Alan,

Tell them what kind of camera you are using. I suspect that is why the quality is so good.

The camera is pretty old - he still ducks under a black hood.

Its not the tool, its how its applied - same as a cnc...

For the record I use a Canon G5 (5M Pix) built in lens with auto focus and "mickey mouse" flash - not what one would describe as a top of the range pro model camera (some cellphones I know have a higher pixel count)

I have not used any auxiliary lighting or flashes besides the 85w CFL mentioned and reflected daylight.

(background info - I did my trade in the Air Force as a photographer 27 years ago and although not currently doing any commercial, money earning photography I have done a broad range of work from weddings, advertising, aerial and technical photography in that period. The Air Force gave a very good background, just like Geralds experience in the Navy - Those might have been difficult years but we are richer for the experience)

As a former "squid" (US Navy), the above statement is so true. I owe everything I am today to the U.S. Navy.

Alan,

The truth comes out....... it is all those 27 years. Well you do an excellent job.

Nils, it was 27 years ago.

Z Slide Assembled
 

I assembled the Z-slide today, had it machined at an engineering works I use for most of my maintenance work for the factory - not entirely happy with the end result, I get so frustrated when I know what I want and how to do it but dont have the tools at my disposal :mad:

I decided to go with the 6 wheel option on the spider even though I have a pre-Mamba unit, its close to the edge but works - as an aside I notice the spider has quite a bit of flex, if you lift the guage plate out of the bottom set so that it is only held by the top four rollers, the bottom pair spring back inwards slightly - when the plate is lowered again it seems to catch as it enters the rollers. Admittedly it was very roughly set up, will have to play with it some more once its fully assembled with spindle, gas strut and power.

Attachment 948

Attachment 949

As you can see I have added the cable chain mounting point as per the Mamba design - building a hybrid Classic/Mamba Mechmate

Started cutting the Y axis angle iron for the rail - the cutting jig works great but seems to use disks at a rapid rate, went through 3 1/2 disks to cut just one rail, and no I wasn't pushing too hard. When the disk is new, it cuts with a good flow of sparks, but once past halway, the sparks get less and the disk wears at a much higher rate. I was using the thin (1mm) disks from both Norton and Klingspor. The Norton ones wore down much faster.

As I didn't have any more disks on hand and the closest supplier is over the Mountain, I decided to call it a day and join the Kids in the pool (temps over 30 deg C today, but predicting thunderstorms for tomorrow) :D:D

The flex you see, ie. the v-rollers "bending" apart for the slide and springing back when the slide is out, is about right. I think it is also the 8mm bolts flexing a bit. All this doesn't seem to cause any problems though.

The good cutting disks are by Pferd - ask them for the thin Inox (Stainless Steel) disks.

Alan,

Easy on the pictures. Those are nice enough to go into a manual. :)

Pferd disks rule, cut the second Y rail tonight with only one disk and it stayed cutting all the way down to the centre. Will do the bevels tomorrow.

Another small job I have to do tomorrow is remove and reweld the lower mounting point for the gas spring, it seems in my haste I bent it the wrong way...:o:o:o

To bend it neatly, I cut halway through, bent it and welded up the open groove producing a very strong mounting point - only in the wrong direction - we have one of those lovely Afrikaans words to describe how I feel, but I am not allowed to use it on the site :D

Gerald, What is the tolerance on the height of the track - I currently have a variation of about 0.2mm along the length

Height of track tolerance . . . .

I don't actually have a figure for it. All I know is that at the end of the day the rail is shimmed as straight as you can with the methods at your disposal. (we laid an extruded alu section on top and checked the gaps with a feeler gauge - light finger pressure closed the last gaps). Suppose you have to figure out how much shimming you want to, or can, do?

Mission Acomplished (well this part anyway)
 

Finally got the Y-axis rails ground complete today, had a slight detour after the first grinder started emitting puffs of smoke (it was a cheap Ryobi I had on hand) so hauled out some cash, bought a Bosch grinder and modified my jig plates to accept this grinder. What a difference! more power, less vibration and almost lash free gear head.

