I've got a slightly-bent Y-axis screw (caused by one side of the gantry crashing after Mach3 bent it crooked), and mine rattles a bit at the ends too... but I'm a little confused as to why you're trying to slide a bearing along the length of it.

If the screws are loose enough that the plates are moving, then the noise is going to be the least of your problems. Definitely tighten those down and use some loctite or whatever your preferred local flavor of thread locker is.

Thanks for posting that. I've never been happy using only two screws for the motors mounts, and that looks like a nice solution. I've also got some anti-vibration dampers from my old build that I've been wanting to use to keep the stepper noise from echoing through the rails, but they need a four-screw mount to work.


-Bats
( you want some witty remark here, I want caffeine. we're both going to be disappointed )

 

I don't that was observation, on 2 screws it was moving easily, on third it is what happen - then when caret is moving it is doing this ugly loud noise exactly in the middle of screw, and whole machine is falling in vibrations. Changed this screw from Y to X, and X become loud.

 

Doing a little fine tuning on my Lead1010. If I tell it to move 100mm, it moves 100.42mm. Is that little difference worth worrying about? We aren’t making anything precise, mostly just signs and such. That extra .42mm is just bugging me though, lol.

 

I used ferrules on my LEAD build. I use them by default on most any wiring including my 3D printers. I've seen and trouble shoot failures in solder tinned tires in commercial equipment and PLC based machinery where solder creep has occurred and connection fail due to thermal changes. Ferrules are simply the safest route to go.

 

Thank you Mark! That makes things super easy.

 

Well that took all of 10 minutes . It’s dead on now in all directions.

 

I've never had any experience with ferrules (embarrassingly enough I didn't even know they existed until a few months back, so file my comments under "hoping to learn more" rather than "attempting to correct my betters") but I have seen occasional warnings and/or recommendations in the past against using tinned or solid core wire in terminals.

The manual for the Gecko G540 (which uses very similar terminals) mentions: "Do not use wire plugs for the main terminal block. Only put stranded wire with a gauge range of 14 – 24 to make proper contact and not stress any terminals" (I have no idea what the "wire plugs" are that they mention, or whether they're anything like ferrules) which makes it sound like their concern is damaging the terminals.

Wikipedia also says "While wires may be crimped, they should not be heavily tinned with solder prior to installation in a screw terminal, since the soft metal will cold flow, resulting in a loose connection and possible fire hazard", which makes it sound like their concern is the long-term reliability of the connection - but they're discussing the sort of screw terminal more often used in residential electrical wiring - I don't know whether that's still a concern with the euroblock type that Openbuilds (and Gecko) uses.

Obviously ferrules would be avoid the cold creep issues of solder, and would presumably make for a more reliable connection than just twisting the stranded conductors - neater, prettier, and easier to switch around when your motor goes the wrong way, too. I have no idea how they'd factor in to Gecko's apparent concerns about damaging the terminals, though. I've also seen some terminals advertising a difference in durability between "elevator" and "leaf spring" designs, but don't know the difference, don't know which OB/Gecko used, and don't plan on pulling apart my connections to dissect the terminals and see whether the two are the same, or just really similar.

Any thoughts on this, since you've apparently had a fair bit of experience with them?


-Bats
( apologies for any (unusual) incoherence, I've been huffing paint thinner cleaning machine tools )

 

So, as I said I've done, reinforced frame a little (in the fast and dirty way). On first cut I got less then 0.01mm error on X axis, and 0.04-0.2mm error on Y. I am pretty happy with that as I not calibrated anything, also noises disappeared, and everything seems to be very rigid except Z axis (this one is moving few degree on harder materials.).

 

This (two owners back) is what I'm working on. Unfortunately it seems to have suffered some abuse in the interim... and I suspect some of the gunk I'm cleaning out dates back to well before those shots were taken.

Oh god... you can see them too??? Run!

Wait... yours are pink?


-Bats
( I thought they were more of a 'lime greenish' color... )

 

I've no idea what "wire plugs" per the Geko is so it's hard to say and doesn't make much sense. My experience with the ferrules is they can squeeze out just a bit when tightened which prevents pull-out if the connection loosens a touch. The caveat is if you over-stuff the terminal with too large of a ferrule, they may take a mighty strong tug to get them back out. (learned that one the hard way).

