Great Progress. I can't wait to see it in action!!!

Curious to see progress branko... any news and pictures?

Sorry, no real progress for now, i got a lot to do the last few months, working double shifts etc. As soon as i continue my build you guys will get updates.

Have you tested Texas micro circuits THC301b ?

I have a friend assembling his plasma and looking for recommendation on THC controller.
was also looking at candcnc LCTHC

the journey continues ;-)

Greetings to everyone once again, i finaly got some time to continue with the build. Just welded up the cart, looking nice and square.

Im gonna keep you up to date...

So basicly i work almost every day now on my mechmate... And the progress is visible... to keep it short, the gentry is done, the cart is done, the y rails are in production right now.... Im gonna upload a video today, so you guys can see how the gentry rolls, in my opinion i can still get it better, although it almost crosses the whole x axis with one push... Still need to get my cables and my chains, so i guess this will be the next financial hurdle i somehow have to manage... Nevertheless im satisfied... Gonna post the link later.. C ya mates

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ERE_V...ature=youtu.be

Sorry for the bad video quality, i just noticed after viewing this on my computer how scretched out the lens is on the back on my iphone4...

Seems like time and metal dust in my workshop are working quiet efficient against apples unscratchable glass ;-)

Some more progress today, finished grinding the y rails yesterday, had them today mounted and squared.. Tested the cart, and it works wonderfull, as you will see in the video down below. Sawed and drilled the Z plate and TIG welded the racks.. Everything went great until i the square tube thats mounted on the Z plate. The problem is i cant get that tube anywhere localy, so i found two possible solutions for the problem:

1) take 2 square tubes 25×25 mm , weld them together and get one pice of 25 × 50 , only problem : wall thickness 2 mm

or

2) use a 50 × 30 × 3 mm rectangular tube instead...

Any suggestions on this problem? maybe somebody came up with a better solution regarding this problem??

Please help

Oh, and here is the link to a little video of mine, i would make a great tool for... i dunno, drivin around?? ;-)

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=L4_IQ_c8Qm0

Progress
 

Greetings again,

as the work continues we are getting to the smaller pieces of the build...

Yesterday we used doubelsided sticky tape to mount the racks, everything went according to plan. Afterwards i began to work on the spider, welded up the mounting plate of the motor and gently did a gut with a thin disc on the two little bendings that they did not manage to do in the company i ordered my lasercuts from.. After the cut i just welded them in place and i looks just fine.

I also began to machine my Z plate. I could not get 100 × 6 mm flat steel localy so i bought 100 × 10 mm flat mild steel ST 37.2. As my table isnt going to hold any tools that could vibrate or make moves i think that the more quality steel for hardening would be just a waste of money. I hope im right about that.

I got into a little problem while drilling the holes for the holding screws of my Y angle irons ( picture 1). Since i prefabricated my drill jig on a 20 × 6 mm flat strip and already drilled the pilot holes on my gantry i started to do the same on my angle iron. After i finished i marked the holes for the proximity sensor and as i turned out i got into direct collision with one of the holes for my holding screws as you can see in the photo. I centerpunched the marking and just drilled a 3.5 mm hole for now. I figuered i can do the 20 mm holes afterwards after checking with you guys about this issue. I attached a photo of this situation.

Another "thing" that im having my issues with are my belt reductions. Im thinking of mounting my motors directly for now. Since i really got no clue about electronics i dont know if my motors can handle this. My mate Ivan is concerend about acceleration ramps, torque and stoping of the gantry.

I think that this is only a problem on really thin sheats ( under 1 mm ). I looked up a few plasma cutters on youtube and they arent really working fast, its like a slow but continues movement of the x and y axis.

Anybody got any thoughts on ungeared transmission and the possible problems with it. I can still add them later....

For now thats all, thanks in advance for incoming advices.

hi branko,

dont worry about direct drive. you can easy go over 10.000mm/min with decent acceleration. if you run into problems with thin material just drop your amps on the plasma. i would also recommend sheetcam as it can loop sharp corners to avoid burning them down or warping too much.
we use candcnc thc and (after fiddeling around a while..) it works well. the biggest problem we are facing is still the grit design as small pieces fall in partly and "stand up" then torch gets stuck, motors stalling and loosing steps. hope you come up with good design... :-) im waiting...

Hey mate,

i didnt really think this could be an issue with the pieces "standing up" but as i think about it it could really be an problem... But it makes sense that this really is going to be something im gonna have to wrap my head around..

Regarding beltdrive/direct drive issue, to me its more a time consuming issue... I really need to get this thing running and making some money, i can still add the 3 to 1 reduction later.

any thought on the proximity hole issues?

You are smart enough to figure out your own details for the prox hole - I don't know how we can really help you. I don't see a serious problem.

