CNC router/laser engraver. son's new project with Dad's help

[Deleted]

Evening all

I thought that some here may find this of interest, my youngest son, (he who gets me all those free goodies) has decided to build his own CNC router, capable of machining most materials, he already has a small commercial router but that's only for lightweight materials, so he's going stronger, more power and larger.
my involvement is to machine up various mounting plates etc.

I have some pictures of the many parts that are involved in this project, my son turned up today with two large boxes full of gear and is expecting some more soon.

Here's the contents of one box plus the extruded rail sections already assembled, this router is going to weigh a ton, everything bar the frame is heavy and very rigid. The motor is more powerful than my mill, the stepper motors are very impressive and very heavy. The spindle is water-cooled, I forget what it's rating is but let's just say it will cope with anything that's thrown at it. In the picture you can see the water pump and it's hose, the water-cooled spindle, the Z-axis hidden top right. One of the stepper motors with the box below containing the others. The lead screws, there will be two for the 'Y' axis, one each end. The drawing seen is one of the stepper motor mounts, I made two of these this afternoon, easy once my son showed me how to use my DRO properly..



A close up of the water-cooled spindle, it currently has an ER11 chuck fitted and included all of the relevant collets.



More boxes, the left is a clear-faced computer tower which will hold all of the electronics, on the right this box has some of the electronics in (I'll show pictures) and some right-angled alloy which will cover the lead screws etc. BTW, all of the alloy parts will be anodised by my eldest son who has a very large chemical kit for this job, something like 100 ltr containers.



The 'Z-axis lead screw, the mounting block will be doubled in size for extra rigidity.



One of the electronic gizmo's, I have little knowledge of such things.



Jumper switches, I believe something to do with the stepper motors.



More electronic bits



The computer tower to hold all electronics safely and cleanly.



Here my son trial fits the two stepper motor mounts which I machined this afternoon. These will have the corners rounded off and anodised, think my son is thinking of a contrasting colour. They will be blasted first in son number 2's new toy fitted at son number 1's garage, yes it gets confusing with 4 sons and 1 daughter. Son number 3, is the IT expert who created my blog for me. BTW, this new water/blaster (over £4k's worth) I'm told will be perfect for getting as good a finish as possible on my motion parts, I might take them up on this one...



A close up of one stepper motors on its newly machined mount, it seems that I got all of the measurements correct, or should I say the DRO setting that my son programmed in for me where correct. The stepper motor is only pushed into its mounting hole here, no bolts fitted yet, so the bored hole was good too..



The last picture just to give some idea of the size, the machining area is approx 550 mm on both 'X' and 'Y'. 'Z' isn't set in stone yet, depends if we need to double up on the mounting block or not.



I will update this thread as things progress, my son's wife is terminally ill so things may go a little slow at times. I have already booked my first job, I thought with this bit of kit my diamond etched cab fall plate could be done in one piece. My son said no problem but he won't use a cutter, he'll do it all with a diamond drag tool, not having any idea what this is he showed me some video. Well, I'm sold, it should make my fall plate with name tag look very polished. I'm sure that I can find many other jobs to make use of his new toy..

More info soon chaps...

Pete

[coniston]

That looks an interesting project and I'll be interested to see it progress.

Chris D

[dscott]

So sorry to hear about your Sons Wife Pete.
Things can be ever so difficult.

His Project looks very interesting and every so often bits of mine come together.
A lovely spindle and these are expensive.
Also the control and some are water or fluid cooled.
Bit like my Milling Machine motor!! Now installing a fan for it.

Yes looking forward to progress.

David and Lily.

[kipford]

Pete
Just looked up Diamond drag tools, very interesting.
Dave

[Deleted]

Mar 15, 2021 11:57:17 GMT kipford said:

Pete
Just looked up Diamond drag tools, very interesting.
Dave

Yes, it was new to me too...looks the perfect tool for fine detail etching.

Not sure how long it will take to build the machine ( depends on my son's free time) but once built i'll be putting the fall plate drawing down in front of him..

