Started making side shields and tops tonight. Cut the left side, and started bolting it together. Cutting the side shields as one piece, 1524mm, that will cover everything from front mount to rear mount. Adding 2 rows of m5 screws through the plate to attach to the C-beams and to screw the exterior plate to the 1/4” spacer at the bottom and the angle at the top. The angle will also attach to the top of the c-beam.

side shield attached temporarily. Waiting on the longer screws to attach it completely, but the side is attached to the angle and the spacer at the bottom.



Putting as many screws as I did was probably overkill, but there is 1 screw every 100mm connecting to the frame, and between them a screw attaching the shield to the angle and spacer. So a screw every 50mm.


Was happy to be able to cut from both directions on the long pieces and have everything meet up as designed. Have not done multi side cuts till today.



new ball screws ordered, new steppers here, changing out everything when the screws arrive. The new design for the ball screws will be fixed on both ends so I will be able to drive quicker. Will also change end switches out to optical at the same time.

also changed the shop vac out for a true dust collector with a separate cyclone, running a 4” hose while way through.

Done a lot of aluminum cutting for work and loving the results!

 

New ball screw showed up today. Changing from the 1604’s to 1610’s. At the same time, adding some new parts to the machine. Linear rail brackets to remove the through screws that come through the c-beams. New milled mounting block for the ball nut to the plates, new end plates for x/y axis to allow for new ball screws to be fixed under tension.


This will allow both ends to be hard mounted. And at the same time will make the end plates a bit thick to allow a one piece mount to the C-beam and the 2040 frame across the front and back.

 

Cutting new c-beam end plates tonight. 1st one done. Not exactly happy with it. But it will work.
If the 2nd goes better, I’ll recut this one. But you can see what I’m doing.


Basically taking the BK12 fixed end that came with the new ball screw, taking the retainer/spacer/and bushing and mounting it to the new plate. The bearing that I’m using is a dual row sealed angular contact bearing with the m12 nut. This will lock the ball screw in nicely.

Anyone have a recommendation for how to coat the aluminum easily. anodized/power coated/etc.

 

New end plate mounted to screw. 1 double row angle contact bearing, 1 thrust bearing, all locked in place with with the 12mm nut and set screw. This will allow me to put some tension on the screw.



Now to install them.

 

New brackets are completed. Decided to make new mounts for the motors and make them for both nema23 and NEMA24’s. The 23’s will mount rotated 45 degrees.

installing tonight. Need to go get some more screws from the local HD.

 

Building a new controller based off of the GRBL-ESP32 and the 6-pack board. This will allow me to add a rotary A-axis.


I’ll post more after the different modules come. Changing from a 0-10v control for the spindle to an rs485 and one relay for a 4 pack 5v output module.

 

New controller finished. Staying with the 0-10 for now. Added more 5v signal ports. Can now control 5 external IoT devices independently. 4 end stops, one on each of the Y axis so I can do gantry squaring, probe, start, hold, and a enclosure door switches.

will be installed tomorrow or Thursday night and then we’ll see how it handles the work.

I have room for 2 more steppers, so I will be adding a rotary now.

 

It’s either twisted, or shielded. I don’t want to have problems with emi in a run. And I’ll even isolate the power feeds onto different circuits for the different power feeds. (1 for the 48v power supplies, 1 for the 12v power supply, and the 220v for the spindle.)

 

i am using optical end stops.


I have one on the bottom of the X axis on both sides to work for the Y axis’s. Just have a small angle mounted at both end on the Y to trip the sensor. For the X/z, they are attached to the X/Z plate and same angles on the X/z axis to trip. These are normally closed, so adds a bit of protection. If there is a switch/wiring problem, it will open the circuit and stop the machine. And, since the switches all have their own signal port, I know which Y axis switch is erroring out.

as for auto squaring. I’ll let you know when I install the controller tonight/tomorrow. And. A nice thing is that Bart lives in the local area, so if I need something it takes 1 day via mail. Normal snail mail.

 

Playing hookie today. Decided to start putting the new parts on.



Liking the results!

 

Did a quick hook up tonight of the new controller setup. Ran a job and am happy.

when I did some initial testing earlier this week, I didn’t like the heat in the enclosure, so I added bigger fans, 2x 120mm, on blowing in one blowing out. Also added 100m40x20mm heat sync on the stepper drivers.



Need to clean up the wiring but. Temperature is nice. Hottest the stepper drivers got was about 30c, before it was about 48-50c. So big reduction in temperature. CPU on the controller was running about 56c, and now it’s about 48c. Fans for the controller will be here tomorrow.

I havnt run the full speed yet, and I don’t think I will try to find the max speed. I did a quick back and forth on the Y axis@ 8000mm/min, 0-1300-0 x10 times, and the start and stop position was perfect.

Should be completely done with the additions tomorrow. Need to finish the X axis. (Change ball screw from 1604 to 1610.)

 

The BK/BF end mounts are good. They just need to have the alignment set and be precise. If you can get them aligned correctly, and keep everything square, they will work great. I went to the custom end plates to get everything more precise. And the outcome has been great for me.

since changing to the captive ends on both ends of the new ball screws, I have really had some great success. I have changed both y and the x to 1610 screws and the speed and power of the all axis’ has increased. Ok, maybe it had to do more with the new closed loop steppers, but I’ll put it as a combination of all.

I’ll post more on the end results shortly, work has been nuts.

 

I created an aluminum plate to use as a template to drill with. I have changed the design a bit since my last post and used the template as a mounting plate for the linear rail. It added an additional amount of rigidity to the c-beam. These plates were made on the machine.

 

Been a while since I have upgraded anything on my machine, so I started a new project. I am changing the Z axis to a more rigid axis and reinforcing the X axis. I am also adding some protection to the X axis to keep dust and aluminum chips away from the Linear Rails and screws. This is the Z axis ready to mount and a new Drag Chain tray that will attach to the top of the X axis. The Drag Chain axis will stiffen up the top C-Beam quite a bit, and will add the same to the bottom of the bottom C-Beam shortly. This change will allow the last of the open loop stepper to be changed to a closed loop.

This has been a fun project from beginning to end, and I have learned a lot from this community. I greatly appreciate the help that everyone has given me over this project!

Last items to add to this and call it done is a rotary axis and a High power laser diode. I am looking at a 30W Blue laser that will do just about everything that I could need it to do!

 

I bought the ball screws from a Chinese company. They custom made them for me because I wanted different end geometries than standard, so I could do a captive end to n both sides and put the ball screw under tension. Similar to the tensioning for some acme screws.

 

Which plates do you want files for? I have them in Vectric Aspire, so I could export the dxf.