Elevator terminals and simply better than leaf springs. The leaf springs can distort with multiple uses or if over-tightened and fail or allow a wire to be pulled out easily. An elevator does not distort and the nicer elevators have ridges perpendicular to the opening that bite the stranded wire or ferrule.

I consider the leads for the Openbuilds kit that I received to have been lightly tinned an safe to work with, but I simply use ferrules by default because they prevent stray strands, are easier to move wires around, and less intimidating when my 8 year old want to lend dad a hand. The kits and crimpers are inexpensive relative to the price of a printer or cnc kit, and well worth the extra safety.

Link below to another nice read on ferrules.
To Ferrule or Not to Ferrule?

--Craig

 

It may not be pretty, but it certainly looks effective. I may have to try something similar once I finish cleaning & reassembling the mill.

Those little terminal blocks on the steppers are a neat trick, too - probably a lot quicker than the 4-pin Molex power connectors I crimped onto mine (I'd just finished a rather elaborate PC build at the time & had a bunch still kicking around).


A note on your first cut, though - and this goes for everyone - be careful of the dust/chip buildup when you make deep slotting cuts like this:

You'll want to be especially careful on MDF, since it produces such obscene amounts of dust (although wood can be a problem too, if you get careless, cocky, or unlucky). The dust gets packed in around the endmill, causing it to re-cut the old chips sawdust over and over and, more importantly, trapping all the heat. Not only does it kill your cutters in a hurry (although heat's a more drastic problem with HSS tools than carbide), it can also start fires.

I may have mentioned it earlier in the thread, but I was at the bottom of similar cut (maybe .5in into some .75in MDF - although I was using using a .25in / 6.35mm endmill) and when the tool came up, it was completely blackened. It wasn't until a couple minutes later that I noticed the smoke curling up from the cut, and discovered, after clearing it out, that the dust at the bottom of the slot was now burning embers at the bottom of the slot, and had started spreading back along the cut. If this had happened during a long run that I'd walked away from (instead of a short cut with a bad router where I was standing with one hand on "pause" and the other on the shiny red E-Stop button because I expected something to go wrong with the ****... the cursed thing), then it likely would've gone from there to igniting the workpiece and/or spoilboard, with the air from the router acting as a bellows to feed what would soon be flames.

A high enough feed can do a lot to reduce (or outrun) heat buildup, but even if your machine and tool can handle a fast enough feed to match the router speed (that's not always the case) it's still important to keep the chips/sawdust from packing in around the tool. Otherwise you'll want to buy your endmills in bulk & keep a fire extinguisher in easy reach.


-Bats
( "Fire bad! Fire bad!" - James Hetfield )

 

wojak, do you have drawings or files for the plates?

 

It really helped with squaring machine, also I used few distances while screwing together to make sure everywhere it is the same.
About screw terminals, seems that they are best solution, previously I was used so called "aviator" sockets, in the end it was always a lot of unnecessary trouble when I was changing cables.

sure, but also fast and dirty, I printed it with real scale, glued to aluminium plates, and then marked and drilled 6 mm holes to leave some space to adjust.

Few things to remember:
on X-axis you may have not enough space to screw collar, I wanted to use some distances, however ended with some old gt2 pulleys with 8 mm hole instead of collar. Also used 35 mm aluminium distances instead of 40 mm to connect motor, cause ACME screw was too short.

 

Has anyone really experimented with different spindles and what the machines capabilities are with those spindles?

 

I've got a 1.5kW water-cooled spindle on mine, which I absolutely love (although I'd recommend caution to anyone considering an 80mm spindle on an unmodified Lead), but I can't say I've done enough with it to really speak to the full extent of its capabilities - or to say how it compares to the Dewalt, since my only point of comparison are the $30 Harbor Freight trim routers I'd used before (I'd recommend caution to anyone considering one of those for any purpose). I also couldn't find (or provoke) much in the way of comparative discussion of the different options on Openbuilds machines when I was trying to decide on mine, although I've definitely seen people using an assortment of other spindles on theirs.

Three things I can definitively say about the spindle I have, though:

1. It's heavy. Really heavy. It's big, too - just the spindle alone (without a mount) is as wide as the entire Z-axis C-beam - but mostly it's heavy. I haven't caught the weight causing any problems yet, but I'm running with a half-width gantry right now, which does a lot to reduce flexing. In general, I'd tend to recommend trying the 65mm diameter models instead, which probably means sticking to an 800W spindles for 110V users, although 220V users can probably find 1.5kW 65mm units. I don't know that the added power really matters much on machines like ours (see 2.), but it may not be possible to find the larger collets on the smaller body spindles.

