An Adventurous Metal Cutter

I can’t tell how excited I am right now. The machine’s all 3 axes and the spindle works perfectly fine. The chassis is rigid, and all motors move the system smoothly.

Since the last devlog, as you can see from my timelapses, I spent 4 hours:

• Assembled the remaining parts of Z axis, and successfully mounted the Spindle
• Extending the Step motor cables
• Mounting Step motors
• Assembling the cable chain and trying to fit the spindle’s power cables + 2 step motor cables to a 15x15cm cable channel(that was a nightmare)
• Designing&Printing new mounts for X and Y axes
• Wiring the SpindleAssembling and wiring the Electrical Control Box, which includes the VFD and 12V power supply.

Also burnt one 5A cartridge fuse by miscalculating VFD’s input current:/

There is the video of machine jogging in 3 axes and the spindle spinning at a low speed, in below.

I am looking forward to either buy a solid Aluminum plate to use as fixture plate or buy a pre-drilled fixture plate, and buy some MDF wood to put over the fixture plate to make fixing the stock piece easier.

Stay tuned:)

Got a great progress in the assembly, with the arrival of some missing size bolts, I was able to assemble the “cutting zone” profiles to the chassis, and it made it even more rigid. Mounted all of the ball nuts to X,Y,Z axes. There is just the holder plate for spindle that is not assembled and after that the main assembly is done besides the electrical box.

While working I spent approx. 50 mins just to make a ball screw fit a screw bed, which I still don’t know why it was very hard to. Also because I don’t have enough M4 bolts, I had to drill&expand mounting holes of the ball screw beds and used M5 bolts instead, and it was pretty hard to do without damaging the internal system of them, especially without a vise I had to hold it with pliers:)

At the moment Y axis parts and mechanisms are all done, X just the same, and Z axis near completion. It seems like all the ball screws are rigid enough and it excites me to build the machine and see the tolerances.

The thing I’m waiting for to complete is that I couldn’t find the right couplers to fix the NEMA17’s shaft to the ball screws so I ordered online and probably it will arrive on 10th or 11th of August. After that, there is the electrical part like mounting and wiring the VFD, 12V PSU, and an input socket.

I’ll do my best to publish the progress, and to update the CAD parts at github.

Started the assembly of the machine, the gantry is assembled.

When started to assemble the side support parts for the gantry movement, I accidentally hit one of them and it broke, so the assembly got delayed 1 day for me to print that part again. At the moment gantry slides smoothly.

Please note that the gantry will have to be removed tomorrow, because the ball screws will going to be lathed tomorrow and also one of the side parts have incorrect positioning for the mounting holes of the ball screw nut.