Sorry if I didn't make my last post clear. I was trying to say ... don,t grind the welds ......... cover and smooth them out with bondo. Just the weld not the seam.

Jr, yeah that is what I was saying, the old rule I heard was if your welds look crappy, then just grind em till they look good. :) Were we not supposed to use the filler (bondo or painters caulk) to fill the seams, so they would not corrode. I thought I remember Gerald saying something about sharp edges and seams being the first place for corrosion to start? Could be my memory though. :)

You've got it correct, Heath.

I think Gerald's bigger point was: weld enough to make it strong, and then fill the remaining gaps (between the welds) with caulking to prevent corrosion.

You could seam-weld the whole thing, but then you get distortion issues from the heat.

Michel

There is only one thing worse than a weld that has been ground, and that is a weld covered with Bondo! :)

My logic with my production workers at my factory is that the welds must pass inspection without grinding. But, if you are the inspector, then you can do whatever you want with your welds :)

Springs
 

A reasonable match for the Mechmate motor springs were hard to come by here in Australia, so a local spring maker did a custom for myself, Aus Maddog and Skippy.
They were made as per M3 19 100 KB and came in to within 5% of the 12 Kg force at 128mm extension specification.

Not important to be that exact I know but as they were making them ...
For those of you not wishing to go blind counting the coils their are indeed 35 as per the drawing.

Attachment 9351

For reference you Aussies, the details are...
Gibbens Pty Ltd
37B Manton St
Morningside Queensland

If you refer to Job order 43028 they can reproduce the same spring for you.
Call them re pricing.

Regards
Ross

:D Looking good Ross!!
Need to catch up soon!! all we need now is the machined parts to turn up for the Z and we are almost their!!

Good work

Cheers
Tony.

Support Board
 

Got my support board today for the mechmate.
As previously stated REALLLLY looking forward to having a flat work surface.

It is a 32 mm humidity resistant MDF sheet.
To protect it, the underside and sides are coated with a super tough undercoat and then a coat of gloss black enamel has been rolled over that.

Attachment 9378

Regards
Ross

Looking really good Ross

Just one quick Question do you think that will rust or are they of no rusting metal or do we need to coat them with something that stop them from rusting?
Can't wait to fit them the our Mechmates.

Regards

Paul

Hi Paul

Thought the same thing myself. It is a an alloy steel but it would rust in a corrosive environment.
They can be painted or powder coated but to do a good job they would need to be painted extended as the coils are very tight.
Personally mine won't get any paint at least until they show some sign of corrosion as I don't think it is a major issue judging by the number of unpainted springs used on the machines displayed in the forum.

Regards
Ross

Do you have any "electroplaters" around? Common procedure is to send springs to an electroplater to have them zinc-plated (electro-zinc). The spring maker could have offered you this option.

Thanks Gerald - I will ask the spring maker.

Regards
Ross

drip a few drops of oil (any oil) on the spring.

From the Gibbens website: "Plating springs causes some distortion in the spring, so when possible choose a pre-plated material, this will once again save both time and money"

The pre-plated wire option is not known around here, and we regularly have that size/class of spring sent to electro-platers without problems.

But, back to basics, you can spraypaint those springs as well......just extend them while painting.

Checked in with the manufacturer and he confirmed over the phone what Gerald has quoted from the website.
He also gave me his source for electroplating but mine will get a coat of paint at best.
In the end they are cheap to replace if one should break, rust or meet some other fate.

Skippy, a few bolts anchored in a piece of steel with the springs stretched between them will do fine as a painting jig.
Put your eye protection on, or with your remaining eye, it will be much harder to stretch them over the jig when the spring flies off !!!

Regards
Ross

Cable Chains
 

The cable chains for the X and Y axis' arrived today.
I used a combination of the forum guide and the manufacturers brochure to get the length figured out.

Bit of a mystery this cable chain thing to me, but once you see them they are like a plastic blocks, just clicking together with the blue pivot pins
The system "CPS" uses is quite simple with each component clearly marked.
The side on shot here shows a 55 mm wide chain with a bend radius of 70mm, all very clearly marked out by the manufacturer on every component.
Attachment 9382

The other shots below show how the various plugs and bits clip together.
Also wrestled my painted support board up on the table ready to be drilled and bolted into place.

