Rick, contacting Chris Laidlaw is likely what I will end up doing, I got my OX-cnc plates from him and his workmanship is pure art. I was curious if there were any other off the shelf options available for mounting a full sized router on a Open-Builds Z-Axis assembly before I bothered Chris. The Colt mount I have on my OX came from Inventibles and I see Mark now offers a similar sized mount here in the Open Builds parts store. I want to be able to run 1/2" shank bits on the Roto-OX so the Colt with its 1/4" collet will just not get the job done. I went with a full sized router from a national hardware chain here in Canada. Some of the stuff Canadian Tire sells is junk but their Mastercraft line of tools have always had a stellar reputation so I picked up a Mastercraft router for the Roto-OX (the fact that I had a $100.00 gift card for Canadian Tire didn't hurt either).

I think I will Sketch-up a model of the router mounting barrel later this week and send it to Chris to see what he thinks about a mount.

Doug M

 

Sorry to be so slow with updates on the Roto-OX but I have been traveling quite a bit for work lately and have had limited opportunities to play with this project.

The good news is I have had the Roto-OX moving under its own power and have managed to round off a square oak blank. I moved the Colt router assembly from my OX-CNC over to the Roto-OX to see how things would work until I have time to track down Chris Laidlaw and order up a mount for my larger router. I have been using some higher end carving software to generate the G-code for the Roto-OX but have not yet been able to get a code that will do quite what I expect it too. I defined the workpiece and set the zero at the top of the blank but then the G-code proceeds to lift the router up to something like 15mm-20mm above the blank before starting the cutting process. The lifting at the beginning of the cutting process means most of the process occurs completely off of the blank. I am likely not going to have too much time to try figuring out what is wrong with my G-code generation before the end of summer but I figured I would let you guys know that I have made some progress and aside from the software configuration issues, the Roto-OX is working essentially as I had planned (even with the 1/4" hardboard plates as opposed to aluminum).

Stay tuned for more updates once summer starts to wind down.

Doug M

 

Mark, I was trying to avoid naming the software I was using but you nailed it. I will play with the safe height settings a bit when I get a chance and see if I can get the software to spit out better G-code. As for the Z-axis being wired backwards, no, the Z-axis is doing exactly what the G-code is telling it to do so I am sure it is a software issue and not mechanical/electrical.

One issue which I have not completely sorted out yet is the motor settings for the A-Axis. I have the Tiny-G controller board and they have several different setup examples for the traditional X-Y-Z setups but the Tiny-G wiki has little information for how to set up the A-Axis. I have the A-axis running but I am not sure it is responding the the G-code quite right yet. I just need to find some time to play with the software some more.

Thanks everyone for your suggestions.

Doug M

 

Honestly, I kind of got distracted from this project. I did make some great progress on a monster 3D-printer project I've been working on but nothing on the Roto-OX. I have not disassembled the Roto-OX yet so I hope to get back to it once my work schedule settles down a bit. Mark suggested a fix in Aspire which will hopefully fix my Z-axis unusual behaviour. Also, I am not convinced the Tiny-G is necessarily the best board to run this machine. I have not found a better controller necessarily but I don't like the inability to jog all axis outputs that is a limitation to the Tiny-G.

I will update when I make some more progress.

Doug M

 

Hey there, thanks for your interest in my build. As you can see, the original posting of this build was a few years ago. I really have no idea what the total cost was to get the project as far as I did. I never did get the build functioning with the controller or software I was using. The TinyG interface doesn't have a jog control for the A-axis which made things difficult to run in manual. Additionally, I was not able to get the version of Aspire I have to run the A-axis correctly. I still have the unit sitting on a shelf and now that I have converted my workflow over to Fusion 360, I might dust it off and give the Roto-OX another go one of these days.

Doug M