Cool look!

 

Just curious - are you going to have another Y gantry to replace that short support piece on the right? Super build, btw!!

 

I distinctly remember the post saying something about a video somewhere???
BTW, this is freakin' awesome!!

 

What's the total usable volume on this thing? Or do you not know what your spindle setup is going to be yet? The machine itself looks really clean so far!

I also have 5-axis plans, temporarily on hold because it'll cost about $6-8k or so (turns out, BT30 spindles, not so cheap... ), but it could be nice to have a cheap'n'easy option for non-metals in the meantime to start attacking that infamous 5-axis learning curve....

 

I think the way you have it is perfect, personally- you don't want to pile up too many axes on one chain or you end up with hefty cumulative tolerances that can be hard to chase down. Y-table with rotary and z-x for the spindle is my plan too, since it keeps things balanced on each side. Originally I was going to flip the x and y and keep it like a rotated vertical machining center, based on this image of an Okuma:



But once you add the tombstones for the trunnion, you've lost a LOT of x travel- a big deal when you're talking 25mm rail and epoxy pours- and it's clearly visible that each moving body would be dimensionally better on the opposite axis. You don't lose any rigidity, but you gain a fair bit of working travel.

I'm also thinking 500w for a non-metal machine. 800W would comfortably do aluminum if you set up the rest of the machine appropriately.

It's not the building or the understanding of 5-axis that's difficult, it's actually running them. The CAM for true simultaneous 5 is a whole 'nother world, apparently. A lot of highly experienced machinists avoid them where possible and stick to 4-axis or 4+1 for multi-sided parts. That's probably more my plan too, sticking to 4+1 as much as possible, but I'm there would occasionally be a part that really would benefit from simultaneous 5 (impellers, sculptures, etc). When you're trying to keep the side of the ballnose end mill in the work rather than the tip for better chipload, it somewhat limits your kinematics and you end up forced to use the fifth axis.

The trunnion assembly? Looks fine to me. I'd just be wary of overloading the belts (I'm assuming it's belt, not chain) on larger diameters where you might have nasty torque multipliers, especially if you're trying to plough through with 800W.

F360 will likely stay free for hobbyists. Autodesk can make some dubious decisions like any other software company (*cough*Adobe*cough*) but I think they're best served by keeping people coming into their pipeline so they'll end up paying customers. Since F360 Ultimate is about $6k a year or whatever, the $100k business threshold makes sense. Seems likely they're gonna keep it rolling how it is. The backlash and loss of goodwill if they change it might be difficult to bear if they're aware of any competition.

 

Wow, Looks awsome,