Hi Kyo great build.

One thought with the BOM is it worth while for a couple of the parts to list what would be needed as additional purchase vs what you would get with things like the wheel kits. e.g. the nyloc nuts you have listed that you need 52 but you get at one with each wheel kit and backlash block. So you don't really need to buy any as they come with each each of the wheel kits / Backlash nuts.

I have some plates on order so next week will hopefully get something built.

 

Cool tooling plate, don't crash in to it

Going to drill and tap holes for holding or just make a spoilboard to go on top?

 

Man, Kyo , you don't do anything half-fast!

 

Pics please Kyo! (as if you wouldn't)

 

I knew you would have some!

I'm looking forward to seeing the rest of them soon.

Thanks bro, keep up the good work!

 

You've got a laser too?

 

Hi Kyo
I have finally finished my cbeam and have done my first practice cut, this Machine is so cool. On my practice cut for some reason it cut across the plywood on the the first outside pass, not sure why but I'll figure it out. You were right in the response to my first post there is a lot of things to

 

Great one, had an abandoned C-Beam project last year. Will be Building an 1000 x 1000mm based on your design this time. It look so great with all your details explainatuon and best of all a step by step manual.

Have shot Chris with an email regarding the plates, waiting for his reply. Can't wait to get started.

Thanks Kyo for the design and build sharing, cheers

 

Hi Kyo
As for your question about safe travel height, I did not have it set but will next cut wouldn't want to waste a nice piece of alum or copper. This thing is a new experience for the fab is easy the electronics are kicking my butt, lol but if you read enough it all falls into place Thanks again Brian

 

@Kyo this is the very kind of answer that'd deserve a dedicated resource page ! Thanks a lot for taking time for our education

 

This projoct is coming along great and i cant wait to cut my plates and build this one. I just wanted wanted to add that i may be a good idea to use the C-Beam Shields to cover the upper rail from things getting in the wheel tracks. I know you already cut the plates but i thought it could be a good idea for anyone else making it. I have some other ideas ill try to make up this week regarding the stiffness of the gantry.

 

Hey i had some time this morning to add a 20x60 to the X- axis. Maybe its overkill but i figure it would stiffen it a little and give support for a cable chain on the X-axis. Im not that good a 3D modeling but here is the new file. Maybe someone can add the bolts and the holes in the plates that hold the 20x60 extrusion on.

 

The extra beam is only going to stiffen slightly against x gantry downward deflection and make sure the y gantry plates will maintain parallelism. Most of the x gantry deflection is torsional in my experience. So rigidity wise, not very useful, but very good as a cable chain support which is a must in my opinion.

 

I agree with EvanBruner. Not going to do much for torsional (twisting) rigidity on the X axis. Still trying to figure out how to stiffen the C-Beam up. It's plenty stiff lengthwise, but not so much torsionally.

It would be pretty hard to stiffen the c-beam up torsionally by adding another extrusion or plate behind it without making the sandwich too wide for the wheel assemblies. I did have an idea to use threaded spacers in the center between the wheels, and using a bolt from each side. This way you could increase wheel spacing quite a bit without having extremely long bolts. Or, if you have the room for nuts, use threaded rod instead of bolts for wheel axles.

I also thought about using tension rods (threaded rod through the extrusion pockets lengthwise, then torque them to put the beam under tension), but I'm not sure if this would help torsion wise. My gut feeling is that it wouldn't do much, but I'm not a mechanical engineer. It would certainly make it stiffer longitudinally, but that's not really a problem. I want to test this and see what happens...

MG

 

Possibly fill internal cavities with some sort of epoxy or mortar?

 

Maybe since there are no wheels on one side we can bolt a pice of 1/4" steel with T nuts and recessed bolts or something to the back of the C-beam and space the z axis a little further out?

I do t thing filling the cavity of the c-beam with anything will help. Maybe at first but as soon as the matching starts vibrating while it runs it will separate from the inside of the smooth aluminum. Just my 2 cents

 

Btw this is my current setup...

 

Granite epoxy filling extrusions has been talked about a lot on other forums and the concensus seems to be that they won't do much other than reducing resonance. The cross section of the epoxy would be too small to add any sort of meaningful rigidity. If you have resonance issues, it's a cheap solution though.

 

Hey KYO,
Do you think you can upload a Sketchup file for the Z-axis plate and cover? Every time i import STL to sketchup i get all these lines that i can't fix

 

Kyo Where'dya get the sexy braided wire cover?