Pete

[jon38r80]

Is this a kit and if so who makes it or did your son look for all the bits seperately? Sorry if I missed you saying what it is but ive looked through it again and at the pictures without success, but then I am going a bit daft.

[Deleted]

Mar 16, 2021 12:41:13 GMT jon38r80 said:

Is this a kit and if so who makes it or did your son look for all the bits seperately? Sorry if I missed you saying what it is but ive looked through it again and at the pictures without success, but then I am going a bit daft.

Not a kit, my son sourced the parts seperately. His design is based on experience from his old job and from reading the various forums and youtube videos out there. He uses Fusion 360, his design has grown over the last few months as he's found new things, it's also grown in size and weight. I suspect it's going to be a two man lift when built...

Regards

Pete

[jon38r80]

Thank you for that. I was curious as a lot of individual components seem to be quite readily available via China trade but its having the knowledge and courage to build it oneself that is missing in my case.

[Deleted]

Mar 18, 2021 12:09:25 GMT jon38r80 said:

Thank you for that. I was curious as a lot of individual components seem to be quite readily available via China trade but its having the knowledge and courage to build it oneself that is missing in my case.

It's above my pay grade too, I can do all of the machining required but the electronics will be my son's domain, as will the programing.
There is a lot of support on forums and youtube for DIY CNC routers if that helps?

Regards

Pete

[Deleted]

evening all, not much progress to show but my son did get to spend the day with me today and I managed to machine the mounting plates and my son did a trial assembly. It's coming together nicely, work left to do on the mounting plates is to curve the ends to meet the rad on the protective alloy covers. Plus the uprights will be angled back and also have a section cut out of the rear so that the 'Y' axis isn't restricted. IIRC we have something like 550mm square machining area, might be a little more on the 'X' axis?

Only one picture to share for tonight... I'm pretty sure that this thing is going to weigh more than my mill when finished.



Pete

[Deleted]

A bit more progress on the CNC router today, nothing much, the slides have been temporarily fitted as has the Z-axis components. The Z slide is only held by cable ties for now. Today,s jobs also included shortening a batch of stainless M5 screws. It's all going together very well and is still very much a design on the move type of exercise.
A couple of pictures to show how it's looking...





The uprights still need profiling, looking at the second picture, the alloy plates will be cut so that they sweep back from the bottom to the top, this will give max clearance at the back. It's getting pretty large now and a good weight too, the footprint will grow further once the stepper motors have been fitted, the height too.

Pete

[jasonb]

Starting to look like a machine now. It will be interesting to see how it copes with metal cutting particularly if he is hoping to try ferrous metals. I did some CAM the other day comparing the parameters for a Shapeoko/Nomad with my machine, not that much slower on aluminium but painfully slow on steel.

[Deleted]

It's getting there Jason, it will be very slow as my son can only get down every few weeks or so. It's already surprisingly heavy and hasn't actually got any of its real heavy parts fitted yet, IIRC each stepper motor comes in at over 4KG?

Pete

[Deleted]

a small amount of progress today, the 'Z' axis mounting plate was machined to size and drilled/counterbored with various sized holes.. This picture shows the plate temporarily mounted to the 'Z' drive lead screw etc.


Progress is slow due to the location of my workshop in relation to my son's home and also that his wife's mother is terminally ill with perhaps only days left. Such things change one's priorities somewhat..

Pete

[Deleted]

Evening chaps

It's been some weeks since my son and I have worked on his CNC router but today he had a full day off work and it was put to good use in my workshop. We are now very close to completing the machining processes. The gantry uprights have now been fully profiled and counter bored, the 'Z' axis is now bolted to the 'X' axis and both are running sweetly on their carriers. I have one more bearing block to finish for the 'X' axis to have the lead screw fully bolted down. Next job of to make up some mounting plates for the twin 'Y' axis bearing blocks (a spindle on either side) and begin to fit the motors. After that, it will be over to my son for all of the wiring and coding gear.
We reckon on one more full day to complete the machining, most of the outstanding work being the spindle mounting.