Regards
Ross

Noicccceeeee!!

They will look great on the finished MM, had confirmation today ours are also on the way. Cheers for the info Ross.
With regards to the springs, some regular maintainance and some lanolin spray should take care of them for quite some time :D

Cheers
Tony.

Porta Power Squaring
 

Today was a bit of a tidy up on the machine.

After checking my base board, it came to light that the upper table was about 10mm out of square.
I borrowed my neighbours porta power, backed off the bolts on the X beams and gently pushed on the Y cross bearers.

The table was squared using the support board as a guide.
Of course the support board was meticulously checked for square before using it as a guide. It all come together within a millimeter.

Attachment 9434 Attachment 9435

My Z slide support bases came in the mail today from a unnamed source. That unnamed bloke did a really good job, so thanks.

Ross

Mounting the Support Board
 

Today I mounted the support base after one more "final" adjustment.

I used a long 8mm drill bit to drill from underneath the table.
In order to get an accurate counter bore for the cuphead bolts I made a jig and used a pattern following router to route a nice flat recess for the cup head to land on.
That took a fair bit longer and made a pretty decent mess a my dust extractor is still on loan for the time being.
Here is a pic of the bolt grid, note I put two in on the edges to take either a 1300 or 1200 wide base board.

Attachment 9439 Attachment 9440

regards
Ross

Ross,

Sorry to hear about the hassles you have had with the squarness of your table, but good to see you have it all under control:D
I like your support board good and solid and well protected on the underside.

Did you manage to get your replacement ends for your E-Chain yet?? if so have you got any photos?? of the ends.

Cheers
Tony.

Hi Tony

No problems really with the squaring issue as I just had to unbolt the beams then re tighten them in the correct position - if it was welded then THAT would be a different story.
It was just fun to use the porta power, you know the sledgehammer walnut analogy.

The ends came and I fitted them up, so now they all point to the right places on the machine. Images show the details.

X Chain
Attachment 9441

Y Chain
Attachment 9442

Regards
Ross

Cool!!
Thanks Ross :)

Cheers
Tony.

We screw the support board to the cross-beams before welding them to the sides. The board becomes a huge welding jig. :)

Hi Gerald

After using my support board as the squaring jig I see exactly what you mean there.

Regards
Ross

White Spot
 

Seems I got some white spot on the table overnight. Must be a spray for that !

I used some of my crystal clear two part surfboard epoxy with some white pigment mixed in to make it very obvious the cup head bolts where below - hence the white spot.

Attachment 9452 Attachment 9453

Regards
Ross

Cutting Rails
 

Rails were cut today - all went well.
I will do one more pass over the cut surface with a thick grinding disk before the V gets ground.

Used the 1mm Pfred disks I had and it took one each for the Y rails and one and a half for each X rails.
Attachment 9466 Attachment 9467

Regards
Ross

Rail Suggestion
 

My "quick tidy up" did not turn out that way today.

As I passed the grinding disk over the rail to take off the last little bit, I realised that the disk was wearing and causing some variation in the rail height.
After rotating through three grinding disks then adjusting for wear and starting again, I thought there must be a better way - and there was, much better.

Somewhere on the forum I read that instead of grinding the V on the rails, the poster used a sanding disk and a grinding disk as a backing pad.
My goodness did that work !!! With a relatively coarse 36 grit sanding disk, the cutting jig effortlessly produced a perfectly flat and smooth finish, Eureka.
As I sanded the rail again I could actually tell where the previous grinding disks were wearing judging by the way the rail threw off the sparks.
The second photo shows the before rail on the right and the after rails on the left.

As I put my jig together, it became clear that the grinding disk was not going to be able to be replaced without slacking off the jig bolts to slip it out.
Went out and got some more sanding disks of various grits from 36 to 120.
I am planning to use the 36 grit for the majority of the removal and then a pass with the finer grits to finish.
The benefit of using the sanding disks is they do not wear down anything like the grinding disks AND the replacement sanding disk just slips out of the jig without undoing any bolts.

Although I have not tested the sanding on the V yet, I suspect the removal rate will be far quicker judging by the removal rate of the rails cut edge.
There was no evidence of blueing (heating) of the steel even at quite high removal rates but it might happen if it was pushed to excess.

