I'm not following this Rick. Is there a way you could explain more in depth? Will this increase the Z height at all?

 

Similar to this (I migrated this from my Sphinx to the LEAD)

But instead of using the mini wheels and the double plate you’d be using standard wheels on the standard plate.

 

What about the aluminum wheels I have seen....

 

That was my though process as well. Ended up getting the 7" Z before I built my lead. The 7" Z is arriving today (less than a week turn time), and I still need to build a table for the Lead and the black boxes are on back order again so having to wait a few weeks on that.

They literally must have just added the option for the Lead Z, it was not there earlier this week.

 

Might have been, I saw metal ones. good to know about that.

 

Are you talking about turning this beam around and attaching the z to the back of it?

 

I'm waiting on the blackbox too. I waited an extra 2 days to order because I was still thinking about it and then the blackbox was out of stock Its going to take me a while to start putting the lead together anyways with 11 and 6 year old girls. The blackbox will probably still get here before I'm ready for it.

I really would like to understand what Rick is talking about before pulling the trigger on the cnc4newbies.

 

Hey, at least you have a planer! That's one luxury I still haven't found the space (or budget... but mostly space) for yet. Initially it was one of the many tools I figured I could take the place of with a CNC rig... only to discover that it was one of the many tools that're really needed with the CNC rig.

But here are the sawhorses you asked for (and a whole mess of other crap you didn't ask for):


This is about half (or maybe a third? it seems to expand whenever I turn my back, like some sort of fungus) of my disaster area "shop". Out of frame to the right (past the disassembled mill column) there's a little wood lathe (a Delta midi) and (next to the drill press) a wobbly little bench with a grinder & Worksharp for the chisels, and (on the opposite wall) a vacuum pump for resin stabilizing/dying wood and convection oven (mostly for resin curing, with the occasional attempts at tempering steel and heating snacks). On the other side of the red tool cart (on the wall opposite the Lead) is the metal lathe (South Bend Light 10) with a bandsaw & air compressor tucked in awkwardly around the furnace. The scrollsaw, main workbench, and electronics stuff are in the "bedroom" I'm standing in the doorway of.

The (half-width) Lead is sitting on a (strictly temporary) MDF tabletop made from two layers of .75"x11.25"x48" MDF "shelfing"(sic) (my main source of junk-grade MDF, since at $2.92/ea they're dramatically cheaper than buying the stuff sold as lumber) - the upper sliced & laid crosswise - topped with a sheet of 1/2" x 2' x 4' MDF ($13 - see why I use the shelfboard? this stuff also stunk up the car and the whole basement before I slathered it with watered down Titebond), all of it glued & screwed together. MDF isn't much good at keeping its shape under load in the long term, but it's sturdy enough for the moment, and with the Lead clamped to it, the weight adds a bit more stability (or at least solidity) to the machine.

Things get even hackier as you go down. The MDF is sitting on top of some 2x4s lying across a pair of collapsible sheet steel sawhorses (which I think I got a 2-for-1 deal on, back when I picked them up to definitely-only-temporarily hold up the previous CNC contraption several years earlier). The front 2x4 has an old shelfboard fastened to the front as a keyboard & trackball stand (I've got a tiny slide-out USB keyboard pulled from an industrial copier that's waiting to replace it whenever I get a proper table built), with an old XP box in a 2U rackmount case (water cooled & with "filters" stretched over all the air inlets) hung underneath. The plastic sheeting stretched over the sawhorses either protects the vents on top from getting piles of chips & dust from getting dumped on top of them, or seals said vents shut with the weight of said chips & dust on top of the plastic (although this is less of an issue with the MDF surface on top than when I previously had the Lead sitting directly on the sawhorses & dropping all its debris straight down).

Then on the floor there's the shopvac, the 5 gallon "reservoir" for the water cooled spindle, and a completely unrelated vacuum furnace, mill vise, cute homebrew aluminum "lathe", and random motors. I think there may also be an accordion peeking out from behind the curtains under the old board games. The plastic sheeting (currently pulled back) can be dropped down to enclose the whole area with the CNC, wood lathe, and grinders (with the mill potentially inside or outside - not sure yet how that'll work in practice). It's hung from the edges of an overhead storage loft full of decades worth of old Christmas decorations, which is also useful for hanging tools, supporting the power & water lines to the spindle, and keeping me in touch with my surroundings by means of frequent concussions.

