One major thing I did was I went to a down spiral bit and took the speed up to 400 inches per minute. I may drop the speed down.

400 ipm is cooking. I've never ran that fast.

Pete...
I'm with Darren. You will fight a long fight trying to get accurate quality cuts at those speeds with gravity based motion mechanics.

Only did that based on what I thought I read here.
What speeds do you run?

When you tune your motors in Mach what velocity do you set?

My sweet spot with an 1/8" down spiral in 1/2" BB doing a 3 pass cutout is 125 IPM. at 8Kish RPM with my Milwaukee router and a SuperPID speed controller.

Thank you.

Is that what you set your velocity at then?

success
 

Set my feed rate to 125
set acceleration to 35
set look ahead to 200 lines.

Perfect corners.

Thanks guys.

Excellent!!

Is there any particular reason why your Z-axis is mounted backwards in the Y-car?

Congrats on your build!!' Yes you'll be 127. I'll update once I'm back in the office.

Alan,
I went back and watched the video. It took me a second to look at the brown machine in motion, but you are right. The router is on the opposite side of the y axis drive motor end of the car.

Pete,
You most likely won't experience any significant issues, but the drive motor is designed to be close to the cutting tip. Personally, I have used a MM with dual Z axis in my #5 and never noticed a real issue unless really pushing the speed of the machine. If going to fast, and the cutting tool further away from the rack and pinion side, the tool path does change with deflection.

Just keep an eye on it.

Sean

Alan, good catch. Dyslexic I guess. I'm not noticing any deflection but will change it. Thanks for the advice Sean.

George made me money today. He cut out a large variety of parts while Tony and I were doing other tasks. 16 sheets of plywood cut into a bunch of small parts with all the shapes and holes complete. Pretty awesome. To me at least.

He does just what he is commanded to do.

Doing the tally on costs and hours to build. Right at $7,000 US and 150 man hours. Less on both accounts than I had figured. That does not include the equipment that I purchased to do the job or the hours of study prior to actually building it. It helped to have the funds available so we could get the materials in at one time. We didn't forget where we were at.

Mike, sounds good.

Oh. If you want you can change the title as well. Maybe "By George it cuts!"

Dont change it just yet, lets see how it works, it may be better for you as you have your dovetail jig at the back of the machine and this orientation may make it better when operating on that side, especially when changing cutters. It all depends on which end you will be spending most of your time.

By the way Sean, I'll have you know. That is not Brown. It's "Copper tone Bronze".
Sheez.

;) Cheers!

Keep it up Pete, and the new title may be " 'Old Man Brown' machine runs despite glaring flaws in the construction!!"


:p:rolleyes:

You used to be such a nice boy Darren.

Can't let you get a big head, Pete.

You leave my head out of this.

Cut our first batch of piecut dovetail drawers today. Jigging is complete and the programming is over with.
We use 100-125 of these drawers each month and the main reason for building the Mechmate. I haven't gotten total completed time down yet but I am guessing around 20 minutes for a completed product. We currently pay $30 each with a 4-5 week wait time. Materials is about 6 bucks so if we can hit that 20 minute timeframe George will make decent money.
I am using a 14 deg dovetail bit on a 1" spread. It works out to calling it a .404 diameter bit at 7/16" deep cut. Lots of experimenting.

THE BROWN IS MAKING GREEN

Here is a video of our initial jigging. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=h8XF...ature=youtu.be

Well done #127.

Nice little production run !!
One nifty way to pay it off !
Congrads ;)

I thought it was Copper Tone Bronze :p but never mind green is the only colour that counts! Nicely done!

Payback will be short. It is cutting all of our parts now. An added benefit has been the ability to declutter the shop of equipment. Time for a sale.
Alan, that was for Mr Saylers benefit. It is Coppertone bronze.

Pete - Great to see a MM get busy from the start !!! Keep posting the videos !!!

I'll be expecting my first royalty check shortly.

I will get it out in the email.

Did a little video up today.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MgBZ...ature=youtu.be

It would be a lot nicer video if you can hold your camera / phone horizontal so the recording is widescreen and fills the youtube screen. Also I find videos that show the machine from a fixed point more interesting as you can see the machine doing its thing (and judge its performance) instead of bouncing around :)

Agreed.
I should redo it correctly.

What feeds and speeds, accel and velocity did you settle on? Its not much discussed subject here but its rather informative for others starting with Mechmate

Velocity is at 125 ipm
Acceleration is at 30
I run my 3/16 cutter at the 125 ipm but the dovetailing bit at 80 ipm.
Nice snappy corners.
I should add my gantry is 1/4" steel on the tubes.
The vacuum is holding the 5/8 material very well. Sometimes on the 1/4" it loses a little by the edges. Amazing that it will suck through the plywood. I may decide to add the 3rd motor up as well to use on the thinner stock. I built my spoilboard at 61x61 so the exposed 1inch may be leaking as well. I might be smart to seal that edge.

You lose a lot out of the edge and perimeter, Pete. Brush on a mix of 50/50 yellow glue/water. You'll be amazed.

Thanks Darren.
The edges are all sealed that way. it is the perimeter. I had the vacuum on when I did the edges so it really sucked in.

Pete, got any pics of your logos done on your laser?

Here you go Darren.
I do sets of 3. About 12 minutes.
I use Vectric 2d laser program that came with the machine.

Here is the machine.

Pete....in my quest to learn all this laser thing, I'm curious !?
Could you, when time permits, PM me the G-code to I may see & learn how I will be using mine !

Also, what machine your using that supplied this Vectric 2d laser program with your setup ?
Thks

Robert, here is the link. https://darklylabs.com/
Yes the cut2d program came with it.
I will get the g code for you.