A few more pics for you all.

Regards
Ross

Sanding the V Rails
 

Firstly I found the poster who demonstated the sanding disk method, so thank you to Artifeh (Nader)

Finished the two long X rails before life called me from the garage.
Also sanded my thumb but thats another story.

Started with 36 grit then went to 60 grit and the finish was great.
As I had some 120 grit disks I used them for a quick pass but it was probably not required.
It was fast and easy to do and the sanding disks lasted very well at one per rail.
Only really changed them because I had them there to use.

My something special to add to the lubricant on the rails issue was that I used candle wax rubbed on when needed.
It proved to be clean and provided a really smooth run up and down the rails.

The photos attached are in macro and in the flesh the rails look perfect.

Regards
Ross

Well done!
Its good that you didn't grind the angle any further, keeping a 3~5mm flat makes the slide work can prevent the height setting bolt from digging into the angle iron.

Hi Ken - Thanks for the encouragement.

That 3 - 5 mm flat you are looking at in the photo is actually 1.25mm wide !!
The macro is really close up and kind of makes it hard to see the 45 degree bevels and you loose perspective somewhat.
Drawing M1 10 110 MC states the rails are to be ground at 45 degrees leaving a 1mm flat at the top, so I stopped just short of that.
The candle wax worked very well in letting the jig slide but I did also polish of the ends of the adjustment bolts so they ran along the rail easily.

Regards
Ross

General Update
 

Picked up the X slide from Paul (Skippy) this weekend and it seems good.
I have yet to actually measure anything but the quality and the tool steel itself looks just fine. Paul has included a link on his thread to the engineer who made them for us.

I also made some car stoppers and just now need to weld them up.

Have a look at how the bolts wore on my grinding skate height adjustment, about half way though I noticed the wear and swapped them out for a high tensile bolt.
The HT bolt showed much less wear but I presume it wore the rail down instead.

Lastly my trusty dust collector is back from it extended vacation on a building site. After a BIG clean up and it looks like new.
I have started a bit of a "two stage filter" modification using the Thien baffle concept and up sizing the collection pipe to six inches.
The basic specs are it is a 2hp 1500 CFM machine.
The exact same model is still sold here in Queensland, but I got mine about 5 years ago now according to the serial number plate.

Regards
Ross

beautifull job Roos¡¡¡¡ thaks for the pictures

Dust Collector
 

I made the upper and lower parts of my rubbish bin (75L) Thien dust seperator today.
Hoping for a massive improvement in dust management over some of my previous setups.
Really enjoyed the router work to make the separator as I promised myself I would have a good extraction system in place before anything was cut on the new machine.

Attached are two pics of the Thien assembly and another of a pleated filter cartridge installed in place of the old 30 micron bag.

Regards
Ross

Primary Dust Filter Tested
 

Hi All

I have still to build a new trolley and a steel frame to hold the motor but ran a test today of the Thien Separator.
It really does work well with a strong vortex spinning all the stuff to the outside and then dropping down the slot.
It does not need the polycarbonate but I really wanted to be able to see what was happening inside the separator to judge its effectiveness.
Boy is it effective !!

Regards
Ross

Hi Roos, i like a loot the seoparator¡¡¡, and i like mor becaus dont use more espace than a normas bacum, ¿coud you drow a little esquematic plam of the separator?
Thanks enyway for the idea.

PD: sorri for my bad englis.

Hi Gonzalo

A plan and a video can found at http://www.cgallery.com/smf/index.php?topic=262.0.
The Pipe Joint Template web application at http://www.harderwoods.com/pipedocs.html is very helpful.

Regards
Ross

Thanks Ross, this will be my nex prollect, i will so you wen is finis, thanks:)


and the program is fantastic¡¡¡¡¡

Dust Collector Near Finished
 

A few more flexible hoses and it is a going concern.
Some concessions have been made to make it compact but it should still work well.

Regards
Ross

Very!! Very!! Niceeeeee Ross!! I love it!! might need to get me one of them ;)

Cheers
Tony.

More important is that white thing on the RHS. Keep them cool :)

Thanks Tony - Hopefully dust will now be a minor issue (wishful thinking I know).
Kobus - the fridge does form part of the overall MM experience but it just is not directly connected !!

Regards
Ross