OK, I must ad on that once the MM is UP and RUNNING who needs a hand held router.:D

Unfortunately however much we dont want to admit it, we will always need a hend held and table mounted router in the shop, its not always feasible to do everything on the MM (putting a small roundover on the bottom of a cut out piece comes to mind)

EUREKA :D :D :D, its working at last (well at least for now - can you tell my positivity has taken a bit of a dive?)

Changed over to the CNC Direct BOB and there is no more toggeling input, it starts by remote switch and pauses by remote switch. One small problem, the on board relay on pin 17 is not switching the load - the relay is activating as I can see the coil move the contact arm, but the contacts must not be making propper contact, no biggie, moved that line to another relay, changed pin settings and the router output now switches on and off on command (on board relay is only switching a bigger remote relay that actually handles the current to the router)

Thanks to all who came with suggestions and help, especially Greg (Belli) of JHB.

You really are having a bad time with BOBs - both of those you have tried so far seem to have faults on them! Anyway you have learnt more about your machine than you ever wanted to know :D

Where can one download the specs on that CNCdirect BOB?

This is the instruction page that comes with the BOB. - some nice features, especially the 12V out to the inputs and the option of an onboard analogue output for the spindle speed control - it can also control 6 axes (at the expense of general outputs)

see here as well.

A legitimate Mech Mate
 

Whoo hoo, it cuts and produces dust, it can now rightfully call itself a cnc router ;)

Attachment 2904

Happy Xmas! :D

Whoo, hoo hoo

Congratulations :D

Alan,

Sweet!:)

Persistance and hard work pays off! We were feeling for you during those weeks of struggling with the BOB(s).

Congratulations!:)

Regards,
John

Well done Alan. Let the FUN begin. I am very happy with Greg's Bob and help. I like the scorpion. That is my sign.

Nice Alan enjoy and have great fun with your toy.Agree with Kobus , Greg`s help is excellent.Would like to hear what you have to say about the bosch router.

Goodluck!

Great Job Alan!!

Fantastic!

Thanks all

The Bosch router seems like a good fit, there is a large volume of air blowing out at the bottom (enough to keep the area around the bit free of dust) The bottom end however does get quite hot to the touch (been like that from the first time I turned it on) so will have to monitor closely once the serious production starts, too early to give any definitive assesment, although I have spoken to others that have been using it a while and they seem to be happy.

First project to tackle is the dust foot, will have to start stealing ideas from the other great minds here...;)

Alan,
Looking good. :)

Congratulations Alan.

if you can in future make a video of the Bosch working on the mechmate, I would be happy to hear it.

I bought this router as a replacement for my PC, and this one gets pretty hot. I'm not thrilled about that. It shouldn't even get warm.

The bottom end heat is entirely due to friction in the bottom bearing. Brand new bearings will be hotter because they still need to bed/run in. Then they go through a period when they run cooler, and at the end of their life they become hotter again. A graph of temp vs time corresponds to the classic bathtub curve.

Glad you made it Alan!
Congratulations!

But gerald, do you think its normal for a router to get piping hot after 2-3 mins under no load with no tool in the router? Thats the issue I had with my pc. Funny, as it is the cheapest router I ever bought, the hitachi runs not only cool always, but it runs cold.

Yes, it is normal for some bearings. After a couple of days it should become cooler. We have often replaced bearings and been nervous if they will make it through the first couple of hours. The router manufacturer has to choose either small clearance (hot bearings) for minimal runout, or use cooler bearings with bigger clearance and more runout.

Gerald, is there some kind of run in procedure that would help bearing life in the long run with these tight hot running bearings? I wouldnt want to get a new router and not break em in the right way.

With any bearing (in your car's engine for example) it is better to apply loads gradually. Give them a little time at no load before loading them. But, it is difficult to say how long one should give them to "warm up". Five minutes of that unproductive noise is too much! :)

Alan,

Congratulations. :)

It's nice to see some dust.

Thanks Greg, hey where you been? havent seen your comments for a while, or has the farm been keeping you busy?

Bosch routers
 

Hi Alan,

Photos as promised. The mount has been machined out of 40mm plate aluminium, cost around R140.00, add about two hours for machining. My router also ran a bit warm initially, I think the aluminium acts as a heatsink though but I ran it for one half hour at speed 3 (no idea of the rpm) and it seems much cooler now. I might add an HF spindle at a later stage (the harting plug is already wired for such) but no plans at the moment.

Regards,
Greg :D

PS I've zipped it as it is bigger than allowed.

Actually, the day job and making Christmas gifts on the MechMate have been keeping me busy. I'm starting to get caught up on the reading of posts. Geeez, miss a couple of days, and the reading gets outa hand very quickly. I don't know how Gerald keeps up with it.

Been playing a bit over the past weekend and tonight.

Got the gamepad figured out, connected up and set up to control 3 axes, start, feedhold, spindle on/off, feed rate adjust, home button, toggle aux outputs(2x), z-zero and centre find (as per CNC zone poster using the MachBlue screen) Had to change some of the settings in the bluescreen .set file by adding hot keys so that the gamepad could activate them. had fun doing it, needless to say the family wasn't impressed with me having my head buried in the PC for most of the weekend, but hey if they ain't used to it by now...:)

Tried some 3-D letter carving tonight, not as fancy as the nice stuff Greg J is doing, but its still early days. When doing this 3-D carving the machine sets up quite a bit of vibration if running at normal speed, I will either have to reduce the speeds in the motor tuning or just ensure that I use much slower feed speeds for this type of work. The sample below was cut at about 600mm/min and shows no sign of chatter (un geared motors!). I dont have the correct V-groove cutter for this kind of work as it has a little flat at the bottom so the multi pass areas have a slight step, the correct bit comes down to a sharp point at the bottom. The tap file was generated by EnRoute.

My latest hair brained scheme...Will it work? heck I dont know but only one way to find out :p

Very interesting!

Wow !!
Very artesanal crane.
And possible dangerous? you don't need this big iron. threat your head. :D

That is a real good looking solution! If the piping is plastic, place a ground wire inside of the pipe to bleed off the static by tying it to ground. Running a ground wire outside of the pipe doesn't help - the plastic will insulate the out side from the inside. I haven't heard of a problem on a short run but I know it can build a high static charge with the air flow and dust.

Alan, the counterweighting is tricky when you switch the suction on - the pipe wants to suck down toward the the table. Just thought you might want to know beforehand . . .

:eek: hmmmm, hadn't considered that, thanks. Will be ready with extra ballast at switch on.

Alan,

Interesting solution. More photos when you get further along.

Really cool looking Alan. I hope it works.

Interesting design. Made to Alan's high standard of detail!

Wow, did you work in the building industry, constructing those big cranes that they use to lift everything.:D Nice going....when it's blue it will look even better. Good luck

No, never worked in that industry but definetly studied the multitude of them around Cape Town at the moment for inspiration.

I will be in Cape town in 3 weeks time so I expect it to be complete I don`t want to battle to take it back to my town, please bubble wrap it.:D