Not shown is the shelf with gallons of flammable solvents and propane bottles sitting right next to the CNC machine that would almost certainly never think about igniting its own spoilboard out of spite. Again.

The superfund site in the foreground is the mill (or parts of the mill) I've been struggling to clean and reassemble. It was actually going really well, if slowly, right up until I got to the spindle (the casting for which is visible sitting on the Lead's tabletop). At which point it started going really not-well, and is now at a bit of a dead end until I can get someone to give me a hand welding/plating/remachining the spindle and then regrinding the taper. Today I'm trying to do a little final scrubbing, then oil & put everything else back together, so maybe I can at least get back to (or near) the Lead. Or at least that's what I would be doing, if I weren't writing this to avoid it.


-Bats
( if the Openbuilds forums supported subject lines within threads, this would be "I'll show you mine if you show me yours". the replies would be titled "TMI", "oversharing", and "can not unsee" )

 

Yeah, those are almost certainly the steel wheels*. Those do add rigidity, but they're meant for running on hardened steel rails, and, like Rick says, will wear down aluminum rails in a hurry. The idea is generally to use wheels that're made out of softer material than your rails, because it's cheaper & easier to replace wheels that wear down than rails that wear down. My first machine's Y axis used steel patio door rollers and used the edges of aluminum square tubing as "rails" - it didn't take more than a few dozen hours of runtime before the rails were badly grooved (the X axis used the same wheels on zinc-plated steel round stock, which held up much better).

I don't think I've seen actual Aluminum wheels, but - depending on what alloy the rails are made from - I suppose it might be possible to make wheels out of a softer alloy. I don't know how the other properties would compare with the delrin or polycarbonate wheels, though - and they'd likely be far more prone to dents, dings, and getting (literally) bent out of shape.


-Bats
* Steel V-wheels. Not to be confused with the Rolling Stones' Steel [non-V] Wheels, which was an unimpressive album but a pretty spectacular show to watch in one of the old wraparound-style IMAX theaters for those too cheap or disinterested to see the real thing.

 

My workshop.. guess I'll pickup q couple of saw horses, 2 sheets of 3/4 MDF and laminate the sheets to get a solid stable base at least, then I'll build a frame later.
There is a Jet mini lathe in there somewhere as well.

 

*gasp*

Look at all that... space!

And tools. Tools are good too. I think I see a jointer under the leaf blower, and maybe a table saw under the clamps? Two things I desperately need, but have yet to find space for (err... the jointer and table saw. I can live without the leaf blower. the clamps, though... more clamps are always good).

So I can see one of the (massively cardboard armored) Lead boxes back by the window - where are you planning to set it up once you've got your table?

I did a double-take there, thinking "I've got half a Lead and needed four 3/4" boards plus the top sheet" before realizing that when you said "sheets" you probably meant "sheets" and not "cheap boards instead of sheets".

I'm guessing that's the wood lathe (does Jet even have a "mini" line for their metal lathes)? I don't know how the Jet mini compares to the Delta midi (or if there's much difference at all - I got the impression Jet's "midi" is bigger than Delta's), but I've had a lot of fun with mine. I do wish I'd gone for something bigger - both because I'd really like a swivel headstock, and because thinking "benchtop == small == good" was only true until I put it on a stand, at which point I might as well have gotten something with the same length bed and twice the swing - but considering the price was right and I could pick it up & shove it in the trunk, I'm pretty happy with it.

Of course, originally the goal was to get a metal lathe to make parts for the CNC contraption (which was going to have a rotary table so that, like all those other tools, I also wouldn't need a lathe), then started using the metal lathe for so much woodturning that I was worried about packing the gears & bearings with sawdust (never mind abrasives from sanding) and decided that obviously I needed a wood lathe too. The parts for the contraption never got made, the upgrade to a rotary table never happened, but I made a whoooole lotta pens and Christmas ornaments (and then the pen turning bounced back to the South Bend and I made a few partially or completely in steel & brass, but those always seemed to involve far more planning than fun).

