power supply
 

I really hope it is cutting soon Jayson. can't wait! I moved the old router out of my shed tonight to make room for the MechMate. I will be moving the frame from my folks place later in the week so i can finish it off at home.

I had another job for the laser cutter and it came in under their minimum order so i added one of these to make use of the few extra dollars i was going to be charged either way.
Attachment 5083
I calculated my power supply needed to be 600VA and it was easier to find two 300VA transformers. This bracket allows me to attach both, and their fuses and the bridge rectifier neatly on the one bracket.
Attachment 5084
Unnecessary, maybe, but it effectively didn't cost me anything.

thats cool Matt!!!!

I am a bit worried about coupling the 2 transformers in parallel, unless their voltages have been closely matched. Best to check with the transformer suppliers if they are happy that you do this.

This aspect further discussed in Two transformers in parallel?

Thanks Buzz for your pics. The little tab bent over rather easy and only a very small crack appear at one side. I didn't bother welding it as its still got plenty of strength.
Attachment 5144

I promised pictures of the painted table but this is all i have at the moment. Its finally in my garage now and i have started aligning and shimming the x axis rails. The wooden blocks are used to hold a line of cotton as a straight guide to shim the rails. (i just sat the gantry on the rails for the photo)
Attachment 5145

I'm not sure how others attach the Y axis cable trays. 2mm wall is a bit thin to tap M6 holes. I know its not holding much weight but i decided to borrow the rivnut tool from work and installed some rivnuts.
Attachment 5146
And here is the cable tray installed
Attachment 5147

For those in Australia you may find as i did that the 3M tape is not easy to get hold of particularly in short lengths (<50m). Jayson put me onto Husky tapes and i called their local distributor. The stuff they have which is 'equivalent' to the 3M tape is Acribond A5200W. Its 2mm thick. Its is cut to the required width on order. So i got it 15mm wide to match my rack. It comes in a 15m roll. Cost ~$50 including shipping. Pretty pricey for tape but the prices i was getting for the 3M stuff was many times that.
Attachment 5148

1st class craftsmanship Matt. Beautiful.

Matt, a weld here would have been good:

Attachment 5163

Yeah, i knew you were going to pick that up :) There is only a tiny tack weld there but the other welds are pretty big and i'm pretty confident i won't have any issues there. Thanks for picking out all my errors! :p

Pulley reduction drives
 

While a belt reduction is not a new idea i thought i'd share pics of my pulley reduction drives. I got a friend of a friend to machine them for me from 1/2" 6061. Its only a 2.4:1 drive.

Pulleys and pinion bored to size and shaft. Still have to put flats on the shafts.
Attachment 5376

Machined plate. The counterbore for the motor is slotted by 3mm total (+/- 1.5mm) for belt tensioning.
Attachment 5374

Machined second plate. These were made to fit snuggly in the motor bracket plates.
Attachment 5375

The mounting screws protrude by a little over 2mm in the pics but i didn't have the spring washers fitted yet.
Attachment 5369

Attachment 5370

A with the pinion (not fastened yet, just sitting there)
Attachment 5371

Yes, the belt does clear the spacers :)
Attachment 5372

Attachment 5373

Well done Matt. Great pictures.
These should work well.

Jayson.

Great work Matt.:) Very professional. Thanks very much for sharing such detailed pictures.:) We are standing by to see how they work for you.

Lovely matt - that Alu will sure help a lot to dissipate the heat from the motors, tellin from experience!

Wow!!! I told my wife that I'm getting a complex just looking at the beautiful work some guys are able to turn out. 1st class stuff.

Hi Matt
I've been lurking in the background watching your progress "DAM FINE JOB"

Stan

nearly there!
 

I have been progressing quite well behind the scenes and hope to have to motors driving the table this weekend. Here are some update pics.

Here is one of my motor mounts attached to the gantry. Fits great.
Attachment 5622

I decided to mount my control box on the side at the end of the cable chain carrier. This allows a neat flow of the cable into the box. Normally its a no-no to mount cables into the top of a box, but this is an indoors project not subject to weather and the grommets are rated at IP68 anyway. In the photo you can see the 4 motor cables entering the box. The other two grommets are for control cables. below the isolator switch is a sealed USB connector which wil interface my smoothstepper to my control PC.

Attachment 5623

And i've got the z axis all assembled. Still have some fiddling to do to get it plumb.
Attachment 5624

and here is the spindle attached. Still need to attach the z axis spring.
Attachment 5625

As you can see, i still have to terminate my cables but once thats done, i'm pretty close to driving this thing around! Then once i sort out my spindle coolant circuit, i'll be making dust :D

Looking GOOD Matt.:) Good luck this weekend.

another pic
 

Thought i should add a overall shot...
Attachment 5626

Matt - very good!

does one of your friend has a excitech router?? i was reading the Excitech on the zone thread and think a name similar to your was mentioned?

Nice Matt, very nice.

Thanks guys.
Yeah, Rocket67 on CNCZone has his business only a couple of minutes from my work. He bought his Excitech about 18 months ago. He's a very nice and generous guy. Why do you ask?