I also had problems with the disk glazing which ended up with it just rubbing against the bevel and not producing any sparks, so then I tried a trick I read about here on the forum (cant remember whose thread but thanks very much) Adjust the height bolts so that the skate is slightly lower on the front leading edge - this makes the disk grind more with the outer edge so that the whole disk is not in contact with the bevel. On the final pass, lower the back edge of the skate so the whole width of the disk makes contact. A slow process (maybe I was just being carefull - wanted to avoid anymore escaping smoke) but still the cheapest and I would guess most accurate way of producing the bevel, as long as the angle is cut accurately to height.

Interesting handle application! :)

How bad is the grind dust in the garage? For me that would be an outdoor job. (Open drum of thinners under the rail? :))

Grind dust is everywhere :eek: major clean up tomorrow.

Dont worry, thats an empty (cleaned out) paint drum I use as a dustbin - extra carefull after a recent fire in Somerset West where a guys garage, car and some of his house burnt down after sparks from a grinder ignited old oil on the floor :eek::eek::eek:

Ja, I know you would be careful about open drums. Just mentioned it so that other folk realise there is a fire hazard involved - glad to have your reinforcement of that message! This is a looong grinding job and folk might not notice the flames before it is too late. Old oily rags, sawdust, paper, lawnmower, are all flammable - another reason to do this outside.

I really like the handle. Good Job. I'm going to do the very same thing! Unless you have additional improvement ideas once you actually used it.

Thanks Marc, the only improvement I would consider is to dream up some sort of compact bearing arrangement for the height adjusting mechanism. Even with using HT bolts and rounded over ends,I had a lot of galling and the ends of the bolts developed a groove very quickly. I found using a spray lubricant helped, but the smaller the top land became the more it galled.

Need to get creative before I do the X rails.

Sloooow progress
 

Although it's been a while since I posted in this personal thread, things have been moving along slowly, I suppose some progress is better than none.:o

I now have the Gantry, Y-Car, Z-Slide, motor mounts and control box sprayed blue and logo'd.

Attachment 1416

Next step is to get the steel for the table and do the X-axis rails - then I can assemble and cut.

Alan,

Is that a smooth finish on your control box or a "hammered" or "crinkle" finish? My box came with a "crinkle" finish and I am thinking of sanding it down smooth.

Basically wondering if the Mechmate decal will work and/or look odd on a "crinkle" finish.

Marc

That box used to be bright orange with a hammered finish, I just sanded lightly and sprayed the blue over it. The vinyl decal sticks well and looks good.

Your parts look beautiful Alan. Good luck with the rest of it.

Alan,

Your progress (and quality) is excellent! I was getting hung up on the pace of my progress. It's a moot point. Everyone has different capabilties and available time. To hell with trying to complete in three months. If I had all the equipment and employee's to help lift the other end of the beam, then time to complete would be less. Quality and end results are the measure.

Keep up the good work.

Hi Alan, That IS a nice colour. I am basically where you are...still no painted control box, but my X-Rails are 99% finished at present, then the table and something I am far behind...my KITCHEN project.

Guys, thanks for the comments.

I am not competing with anybody, just very eager to get it finished.

Mind you its very seldom that we Stormers allow the opportunity to show up the Sharks slip us by, especially as they effectivley took us out of the semi's (well done Sharks). For those not familiar with the situation in SA, there is great competitiveness between the major Rugby playing centres in the country, except when the boys put on the Green & Gold - then we become one.

I think I will repaint my MM black after the weekend results...not Stormers black, but Shark black.:)

Hi Alan

Colour looks good! maybe we must pimp a MM with Green and Gold with some blue and black pin stripes

Question for Alan ?

Do you have a one stop shop on your side of the Cape where you got all of your electrical wires and hardware from or was it from JHB.
I can get the standard electrical box and some switches in George but the cable that goes from the control box to the motors. that is the ones with the shield ( don`t know what it is called)is a bit of a problem.On my side of the town we are limited to what we can get or buy over the counter.