Speaking of which, one of these days I'm going to have to fire off a post in General and see if anyone here has any clever ideas for making pen clips. That's the only (visible) component I've never found a decent way of making for myself.


-Bats
( can you tell I'm really, really eager to spend time scrubbing mill castings today? )

 

Yep, Table Saw and Planer, thickness planer on the floor. This is a large 2 car garage with a huge area in the back, I could park 2 cars end to end on one side. That area is ultimately my workshop. I still need to fit the cars in there, although since I am working on the bathroom, what was not in the pictures was my tile saw and stack of tile, and plumbing crap.

The Jet lathe is indeed a wood lathe. It's the Jet1015VS (JWL-1015VS 10'' x 15'' Variable Speed Wood Lathe) I plan on getting the extension bed at some point.

As for the blower.. uhh.. my shop vac does a crappy job.. so what it does not get.. I use the blower to just blow outside.. I mean it's just tree dust after all

Once I am fully setup (I only moved here a year and a half ago, tons of home improvement projects, still have not even completely unpacked yet lol), I want the CNC on a mobile base that I can pull up and out of the way. maybe used clamps to hold down the base of the CNS to the table, then hanging pulley system to pull the cnc out of the way up to the ceiling. I don't think flipping it up vertically would be good for stresses on the gantry.

What you missed.. the bicycles cumulatively cost more than some peoples cars I won't give exact prices, but uhh.. north of 10k, less than 20k Lets just say I spent a few weeks on teh couch after making those purchases.. better to ask for forgiveness than permission ps.. I have security cameras..

 

Ok, so aside from Jet's trademark hideous "I'm a 90s PC" beige paint job it's almost exactly like my Delta 46-250. The only functional difference I can see is the indexing pin (which, I'll admit, I'm jealous of - although it's a feature I really wish I had on the metal lathe).

Ok, so maybe I do need a leaf blower. Although you've got a much bigger target to hit with the dust than I do - I think if I tried to get it from the Lead to the door, I'd just end up with more tree dust in the air (although I have thought about just blowing all the dust into the air & letting an air scrubber deal with it).

I've only been here a little over a decade, so I haven't had time to finish unpacking yet either.

Clamping down the base of the central nervous system to the table, then using a hanging pulleys to pull the... wait... is this a workshop, or a new Saw flick?

I like the idea of hoisting it up to the ceiling (I'd like it even more if I had a ceiling that wasn't covered with a loft & duct work, or had enough headroom to hoist it above eyelevel), but I doubt vertical storage would be a problem with a trim router spindle. Even if you're joining the big spindle club (can someone ask the club secretary to post the membership list? I keep losing track) I have to imagine aggressive cuts (or crashes) will create regularly far greater loads than the dead weight of the spindle/gantry. Well, unless you want to run it in the stored position... then things might get a little more interesting.

Far more than I paid for my car (the original owner, on the other hand... well... they may not have paid that much either). Definitely nicer bikes than I've ever ridden. Probably nicer than anyone's ever let me breathe near. But even really really nice bikes are small and easily stowed (this is someone's cue to start posting pictures of their tandem recumbent mountain trike) - I could find room to stash a bike or two in my current shop, and kicking the bikes out of the garage isn't going to score me any floorspace (this is only mostly because they're all hung overhead to begin with).

Just make sure your first extravagant purchase is always an outrageously comfy couch.

Oooo! Can you post pictures of them, too?


-Bats
( I'm just... err... curious. About how people like to set up security around their very nice belongings. Specifically about the lines of sight - I'm really curious about those )

 

It's sort of on topic.. can't you see my Lead 1010 box somewhere in the back of my shop still in it's box

 

Hey, it was regarding the Lead! Sure, there was a little fluff surrounding the Leady bits, but it was definitely Leady. Ish. Leadish. Containing natural Lead flavoring?


-Bats
( just a little fluff, too. almost certainly no more than 80% )

 

Having problems with limit switches on Lead. What setting do I use to figure what’s negative and positive on multimeter? Thanks.