Yes I too found out the "stand up" pieces problem. If you are cutting smaller pieces the operator has to be around to pause the machine and remove the part that gets in the way.

Or you need a really dense grill beneath the table, which will of-course cost more and get damaged more while cutting.

Some use spikes and some stripes with spikes cut on the same plasma like this one
http://www.chacich.com/ppllc/LC4X8.pdf

Progress...

Its a living hell these days in Croatia, today it was like 38 degrees Celsius...
Still the build goes on...

I finished the Z slide plate today and the mounting tube. As you can see in the photos i had a little mishap, i had two of them basically ;-)

The first one was that i countersank my holes on the Z slide on the wrong side, so i ended up having my holes for the rack on the wrong side of my spider, the second was that i drilled the holes for my rack at 100 mm distance instead of 200 mm.

Shit happens i guess, especially if you think more about how not to dehydrate instead of focusing on what to do.

In my opinion those to wrongs are nothing important , doesn't affect anything on the built.

I also encountered a problem with the holes for my V wheels on the spider. After mounting my V wheels, in the holes that where drilled through the laser marked spots it turned out that the wheels where to close so my plate pushed them away one from another. It didn't really bother me much i just made the holes "longer" on my mill. After that i fitted perfectly.

Reguarding issue with my 50*30 rectangular tube instead of 50*25; there really was no issue. Although my spider touched the tube with the little bent part in its middle, i simply grinded it of a little bit and the issue was gone. So anybody in near future who will face the same problem should not worry, 50 * 30 mm fits great if 50 * 25 mm is not available.

At the end of the day i "mounted" my spider plus slide on the y car just to make a picture, so tomorrow i will need to fine tune the hole assembly.

Im thinking about buying my paint tomorrow and starting to paint this thing.

The color of choice would be a black and yellow combo, just like ESABs branding color..

Thats it for now, more updates tomorrow.

One more thought about my wrongs today; it comes all down to the beauty of working with steel, if you make something wrong lets say you cut something shorter then you are supposed to, simply weld it up and cut it again ;-) try to do this with wood or glass ;-) Greetings to my mate Ivan who likes glass more than steel ;-)

Don't you mean Mechmate Blue? Mechmate's Branding Colour? :eek::):D

I don't understand how people can use those laser marks for drilling without first checking how wide their slide is :confused:

I guess you spoiled us by making 99% of the drawings idiot proof ;-)

I tried to make that 1040432P drawing "idiotproof" by giving each laser mark 3 points. So you would have think which mark is the right one. Also, there is a note on 1040432D that says the 132mm dimension is approximate. Maybe this note is the problem..should the dimension 132 be removed?

There is also the top sticky thread Spider Plate Oh-Oh!! (which # mark to drill on?) but we see a lot of people skipping the top sticky threads like they skip over top advertisements.

lol :D I must admit that i skipped it :rolleyes:

Ola,

is there a formula for calculating the strength of my gas spring if i guess that my torch plus mounting head of the torch is about 5 kg? I read around the forum but most all of you got heavy spindles mounted so there is no one to compare it to....

And also my slide is 250 mm.. Is ordering a spring that has a stroke of 300 mm a bad decision?

I also just read about the way I should mount it, so the seal stays tight.. Great info, didn't know that...

50N will be ok to counterweight 5kg , you should measure weight of total Z axis, so rack, z plate and torch together

http://wiki.answers.com/Q/How_many_Kg_is_50N

cool, thanks

Have two new gas shocks I will sell they are Macmaster –carr
#9416K181 20 lb
and
#9416K361 15 lb

If they work i will sell cheap.

Al

@alan254; sorry mate ordered them already localy...

updates...

dismounted everything on friday, cleaned and painted... The paint cured over the weekend, started to mount everything back where it was..

I love the color, sorry its not a mechmate blue ;-)

Our first dwarf Mechmate! (sorry - vertically challenged :) ) Never mind the colour, it looks cool.

if you make it deeper you can use it as a swimming pool.

yellow its a nice color for a machine. dewalt maybe looking for a pattent rights.

A nice fresh different set up….Congrads Branko !
To…. It’s more like an “old school” low-rider HOT-ROD…..:D
Great work, amicalement, Robert ;)

Alright folks,

some updates and questions...

We finished today our box for the electronics. Got also 3 fans to manage the cooling of everything. One huge ( 80 mm) fan is going to be mounted on the back of the box, two smaller on the sides, on the left lower side for fresh air intake, on the right upper side for warm air outtake.

As you can see i took a 1,5 mm aluminum sheet for my base plate, my first question is: should i use some sort of material that isolates the electrics from the rest of the box??

Second question; Is the allignment of the BOB and geckos alright this way?