If only it were that easy... no almost all the major groups of items came from different suppliers. Any good electrical supply house should be able to supply most of the electrical components - contactors, din rail & connectors, isolator etc. The electronics stuff I got from Communica (021 447 0949)

The cables to the gantry (shielded) will be a special purchase, the closest to you is Lapp Cables CT - 021 982 1770 (Andre)

Thank you for the info i will give them a call

Cables
 

Hi Hennie,

We have used normal 4-core cabtyre on a number of machines including Mechmates without difficulty. Should cost around R9/m for 0.5mm^2 compared to about 10x that figure for screened. We have even run them next to spindles cables from an invertor and have never had an issue with noise. Stepper motors and drives are very immune to noise due to the very low impedance of the output stage.

Regarding power supplies, we now offer a 12A and a 16A power board, no longer necessary to double up on the 8A unit like before.

Regards,
Greg
:eek:

HI GREG

Nice to hear from you.Do I need to order another board like the one you supplied?Be advised that I am not very confident at the moment that I will use the right size motors :confused:?? Do I need to use two transformers to power each board or only one.What would you suggest what size motors to use with the MM.If you recall at some stage we spoke about using the 34hsx-308 but on your machine you used 34hsx-104d steppers for your x-axis and it works ( advice required), and on your wiring diagram you have only one transformer and one power board.

I also have a suggestion.Would you put together a standard component package for the MM.( electrical box with all the goodies, steppers with pinions & racks)
The hardware & steel one can get from the local suppliers.

Alan I got my MM logo from my buurman next to my workshop for 90 c cheeper .

Update on build Cost...

Somebody asked earlier about build cost in SA but cant remember who, you know the age thing, but anyway I did some re-calculations today and got a bit of a shock, the steel being the biggest offender.

Projected cost now just creeping over R60 000.00 (about $7700)

That's still pretty cheap when you consider how well it is designed and functions.

Doug

Sure its still cheap, but when I started the cost was below R50 000, the increase is because of steel increases and forex fluctuations.

Hi Alan

I have calculated that the steel and cnc cut parts that I have spent so far cost me R 7 583.89

Having done some more assembly on the Y-car today I noticed one small item that may need a mod. Once the gas strut (Gabriel Gaslift mod 4047 - 257mm stroke) is in place and the Z slide moves up to the max up position, the pinion is on the very end of the rack and when the Z slide is moved to the lowest position, there is still about 15mm of rack exposed at the top.

I know this will not affect the performance as I am getting the full 250mm stroke (actually slightly more) but it might be worth considering either moving the rack slightly lower on the slide or making the offset on the upper strut bracket longer. If the offset is made longer the slide will be able to plunge a little lower but will also sit lower when fully up.

Sorry it took so long to get back on this but I took the family out to lunch at Dassiesfontein, been spending too much time in the garage and the mood was getting testy...

Here are some pics of the situation, as I said, it does not affect the performance but the pinion does get very close to the end of the rack in the fully up position

Attachment 1685
pinion on end of rack when slide fully up

Attachment 1686
rack still exposed when slide fully down

Attachment 1687
distance from lowest point on spider to bottom of slide when fully up - 54mm (this shows that the middle wheels could be positioned a little lower if required)

Attachment 1688
distance from lowest point of spider to bottom of slide when fully down - 200mm. (photo has parallex error)

Ah Dassiesfontein, one of those gems that 80% of tourists to this country drive past and don't bother to stop.

Alan, you couldn't have made it clearer than that!

If that was mine, I would like:
a. the rack to be longer to the bottom so that,
b. the slide could go further up until it nearly gets to the center of the middle rollers, to achieve this I would
c. Mount the upper strut anchor bracket lower down on the rect. tube., because
d. I would be happy to lose some of that 200mm because that puts the collet against the table.

Does that make sense?

That sounds like a good plan, I think I have some spare rack I can cut and drill to suit...watch this space :)

Ah Dassiesfontein :eek:
Woawy woaw, now that is a very nice place to go indeed. Some nice photos to look at from that web site.
Anyone in your “neck of the woods” in need of a “talented” :rolleyes: woodworker for a short trade-guild exchange period.
Very nice place to be !!
Robert ;)