...I ground just a little crescent in the base of clearance - never really thought about it differently until today. Of course, I had slightly "taller than specified" rails.

"what's a mm between friend's anyway?!" :)

Moving on to the Z slide, I welded most of the spider tonight. With a 4" gauge plate for the slide, my holes were outside the three hash marks.

I still need to drill the hole for the gas shock, and then untwist / flatten the spider.

Boots work well for flattening spiders. Couldn't resist, sorry. No, I'm not.

I did a quick test-fit to see how the K2CNC mount was going to fit on the Z-slide. In a word: badly :mad:.

It looks like the exact inteference seen in this post: http://www.mechmate.com/forums/showt...37&postcount=8

What it looks like, positioned as per the plans:
Attachment 11712

First I tried inverting the eccentrics, which helped:
Attachment 11713

But that wasn't enough, so I added a 1/2" spacer as well:
Attachment 11714Attachment 11715

That seems to work OK.

However... I'm now seriously wondering whether I'm better off selling this K2CNC mount and having a local shop make a mount that will clear the rollers without all this extra fussing about.

Hmm... :confused:

It would seem the easiest solution would be to replace your plywood spacer with a metal one that has all the necessary drilled, tapped and reamed holes to adapt the K2CNC mount to the Mechmate. A flat, square plate with 7 holes is likely to be a lot cheaper to have made (or easier if you make it yourself) than a custom mount.

If you decide later that is just isn't what you want you can use your Mechmate to make one to your liking.

Brainstorm: just to get the MM cutting even sooner, without waiting for metalwork: if the plywood is basically ok but prone to crushing in a few places, then insert a few metal standoffs into drilled holes. By standoff I mean a junkbox bolt hacksawed to half-inch length. Even simpler: press in some T-nuts as load spreaders.

I have used the K2CNC mount on 3 machines and had to add little spacer for just the same clearance issue. That added 20mm of moment arm did nothing to affect the machine. I actually used the space to my advantage to make a deeper draw bolt pocket threaded spacer. Without confusion - just add the spacers and once your up and running, you can cut a custom bracket to exactly fit your needs.

I personally like the K2 bracket because it fit my PC router so well.

Best,
Sean

What about taking a small 45 deg cut off the corner that is fouling on the rollers? I thought I saw a picture of that on one of the builds some time ago. The backing plate would have to be narrowed to where the 45 ends on the mounts as well.

Trimming the mount has been done, see Ross's (Surfcnc) thread here
http://www.mechmate.com/forums/showt...&postcount=252

Thanks Jed, that was the one I was thinking of. :)

I had to do exactly the same thing to both our MM's also. Works well and saves the need for a spacer.

http://www.mechmate.com/forums/showt...&postcount=224

Cheers
Tony.

As suggested, I made some modifications to my K2CNC mount. Now it fits great :).

I do have a question about the gas shock, now that I have it mounted. The threads on both ends are too short for the nylock nuts to engage the nylon. Is there any point to trying to fix this mechanically, or should I just be lazy and use a bit of loctite threadlocker instead?

The nuts actually serve no purpose. In fact, there is the danger of someone tightening the nut onto a less than perpendicular surface and putting side force onto the rod and seal.

Loctite, followed with a dab of paint across nut and bolt so you can later see if it's loosening, and a note in your maintenance schedule to check that dab monthly?

Camille, you want the nut to be loose.

I'll just omit the nuts then. I have barely enough thread to get the nut on, anyways.

I'll just position the "stop bolt" on the back of the tube such that the gas shock is always captive.

I'm happy that the spider is now complete, and painted. I wasn't happy last night :rolleyes:. Trying to get six roller mounts coplanar and flat... what worked best was the sheet of sandpaper on my table saw.
Attachment 11761

Well, what would have worked best was my soon-to-be-delivered Bridgeport clone knee mill :), but it won't be here for another week or two.