2. It's powerful. Really powerful. I have yet to try any serious hogging, but the times I've had to back off and take less aggressive cuts have always been because I was worried that the cutter or the machine itself couldn't handle it - the spindle acts like it can't tell the difference between cutting air and cutting aluminum. I wouldn't think twice about trying it on steel, except that the an extruded aluminum machine like the Lead just isn't up to that sort of job. I strongly suspect (and looking at some of the derating calculations in G-Wizard seems to back it up) that any difference in power between the 800W and 1.5kW spindles is basically lost without a better, stronger, fas... well, a much heavier, and more rigid machine behind it.

That being said, I was inclined to think the same way about power before making my choice, and still went with this overpowered beast because it was the only way I could get an ER16 collet chuck (which takes up to .7/16" or 10mm tools) as opposed to the standard ER11 (which tops out at 5/16 or 7mm). I was originally hoping for an ER20 that could handle 1/2" router bits, but that wasn't even an option without getting something even heavier, and then running a 220V line to power it.

3. It's quiet. Really, really, actually kinda ridiculously quiet. The noise of the spindle cutting air is not only drowned out by the (obnoxiously loud and always-on) fan on the cut-rate VFD that came with it, it's even drowned out by the noise of the steppers and is barely in competition with the pump humming away in its bucket underneath the bench. Obviously it gets louder once it starts cutting, but, while the volume depends a lot on the material (thin, vibration-prone sheet still absolutely shrieks), it's still a lot quieter than I ever would've expected.

Using a VFD-controlled spindle also offers an opportunity to wire it up to your controller and have the power & speed managed via G-code, but that's not something I've gotten around to setting up yet, because, well, unlike going for the pretty much plug-and-play option of the Dewalt (or other similar-diameter trim routers), the VFD-driven spindles require a lot more setup. The water's less trouble than you'd think (two tubes going through a hole in the lid of a 5gal bucket to a pump), but there's a fair bit of wiring, and you have to design & fabricate your own mount (or, in my case, a temporary mount until I could use the spindle itself to cut a proper one out of aluminum). You may also find yourself having to fiddle a lot with shielding, grounding, and/or enclosures for some of the hardware and/or cables, as, especially with the cheap chinese VFDs, there can be a lot of EMI/RF noise (at some frequencies my VFD broadcasts noise that the my gamepad pendant's USB cable picks up like an antenna, causing the hard drive to go wonky & the PC to eventually bluescreen - it took me weeks to track down just what was happening).

I suspect this doesn't actually answer your question, but if there's anything I actually can answer - and if you haven't already read too much of my spindly ramblings - feel free to ask.


...now why do I get the feeling I've said most of this before?

-Bats
( "We have the technology! We can rebuild it.... Bigger! Cheaper! Noisier! With poorly-translated instructions!" -Huangyang's director of VFD development )

 

I searched the thread.. I have limited space (and if I show up with 2 machines my wife will kill me).. Anyone think I could shoehorn a co2 laser onto this thing.... I was planning on building one of these with a mix of Chinese and Openbuilds parts (with current prices and shipping, the AL extrusions are ridiculously priced from China.. hope I did not violate any rules bringing up Chinese parts). Now, I might just pickup on from OB (if parts ever come in), and then setup a second Z axis (well I guess just a stationary tool holder in place of the Z axis). Or should I just suck it up and build a separate machine and incur the wrath of wife..

 

I haven't heard any mention of rules against discussing Chinese parts, but I expect someone from Openbuilds will be chiming in to mention that they can't offer any support for other suppliers' hardware. A bigger concern, though, may be compatibility. I know that a lot of very similar extrusions aren't actually compatible (or are unreliably compatible), and I've seen it mentioned in at least a few reviews that some of the Chinese hardware has slightly different dimensions and isn't even reliably compatible with the systems it's advertised as working with. If you do decide you want to mix systems (and I can definitely understand the need to make every penny count), you may want to try smaller orders first, to ensure the pieces from the different suppliers actually work together, before committing yourself to a big order. I briefly considered trying to take that path, but came to the conclusion that the money that might be saved wasn't worth the risk that I'd get stuck buying incompatible parts twice, the additional headaches of coordinating the parts on multiple orders, or the loss of convenient, single-point, English-speaking (and, as it turns out, friendly, even!) support that I could blame whenever anything went wrong.