I have to say that it really is looking the part, it's very strong (heavy), the gantry can easily take my son's weight, perhaps even mine.

Pete

[44767]

Hi Pete,
I've just seen this; I don't often venture outside of the General Chat area! I was going to ask, but I see from the photos, if the X-axis is driven on two timed screws. It looks like it is. That should be a very useful machine. It may need some stiffening in the corners of the cross rail to stop it racking as it's really only a parallelogram as it is.
Mike

[Deleted]

Hi Mike

Thanks for the interest... yes it has two timed screws...there are still parts to go on.. IIRC the corners will have right-angled supports and there's something else too but can't remember off the top of my head. Added to these will of course be the baseboard which will lock everything in pretty solid. We may also add another rail on each side so that the Y-axis has two rails support like the X-axis.

Cheers

Pete

[Deleted]

Evening all

A little more progress today, mainly it was a beefing up exercise and in this case, it was the axis bearings. I had pointed out to my son previously that I thought that the 3D printed bearing housings weren't up to the quality of the rest of the build, a possib le weak spot on a design which is clearly capable of far more than the original plan. This has now been rectified by the new bearings fitted today, one end was a direct replacement but the other involved a slight design change which I have to say i much prefer.

Here's the original 3d printed item with its sealed bearing installed.



And here's the replacement, as you can see this is a proper bearing that is far more rigid and very heavy, this bearing was more or less a direct swap for the original. The original two-hole plastic mount was replaced by the 4 hole metal mount, you can just see one of the holes for the plastic mount which was 90 degrees to the new mounting holes. The same size M5 machine screws have been used although slightly longer.



Here's the other end which involved a rethink on how best to mount the bearing block, here we decided to mount it to a base which in turn is mounted 90 degrees to the original bearing plate. The block isn't fully bolted down yet, here we are checking the final position before drilling/tapping the holes to mount the base to the endplate.



This was my first machining of any sort in two months due to an issue with my eyes, even these setups had to be done by my son as I couldn't see well enough to zero the job with an edge finder.

So if any of you had been wondering why there has been no progress on 4472 during the last 8 weeks, now you have some idea.

Kind regards

Pete

[Deleted]

A few more hours on the CNC today, this time we have made a start on a very substantial stand. The top is 50 mm MDF, legs are steel, recycled off something one of my other sons picked up. needless to say this stand is very heavy, the finished unit may be more than a 2 man lift by the time that we have finished. The front will be fitted with some engineer's draws, the span of the legs is to allow for these very wide/deep draws to fit, top measures 900 x 800 mm. The base will be covered in alloy sheet with bonded foam which should make it very quiet. there will also be a cover made form the same material to deaden the sound even more. The machine will be bolted to the top using steel L plates, all fixings will use threaded furniture inserts which is what has been used to fix the legs.

Getting there slowly...



Cheers

Pete

[Deleted]

got a fair bit done today although you wouldn't think so to look at it. The rig was completely dismantled and has now been squared up and bolted securely to the 2" thick worktop, this isn't going anywhere now. It took a lot of setting up as the bolts needed to be tightened in sequence to get everything to remain square but we got there eventually. with that done the plates to hold the 'Y' axis bearing blocks were drilled/tapped for final fitting.

A few pictures, This is a closeup of the rear bearing block which is the end that the stepper motors fit, two motors for the 'Y-axis, one either side. The lead screw nut seen slides into the X and Z-axis gantry mounting block and then secured by bolts which can be seen in the following picture.



Here's the opposite end bearing block...



A view from the other side of the same bearing block, the right-angled alloy cover over the spindle will when cut/fitted have anti-swarf material to stop it from getting to the lead screw below. The alloy extrusion supports seen sitting inside the frame are to support the bed, there will be 4 of them bolted to the outer frame (lying in the 'Y-axis direction) and also bolted down through the worktop , this rig is very rigid.



more soon...

Pete