Hi all, I'm exploring mounting my ACRO 2020 to the wall in a vertical orientation. I've seen a couple brief discussions from a while back talking about this and the main concern I saw was keeping the gantry from falling when the servos were off (to prevent damage and current flow). The solutions I saw mentioned were a counterweight (pulley system I suppose) and constant force springs. I wanted to see if anyone here had implemented either of these and could provide some guidance. Pulleys seem a bit easier to get set up and easy to shop for, but there was some concern about possibly adding unnecessary "bounciness" to the system which might reduce accuracy. I searched around a bit and could not immediately find the right kind of constant force spring, but don't hate the idea, but I think they would be a bit more complicated overall. Any and all advice/criticism is welcome! Bonus: If you have a preferred orientation x/y up/down for wall mounting, I'd love to hear that too.
This is a bit of a difficult one to make suggestions on based on the size. You’ll definitely want the X-axis set vertically as the only weight you’ll have to worry about is the weight of the laser gantry. Would suggest starting with weighing the fully laden gantry to know how much of a counter weight you need. And if you go with a counter weight it would probably be best to do a complete loop on the support cables. If you find you’re moving more weight than you’d really like, consider mounting the X-gantry motor to the top of the axis and powering a looped belt from there. As for constant force springs, I can see where length would be an issue here. Is there maybe a cable recoil system that might be better suited to this?
Thank you for the insight Rick. I’ve been thinking about what you said and I'm trying to imagine what it would look like. I have 2 ideas: - Mount the machine with the x-axis vertical, move the x-motor to the top of the x-axis and do a loop belt with a counterweight "gantry" that rides on one side of the x-axis (via rail/rod I guess?) and the real gantry on the other side of the x-rail. - Alternatively, mount it with the y-axis vertical so that I could use a pulley per side that can be mounted directly above the y-rails (top or wall or ceiling) since they won't have to move any horizontally and the counterweights can be outside the frame on either side connected via 2 pulleys. I think the former will be a bit more complicated and will require new parts to reconfigure. I assume I would need a new mount for the motor, 4000mm or so of belt, a 2000mm rod/rail for the counterweight, the actual counterweight cart, and another mount on the other side for an idler pulley for the belt. For the later configuration I would likely just need 4 pulleys, some sort of cable, and 2 counterweights. Do I have that roughly correct?
With the latter though you’ll have substantially more inertial mass to overcome. Granted, it will be divided by two but those halves will likely exceed doing the singular axis and inertial mass is what makes a system sluggish
Okay, that makes sense. Perhaps I will try both ways. Did I get the rough parts list right? I'll probably need to put an order in with you folks.
Seems about right but you will need to give some thought as to how you’re connecting the rails. Also as the ACRO system was not designed for vertical mounting you may have issues with the acrylic plates at ends of the X-axis (Y-axis gantry plates). The cross loading may have an adverse impact on them and they may need replaced with metal ones. No one has tested this though so it may or may not be an issue.