My box is 60 cm high and 50 cm wide, did I make a too small box?? I still got my THC to fix in there...

And last but not least, how much space should i leave between the components for cable managment? Is 3 cm enough?

Thanks in advance

Is your plan to attach this to the table? I would not directly attach it to the table. Look through a few threads and you will see some nice examples.

@Mike; either it will be wall mounted or part of a "terminal" together with the pc screen and worktable...

I wish I made my plasma table as tall as this. I think I only has 50~70mm of water in my tray,,,

Branko,

I would put the torroid flat, not on its side, its just far more sturdy and it seems like you have the room.
I would also give the gecko's a bit more room for cabling.
The fans look like the 12v kind of types, i might be wrong... My personal preference for the big fan (80mm i see) is a more heavy duty 115v/230V type.
I am still missing the mains relais ?
Lastly, thats a beautifull machine you have there!

Roadrunner aircuts....

Its alive ;-)

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ta2hT...ature=youtu.be

Hi folks,

some updates and problems...

As you could see from the previous post i got my machine to draw a roadrunner :)

Nice feeling to get your machine to move the first time..

So i began to play with my motor speed, acceleration , and steps per mm settings..

Also fun :)

So i started to get it to move in x direction and i noticed that my screen shows me movement in y direction when i reality move in x direction....

So i started to dig deeper, googled, asked for advice and so on...
It turns out that my machine doesn't do what i want it to do.

Danilom send me a calculation over on how to set the steps per mm value and i did it that way and on paper it made sense. i got 1,8degrees per step, thats 200 steps per revolution, i got a g203V drive with 10 micro steps by default, a metric gear module 1 with 24 teeth which multiplied wit PI gives me a circumference of 75,39 mm. Then i divide my 2000 micro steps with 75,39 and get a value 26.528 steps per mm. Ive thrown in the data into mach 3 and got movement....

But not very precise movement... Suddenly mach 3 shoved me on the screen that my y axis is from start to finish 8400 mm long :) That shocked me a little bit since I was pretty sure that should have a 2100 mm long y axis according to my build :)

So i tried, and tried, and didn't get it... After a while a friend stopped by and asked me if there is a different method to calibrate the whole thing.

As it turned out there is. Under settings there is a calibrate axis button, which after pressing it asks which axis i want to calibrate. So i say x and since mach thinks my x is my y i got to calibrate my cart first :). Then it says, how much do you want me to move this axis. I don't know why but my friend said lets try 400 mm, so i typed 400 and it moved the cart for what mach thinks is 400. Then the screen said i should measure how far it drove. I took my meter and measured 100 mm.
So i said to mach you traveled only 100 mm, and then it suggested to me that my steps per mm are in fact 106.something.. (I'm at home right now and cannot remember the correct value.

After that i drove the cart from end to finish of my gantry and i got my 2100 mm in y direction although shoving up under x axis movement.

So we again sat down and figured, read all the manuals, searched online and didn't come up with anything.

After i got home i figured still a little bit more and i checked some mach3 tutorials on youtube where art says one thing that i know was checked but should not have been and thats the Max CL enabled checkbox. This one will set the pins and ports automatically regardless of what you say your pins and ports are.. I also noticed, but forgot during the day, that only after checking it i got movement on my machine...

I guess this will solve my problem regarding the wrong readings on each axis.

But still one unsolved problem for me remains. Why aren't my steps per mm value right, but 4 times higher then they should be? Could this be because of my motors being connected to half coil? I can't imagine that steps get lost only because i didn't use the other two coils?

Any idea on that anyone?

Long post but i guess my anxiety is speaking because i can't wait to get up tomorrow and play around a little bit more.

Thanks in advance for any comments.

ciao

Stuff which affect the configuration are
1) pinion teeth number,
2) rack & pinion specifications
3) belt reduction ratio (1:1 is for direct drive)
4）Microsoft stepping

check if all of them are in order.

Hey Ken,

as i said, i built my according to plans, which means:

1) pinion teeth number is 24 teeth
2) My rack and pinion are Metric modul 1
3) I got direct drive so the ratio is 1:1
4) Microsoft stepping is the factory settings which should be 1/10

Im not really sure about number 4 , and i dont know where i can find this one out, maybe someone got any info....

reguarding problem with max cl settings, i fixed it and i got my movement and my mach3 reading in order...

Little update...

Our calculations were correct, indeed i got 26.5258 steps per mm...

It seems that the max cl checkbox was the cause of all my problems..

I again did the calibration of X and Y and my machine now goes in each direction as it is supposed to.

That is the cure for most setup problems . . . . . leave it alone, go and have a night's sleep, and it will all be solved early on the next day. :D

Gerald....you forgot to add "drink a pint" :D