 

If you're trying to test the switches themselves, there isn't a negative or positive - or rather, the meter has a negative and positive, but they don't matter at all to the switch. You'll want the dial set to measure resistance though - any of the settings with an omega Ω for Ohms should work. The particular range & the numbers you get don't matter much, since you're basically checking for continuity - the readings that matter are basically "nothing" and "lots".

I can probably be a little more helpful if you can describe the problem with the switches.


-Bats
( or at least I can probably spew some smart-sounding stuff that doesn't actually turn out to help much at all )

 

I figured out the limit switches. I didn’t have solid contact with the connected. The wire is so thin! Thank for responding.

 

If you are trying to check which connections on your switch are normally open (NO) or normally closed (NC) then NO will give you a very high resistance (unless you press the switch when it will read zero) and, of course, the exact opposite for NC. Do tell us what you are trying to work out.
Alex.

 

Sorry, new to all of this! I figured out the limit switches but, I do have a problem with my A and Y axis not moving at the same time. The A axis is delayed slightly which causes some movement of the machine. I hope that makes sense.

 

By "A" I'm going to assume you mean the second, slaved Y axis (unless you have a rotary axis, which is what A/B/C generally refer to in CNC ).

While I can think of (and suffered through) a number of ways & reasons they could end up out of sync I'm not sure what would cause one to be delayed relative to the other. It's definitely a problem that needs to be sorted out before you start using the machine - I managed to bend a lot of bits that really shouldn't be bent when my two Ys got out of sync. Of course they got more bent when Mach 3 decided that the default behavior of G28 (return to home) should be "send slaved axes in opposite directions at top speed".

What happens if you swap the connectors (or channels/drivers on the control box) between the two axes? Does the problem problem remain, or reverse? That should help narrow down where the problem is. If the problem moves with the connector, there's probably something wrong in the control electronics/firmware/software. If things stay the same, it's either the motor or something purely mechanical.

Next, if you can swap two of the steppers you should be able to either isolate it as a bad motor or something mechanically funky with the axis.

If it's a mechanical issue (and I find this a little unlikely, since you described it as a delay between the two) there's a chance it could be something like a loose coupling or motor mount loose, or (even less likely) that the axis is binding on something the stepper has to overcome to get it moving. If you disconnect the motor and can twist the leadscrew with your bare hands to move the carriage, it's probably not binding (it may be a little stiff, and probably won't be fun to move it any distance, but it shouldn't be a battle).

There's also the chance of something purely fluky, like a loose connection where the vibration from the one axis knocks the other into action. I'd say it's unlikely, but I ran into the opposite on my Z axis.


-Bats
( have you tried checking inside the stepper to see if the hamster is getting distracted by a cellphone and missing its cues? I'd say it's unlikely, but those hamsters really love their mobile games. )

 

Most multimeters have a continuity testing setting.

 

Most multimeters can be used for continuity testing, but cheap meters don't always have an actual continuity tester, and I didn't see any indication of one on Jermaine's. That doesn't mean much, of course - they're not always entirely obvious, and I'm always not entirely observant - but it seemed easier to set him up working with an ohmmeter mode that was obvious, rather than dragging him through a bunch of fiddling around in search of a continuity mode when there's already so much fiddling waiting for him on the Lead.

I've also found a lot of continuity indicators (on cheap DMMs, at least - I eventually grabbed a vintage Fluke 87 on Ebay that I've been quite happy with) to be surprisingly unresponsive or erratic, and I'd always end up frustrated & having to check the ohmmeter anyhow, just to see whether the problem was a broken/intermittent connection or just a flaky beeper.

Luckily on a circuit as simple as a switch or three it's just as easy (and nearly as intuitive) to watch for the display to suddenly jump from "nothing" to "something" - or something to nothing - and know that a connection has been made or broken. Tap the bare leads together to see what continuity acts like on the display, then poke at the switches until it does something similar. Then, if you really want the full experience, you can shriek "BEEP!" when it trips and drive the pets crazy.



-Bats
( I couldn't figure out why I was having so much trouble stringing words together to type this... then I realized it was 1am and I hadn't eaten yet today. clearly my brain is on strike for better working conditions )