New Day, new design

Since the last post I have scrapped the gantry made of 2x10 plank and gone with a design which uses some nice 11 ply 0.5" plywood. This was a super idea because the new gantry is much stiffer, much straighter, and about the same weight.

Once everything was square up on the table, it was time to install the parts and tune for levelness and straightness before mounting the guide bearings. The linear slide was a bit twisted down below and required a few washers as shims. The result is only 0.125" vertical displacement error across the entire 48" travel in both the X and Y directions, measuring from the router tip to the work table.

Last week my goodies came in the mail. For a $1000 I received three 570 oz-in stepper motors, three Gecko 203V motor controllers (which supposedly will never fry from user error), a 48V 12.5A powersupply, and a PC controller interface card, along with some other little necessary parts. The motor controllers and power supplies will need to be mounted into a fan cooled case. Luckily I have a brain dead Dell computer sitting around, thanks Rio :-)

 This Porter Cable 3.5hp variable speed router needed some new bearings after hearing screeching during it's test run. Easy work, although the lower bearing which supports all the thrust cost a hefty $40. :-/

CNC build

Welcome to my CNC build blog.

Somewhere around October 10, 2010 a bug was planted in my ear about how many people are building a CNC (computer numeric controlled) machine in their garage and putting it on Youtube. Having full control of a capable CNC machine has been a long running dream of mine, so this is hopefully a first step to many great achievements! This past week I finished building the 3 axis gantry style table that will be my first CNC machine and will also be the first time I will have ever operated a CNC machine. Also this week I purchased a long list of components that will control the machine using "stepper motors" which are controlled by a desktop computer running Windows XP.

I'm not going to write a whole lot, so I must compensate with pictures. Enjoy!