Next, I built a bracket to lower the cable-chain connection on the gantry. It's times like this that I'm glad I didn't just contract out the welding of the whole table... this whole process would take WAY longer if I had to call in a welder for each little 10-minute job.

Attachment 11762Attachment 11763

I like the paint stands!

Kobus and Danilo liked them too, back on page 3, posts 64-67.

Progress on painting the cable chain parts: Y-chain carrier and X-chain glide trays primed. They've since been painted and installed, photos soon.

Y'know, if you keep using those painters pyramids that much, they'll end up spherical! I don't think you can bend them to flake off dried stuff. Maybe let them marinate in thinner and hope it's good plastic? (Thinking waaay too far ahead, as usual...)

Progress on the gantry: Z slide mounted, and cable chain installed.

Moving on to the control box, I made a couple of brackets to mount my power supply horizontal, to save a bit of area on the panel:
Attachment 11845

The panel has three ribs welded behind it, to help strengthen it vertically:
Attachment 11843

Test fitting most of the electronics:
Attachment 11844

And the control box cover, with the switches and indicator lights installed:
Attachment 11842

Going to be a kick ass machine! Looks good

Cheers,
Tim

No beer allowed in the workshop unless it's structural! (Hence the Guinness. Pabst Blue Ribbon wouldn't work.)

I couldn't see in the photo, but the panel's stiffening ribs are welded the whole way, not just tacked, I hope?

Not fully welded, that would be excessive, and also risk heat distortion. They were tacked, and then welded for about 1" every 8".

It's been suspiciously quiet from Brighton for the past 24 hours. I expect momentous news. Either really good news, or that the gantry drove over his arms and he can't type on a keyboard anymore.

Well, I am making progress, but I'm not cutting quite yet.

I built a wall mount for the keyboard and monitor today. The monitor swivels so it can be easily seen from anywhere I happen to be standing around the mechmate.

The bolts are loose for now... this was just test-fitting.

A piece of MDF or plywood will become the keyboard shelf, held in place with four screws from below.

Hey, you forgot to paint them blue! (Which MM part numbers are they, anyways?) http://s3.amazonaws.com/wootsaleimag...o1y9Detail.jpg

It's been a very busy few days. I pulled all the cables for the table. A pull string made the cable chains much easier to deal with. Much less expensive than the opening-style chains, too, for what's typically a one-time operation.
Attachment 11876

With the wires in place, next up was all the pushbuttons. I bought a second box to use as a junction box at one end of the gantry. It did work, just barely. There's no room at all for the proxy relays, so I'm running without proxies for the moment.
Attachment 11878

I spent quite some time sitting on the table, which turned out to be a perfect working height for the control box :).
Attachment 11877

Next up was the logos, finally! I didn't break a bottle of champagne on the spoilboard, but the temptation was great :).
Attachment 11879Attachment 11880

Two photos of the control box:
Attachment 11881Attachment 11882

The port on the left side is a Neutrik USB panel connector, used for plugging in a thumb drive for loading files. There's no network enabled on this computer, and never will be. I don't check my email from the workshop, and have NO desire to do so :D.

And... sawdust!

It took me a while to figure out that the roadrunner file is programmed in inches, while my machine runs in mm. There is a G code to specify inches, which resulted in motion I could see, not just hear :).

The first try was with a 1/4" spiral upcut bit, which was totally the wrong bit to use :o. I tried again with a V-bit, and that turned out much better.

So, I think I've got the bases covered... blue paint, stickers, sawdust.

Good job!
You just reminded me of my long overdue button name plate for my control box...

Good job!

Great work. Nice to see another machine come online.
Happy cutting!

Very Nice !!!
and well done on a very nice looking machine.

Cheers
Tony.

Nicely Done!! :)

We hardly recognize you in a t-shirt after all these photos of boots and mittens. BTW, nice warning tape on the edges of the lcd monitor!

...and you got to bed before 2 AM. Triple word score with a side of poutine. Bravo, Melissa.

One Fine looking system!

Cheers Tim