As for the laser, I can't imagine it would be difficult to mount it (especially if you've already got a spindle on there to cut the parts you need) - but I don't have any experience with laser cutters, and don't know what other characteristics are important in the machine (3D printing prefers speed, CNC needs far more rigidity, lasers need... onboard sunglasses?) or whether the laser head is going to have trouble with the vibration of sharing an axis with the spindle. If so, and if they have to be swapped out, then unless you come up with a really clever quick-change setup you're going to have to re-tram your spindle each time, which is likely to get annoying in a hurry.

Hopefully someone else is a little more qualified to comment on that end of the project, since it's something that's been hovering vaguely on my long-term wish list, and I don't even have space (or money) for the machines I already have - never mind another one.

Logically, it probably makes more sense to go with two machines. After all, if you upset your wife enough, you'll have all the extra space that she used to use. Just think of how much extra hardware you could set up if you only needed half the bed!


-Bats
( Bats! With frickin' lasers on their heads! )

 

Making a laser diode housing that could fit into a spindle collet could be a solid option, that I've been pondering on for machine #3 which will be high speed (sans servos, initially)- no need to re-tram spindles or even re-zero your DRO, no need to have lasers shaken around and filled with coolant, and you could even make it part of a toolchange setup similar to a wired touch probe or even with an inductive wireless ring on the spindle base to give it 8VAC (or whatever rectifies to 12VDC- the whole RMS thing), and then have the laser diode, the driver, and a rectifier/linear regulator in a single housing with a 40mm fan or maybe connect the main airblast line up to protect the diode lens. Definitely doable.

So far in my experimentation with the laser (needs lots of rewiring before I can turn it on again, it's been out of commission for a couple weeks), enough speed for marking wood and cutting paper with a 1-2W 445nm diode seems to be in the 800mm/min range at partial power, which is easy enough with an ACME router build, but the issue might be accelerations. I have my laser accelerations at 15,000mm/s^2 with belts and NEMA17 steppers. 20k was doable but not 100% reliable. That's where a router build might fall down without some major mechanical overhauling to get accelerations up- inertial matching, small NEMA34s vs large NEMA23s, all that good stuff.

3D printing would be the same, though with even higher speeds. 100mm/s is 6000mm/min... That's not nothing. Probably not something I'd try to achieve with steppers and ACME rod though. Servos with sustained torque at 2000rpm and 5mm lead ballscrew, maybe- that's 10kmm/min, which is just over 150mm/s, the highwater mark for 3D print speeds generally.

There's a lot to think about with a build like this, and mostly it's an exercise in excessive overbuilding futility vs just building a secondary lighter-weight machine that can do printing and laser with no milling capacity (and could go in a cleaner part of the shop/house). No one's made a three-in-one that's actually been worth the effort yet, as far as I'm aware.

 

I appreciate the responses. As I noted, most of the extrusions would have been purchased from OB, electronics and drivers elsewhere, considering I am more likely to end up with a raspberry pi and a cnc hat (I already have the Pi's with PoE hats.. althought I seriously doubt my switch would be able to power anything ... okay I know as much.. but still an amusing thought). And the steppers are out of stock......

When it came down to it (hell, I will post the excel spreadsheet for the fun of it later when I get home, its on my personal machine), the costs to do a piecemeal OB/Ebay/Amazon/Chinese build was only around $200 less than purchasing it through OB, which is not enough savings to make the effort worth it. So if I go down this route, which of course depends on when OB restocks things, it will most likely be through the store here. I have no problems spending a little more.

As far as the laser issue.. well. the plans are to cut acrylic for custom templates (guess I could use the cnc router for this too) for routing on my router table (hey, cannot run everything through a CNC, and I do not have space for a 4x8 large format built, and this is a hobby, not a business, so expense justification is hard sometimes ), but also cutting material (cloth and stuff for my wife who's hobbies include sewing), but after a little but of googling, a plotter style cutter would be better for cutting patterns for cloth... although if you just cut the cloth directly.. who needs a patter, and for smaller bits.. a drag knife might work (hey.. had to work my wifes hobbies in to get approval.... ) on the router would work.

The other option I was thinking of was using the mpcnc for laser cutting.. it's cheap and could get up an running....

