Hey everyone! I'm wondering if anyone else has this issue with the lead 1515. My material is firmly held down. I'm taking very light passes (.04) at very low feed rates (30-40 in/min. And getting really choppy results on the y axis. The only mods are a vfd spindle, and the x gantry is rased 2 inches from stock. I used 15" 2080 extrusion instead of the stock 13". I understand there's a loss of rigidity the higher from the bed the gantry is, but this seems excessive. I thought it was my table at first so I braced the **** out of it, it's solid as a rock. So what's going on?
either backlash or the head is nodding. as a test, put the work on a 2" thick block so the Z does not have to extend down so far.
Put a bit into the spindle and try shacking the gantry by the bit. See if there is movement. If there is try to tighten it at the spot where it moves.
That just shows there's something specific about yours, or your workflow, or your tooling... Worn wheels, some non standard modification, something loose, something different, something thats now made it less rigid than the "as-designed" kit is supposed to be. Something's off and thats the thing... Best to dig in and review the assembly, find what the source of the issue is - then address that accordingly Your Gantry setup looks pretty standard and this design does not cause this issue for other folks, the dual rails do a fantastic job at resisting twist in the standard kit. Plus if I interpret your pics correctly the notches are "along the Y" - so that means its bouncing side to side along X? To me that could mean flex in the uprights (as they are longer, possible) or something else is loose and theres a bit of play in the Z/X causing endmill to move sideways a little. Maybe more pics of your machine can help us spot something, but really best is to be up close with the machine. The best instrument on the human body for finding play is the hand - fingertips can detect relative movements in the micron range - far better than eye (pictures/videos not as good as being able to feel) when you are moving, pulling, and touching parts while applying a little counterforce from the endmill side by hand. If the machine is as rigid as it should be (original design spec) it might be something else: that kind of pattern looks like chatter, so also check your endmills, sure they are sharp enough, correct cutting parameters, correct flute count etc?
Strange. It appears in the V bit cut letters, but the round grove does not appear to have the chatter in the first photo.
I will take more pictures and post a video if I can. I have gone over every bolt multiple times, checked alignment over and over. The wheels are brand new. This machine might have 4 hours of run time on it so far. here are more pictures of the setup. like i said, its fairly standard. ive taken videos of the deflection/ shaking while under zero load. there is a roller ball on the dial indicator. you can see the x movement is fairly sturdy, but moving the y direction theses a bunch of movement. Look, I understand this is not a haas milling machine, but theres roughly 6 to 8 thousandths of deflection with zero load on the axis. thats just unacceptable. ALSO, the gantry plate assemblies are brand new from open buils. They are replacements sent to replace the originals. they still dont make contact with all four wheels. ive squared, tightened, measured, disassembled, reassembled, and scratched my head till it bleeds. i have to be missing something.. that or everyone who uses this machine has incredibly low performance and quality standards. I really wish i could just get someone on the phone, its pretty unfortunate that the only customer service available is a 24 hr email away. At this point it would almost be worth it to box it up and ship it back. Please, I'm begging you guys. Help me out. Ive got jobs on the board. heres another example of the utter lack of rigidity Not to mention, i have 2 layers of .75 material for a spoilboard. i could not imagine only using the recommended .5 MDF.