Looking good Matt. Good luck with the first cuts. :)

Ya matt - i read on some page that u folks were working to get some sort of software for cabinet making - could you kindly pass on the information to us Mechmaters - may be we can also add on to our business portfolio :)

Inspirational Matt great photos and great progress!! cannot wait to see it making some dust.
Cheers
Tony.

Well i have my table zipping around but i haven't made any dust yet as i have an issue with my smoothstepper and the spindle. I'm having the same issue as here. Table moves fine, but as soon as i fire up the spindle, Mach3 loses comms with the SS. Makes it hard to cut anything :(

I don't have a parallel cable handy so i can't try control with the parallel port. I put all my faith in the smoothstepper but i think i might ditch it now.

Hey Irfan, sorry, while i'd like to say i wrote some software to make cabinets, thats not the case. Not sure if you're confusing me with someone else maybe? I have helped Rocket out with their V-Carve toolpaths so they resize their profiles to suit different door sizes more easily, but thats about it.

Matt, sorry to hear that you are also having SS problems. My son mostly resolved his problems with wiring changes, but we are not 100% convinced it is all clear now.

Yeah, A CNC router is not the kind of thing you want flakey control. I'm going to take my wiring diagrams into work tomorrow and have our EMC Compliance Engineer have a look at it for me. When ever i have had a problem with other hobby projects he sorts me out with filters, chokes, shielding etc where needed. Hopefully he can point me in the right direction.

But i'm pretty happy with the machine otherwise. Got it up to 40m/min. Didn't try any higher as i didn't have the acceleration set very high and was worried about thumping it into the end stops.

Its all working!
 

Maybe it was a little premature to rat out on the SS.
I went over the earthing strategy with our EMI compliance engineer at work and he gave me a number of things to do. (He wasn't all that impressed with the Chinese VFD) I'm sure i'll get a heap of resistance from you guys for this, but he told me earth the motor & spindle cables braid/shield at the motor end. He says the effect of ground loop is insignificant when compared to the shield acting as a large antenna. Without any disrespect to you guys i'm going with him on this. (He is a well experience EMC/EMI engineer who has all the right equipment to measure this stuff)
In addition to that, he told me to add an EMI filter on the power input to the VFD and a toroidal ferrite on the motor output as pictured below.
Attachment 5686
The IEC cable filter was the only one i could get off the shelf at my local electronics store. I will change this to a normal spade terminal one and neaten the wiring.

But this has fixed my SS problem and i no longer lose comms with it!! It was so much fun driving the table around with the spindle going. I need to finish my water circuit for the spindle but should be cutting in the next couple of days when i get a chance!

Matt, I have also recently started becoming aware of alternative strategies for grounding shields. What is coming through is that power cables (motor or spindle cables) should be grounded both ends, while signal cables (the milliAmp stuff) should be grounded one end only.

We have added ferrite rings on the input and output (2 rings) of our VFD - it is recommended in their handbook. But, what really got our SS going was routing the USB cable far away from anything else.

Anyway, great to hear that you have reliable movement! Now we want reliable sawdust! :)

Its making dust!!
 

Finally today i cranked it all up and had it making dust! :D

It was very satisfying seeing it moving around flicking up dust. I don't have my dust shoe done yet but it will be first on my list of things to do tomorrow.

Here are some final pics. These were taken just before covering the place in dust.
Attachment 5706

Attachment 5707

Attachment 5708

Attachment 5709


So do I get a serial number? :rolleyes: I can't get my decals until monday...

Congratulations Matt. Looks great.

Now the fun bit starts.

And another happy MechMater :)
Congrat Matt….Like many would say, keep those photos coming.
Forecast.... Busy week end ahead for this new happy camper :D

hi matt - congrats

Congrats Matt! I'm so envious of your progress.

You did mention grounding the shield of the motor & spindle on the motor end, motor is the sepper motor? If so, how this ground connect to the earth? Just wan to be sure.

Cheers

Ken

Congrats Matt! I'm so envious of your progress.

You did mention grounding the shield of the motor & spindle on the motor end, motor is the stepper motor and both end grounded? Gerald got me confused, if both ends are grounded, the faraday cage effect will deminish.
If ground on stepper motor end, how this ground connect to the earth? Just wanna to be sure.

Cheers

Ken

Well done and enjoy every minute working with the beast.

Just remember to SURFACE you table.

Good luck

Congrats Matt. Where is the picture of the first cut though? :)

Absolutely beautiful work Matt.

Awesome!!

Well done Matt!

First cuts - dusty machine, dusty room
 

Well, other than trimming the two 6mm MDF boards to square the gantry my first cuts were of a quick and dirty dust show. I read somewhere that someone had a dust shoe with a removable front but ended up not using the front much as it worked just as well without it. At least thats what i though they said. better go back and read that again as that is definately not my experience. Need to get a proper dust shoe fitted quick smart...

Anyway, here's a pic of my first proper project, some toyboxes that are WAY overdue. Here is the first one assembled ready to be pulled apart and painted. Its a toybox/seat. I made one for my daughter earlier in the year on my old machine and have made a few now. The seat lifts up so you can store toys inside.
Attachment 5742

Thanks to everyone for their positive comments and encouragement along the way. Much appreciated!