I'm trying to reduce my shop size.. this is not helping. currently I have mostly large table and floor standing tools (saws, planers, router table, sanders)... but being I work in IT security.. and am a nerd.. I require something a little more fun than the usual.. as my wife calls them "tools with spinning blades of death".....

 

I'm just waiting for the NEMA 23s to be back in stock to finally order my LEAD. I've really been back and forth on the trim router vs spindle for some time. Actually part of what's held up my ordering one. From a noise stand point alone I'm very interested in the spindle direction. My concern is mounting both to the Z and a dust shoe. I don't want to have to fight getting things working for my first CNC router, but I would rather have the right spindle choice to start with.

I would rather have 110v unit, but now that I think about it, moving a 220v into the garage area right next to the panel where there is already a spare 220 breaker would be cost efficient anyway, so maybe I shouldn't be so worried about limiting to 110.

 

I'm less concerned about noise.. considering I have a bunch of servers in a rack that pretty much sound like 747's on takeoff all the time.. my woodworking tools actually make less noise.
I need to measure my Porter Cable which I will be using, or my hitachi, I am not about to buy another router/spindle. I think the hitachi is just 1.5hp, my PC is 3 1/4hp. Although the advantages of a spindle are speed and on/off control. I have a ton of 1/2 router bits which are bulky and hefty, like say a cabinet profile for doors.. I would be concerned about the spindles exploding.. also why I plan on keeping my router table...

 

Ahhh... I misunderstood. I caught that you wanted OB extrusions, but assumed it was the rest of the associated hardware you were looking to China for - electronics are another matter entirely. I've got the base Lead 1010 bundle plus a few other odds & ends from Openbuilds, but most of my motors and all my other electronics are from other sources (well, except the nifty LED ring - I had to grab one of those) - mostly carried over from other projects.

$200 is nothing to sneeze at - a $200 difference was enough to nearly give me a heart attack when I got to the checkout and discovered I'd been shown the wrong currency while I was picking out & pricing my order a few months back. OB's xPro setup does sound like it's a lot more reliable and intuitive to deal with than a lot of the Chinese drivers, though... and I don't know much about OB's shiny new Black Box, but it certainly looks pretty. I do like the higher power ceiling on my Gecko, but that's going in entirely the wrong direction price-wise.

A drag knife would probably be great for cutting patterns, but directly cutting the fabric itself could be trickier - at least without some sort of sizing applied to the back to keep it from stretching and deforming as the knife moves. It might work for fabrics with sizing applied to stabilize them, but the only way I can see it working broadly is in combination with some sort of especially grippy cutting mat that could hold it in place... maybe one of those gecko toe-derived materials? If you're a little more ambitious, though, you could try building a vacuum table (bonus: it makes workholding much easier for your CNC projects, too!). This video shows a clever way of handling it, which would probably work with a drag knife, even though they're using it to show off their fancy tangential knife (which is basically mounting the knife on a revolving 4th axis or indexing spindle) holding their rotary cutter.

You mean some people actually do that deliberately? Mine gets smaller all by itself - the more tools I cram in, the smaller it gets.

Naturally. Spinning blades of death are more suited to help desk work than IT security. Break them down into packets, and they never seem to deliver on the 'death' bit when reassembled on the receiving end. Lasers, on the other hand, have a long and noble history in IT security.


-Bats
( for more on the history and applications of lasers in IT security, see the 1982 documentary 'Tron' )

 

You might also want to weigh your options before making a decision - and I mean that in the most literal sense possible. If that PC is the 75182, I'm seeing weights quoted for it in the 14-18lb range, which is about twice is heavy as my 80mm spindle. I'd be leery of even using mine on a full-width gantry, and doubling that weight seems like it's asking for trouble.

Yeah, I should've been a little clearer on that point - the main reason I'd been eyeing 1/2" shank bits was for larger diameter surfacing tools, to be used with a very shallow depth of cut. Even if the spindle or router could handle it, I'm not sure if machines in this class are quite cut out for pushing the really large profile or stacked cutters through any but the softest materials.


-Bats
( Of course, I did use a 2.25" lock miter bit on my old machine once. Once. )

 

Well, I lucked out. Not much of a discount, but I picked up an unassembled full setup on eBay from some guy who bought it and then was transferred (sounds like he is military). Cost me 1500 including shipping.

CNC Kit OpenBuilds LEAD 1010 *BRAND NEW* bundle! | eBay