RGDS
IRfan

Irfan,
I think JR has inch based rack because he is in the US. This is the same rack I am going to use as well.

Heath you are correct, my rack is 20 degree.