Concept for Five Axis Mechmate with 1000mm Z Slide
 

Hi everyone at the forum, I designing an Five Axis Mechmate with 1000mm Z Slide. Feel to comment before I do something crazy.

See the link below :-

http://s303.photobucket.com/albums/n...=nav_tab_album [/URL]

Thank You

JK Siew

I'm no engineer but to me, it looks great! I can't wait to see your progress.

You aren't doing anything too crazy :)

Why no widen the gantry and lengthen the y-car while you are doing this, and then add a second y-motor?

Marc, I am not an engineer either and have not build any CNC mechine before.

I would properly need a lot of support from all the CNC gurus here.

Gerald, the size will serve my purpose of curving PU form. And space is also a constrain.

Jk Siew

JK

Cool. Looks like an interesting machine. More details about the Z....

Before you go to the trouble of building this machine, have you actually tried to write some G code and simulate cutting something using a machine control software?

Doug,

Yes, I had try out some software eg, Featurecam, Mach 3 and CNC_Toolkit by Rainnea. still have have not decide which to use yet.

Hi Arowana! your design looks good.. what i'd do with it is just (as gerald said) try to make the gantry a little bit wider, and the car longer.. or somehow try to add some rails facing down so you won't have the problem of lifting the car because of the momentum due to the long Z.
another thing i thought about is that if you have to separate parts of the "table" you probably will have misalignments because of the floor, its not always perfectly flat. so i'd try to have something getting them together.. even if its just bolted.. just as reference..

other thing...i have the mechanics and electronics pretty clear in my mind for the 4th and 5th axis... what i haven't found out yet is how to set up the B and C axis offsets. i guess its in the controller (in my case Mach 3), because since im gonna change the tool manually it would change with the tool everytime (at least for the B axis) i just don't know where to set the offsets.. HELP! =)