That looks nice @Steven_Kirby .
The ballscrews I bought are the typical ebay 1605 series. They’re fairly cheap but do the job. Funny enough, my company’s susidiary is a ballscrew manufacturer but ours are WAY too expensive… The steppers I’m running are NEMA 23’s but I have external drivers for them. They run at about 4 amps and can deliver 3Nm of force. To get enough torque out of them I had to set the acceleration really low (around 75mm/sec). I’m still not sure if they’re big enough. I did really have to think twice about 3d printing parts for this build. Currently the only parts that are 3d printed are the stepper spacers. I wanted it to be as strong as possible. You’re right about the headache/design time/cost. Although I bought everything spead out over the year, it’s become quite the investment. I didn’t want to end up wanting/needing more out of it. I hope to do a major spindle upgrade down the road and be able to cut aluminum.
I too was looking for a straight forward build. My approach was to do as little fabricating as possible. The entire design was based around materials that fit the design. How nice would it be to go nuts and have everything made to suite though! Maybe one of these days.
It seems like I always find a bottleneck in the electronics. I’m very mechanically versed but have only been in the electronics field for a few years and always seem to find myself in over my head… LOL. This is how we learn though…
Cheers @Chuck_Comito . Yeah it’s a bit of a lottery with the Chinese stuff. Most of what I get from there these days ain’t too bad, but this VFD drive is a lemon! It actually had a literal “offshore stink” to it (in the words of AvE), it stank of petroleum. I did buy the absolute cheapest combo I could though so, lesson learned!
I take it you work for an engineering firm then? I’m a lab technician at a university myself but we have a pretty decent engineering department and our fellow engineering technicians always sort us out with favours. The perks of the job!
So you literally do have the most powerful nema 23s available. There’s another set with similar dimensions that will deliver 2.4 Nm at a measly 1.8A. I was considering these as a way to save on external drivers but then i ended up getting bundled motors with more demanding requirements so external drivers it was.
I was initially going to build MPCNC, I liked the idea of bootstrapping something more robust from a machine I’d been able to make with my printers. The more I researched things though I just thought I’d cause myself loads of needless expense and time so I dropped that idea in favour of building a more robust machine at the outset. Aside from the drag chains only my spindle mount is 3D printed, It uses hose clamps to get everything snug and tbh it’s pretty sturdy. Project number 1 will be to cut a proper mount from aluminium though, which this machine claims to be able to do out of the box (to an accuracy of 0.2mm at the very least). Now I can use the machine to fab custom plates for ballscrews and since I’m fond of modding stuff I’m gonna see how far I can get re-engineering it. Ultimately though, I’ll probably end up using it to build something much more robust out of stronger materials. there’s likely only so far you can go with V-slot extrusion and polycarbonate wheels.
I guess in industry each part of the design and manufacture is handled by a dedicated team of experts. Kinda impossible to keep up with that as a home-gamer. I haven’t the foggiest about coding tbh, I mean, I can mess with other people’s stuff edit configs etc. but it’s really an Achilles heel for me. I’m not formally trained in any of this though. I learned my craft just having a pop at fixing broken lab equipment, way I see it if it’s broken there’s no harm in having a go at fixing it, even if you break it more in the process. Turns out I’m not half bad at that! (The fixing that is) My Grandfather was an engineer and an absolute maestro on the lathe by all accounts. Back when this country was actually renowned for it’s engineering prowess. I think it’s in my blood, as soon as I’d designed my first 3D printer upgrade and saw it working, that was it. I’ve spent almost every waking minute and probably too many minuets I should have been sleeping, learning about machining.
Cheers for sending the documentation link. I did receive a paper copy of the “catalogue” XD with the drive. Trouble is it’s completely useless. It’s badly translated and the descriptions of some of the settings are completely indecipherable. Also no mention of the modbus protocol. There’s settings related to it but nothing about the specific codes the drive uses. :’(
Any sign of your new board? Did you get a chance to try out the spindle module yet?
Sounds like we have similar backgrounds. My father was an engineer and I’ve been fixing mechanical and electrical things my entire life. Even before I knew a resistor was a resistor. I also can mess with other peoples stuff pretty good. Funny enough is that most of my friends think I’m a genius… Little do they know that there are lots of people way smarter than I. LOL.
My board is currently “out for delivery”. I’m hoping its at my front door when I get off work!
In regards to the “home-gamer”, you’re right. But good thing we have lots of people online to contribute.
I have a pretty extensive 3D modelling career behind me and I’m now venturing into CAM. Fusion 360 seems to be the ticket as it’s very familiar coming from an Autodesk background… With any luck, I’ll throw the new config file on the SD card after a firmware load and be off and running tonight!! The first thing I plan to machine is a touch probe assembly. I think I’ll get the most use out it on the CNC router… At a very minimum I’ll build a Z offset plate tonight and get the code sorted.
Ha, yeah same here. Although in my early years I’m pretty sure I broke more of my toys than I fixed. I get similar genius comments from the better half. I’m like “yeah maybe by comparison to you I am”
I hope your board shows up soon.
Yeah the internet is a fantastic place! All kinds of information out there! I really envy the kids of today having the internet we have now as a resource. Back when I was a school it was dial-up modems and you were charged by the minute. My dad would let me go online for about 5 minutes and I’d probably spend that time downloading south park audio snippets to customise my windows sounds or something equally retarded.
Yeah I’ve been learning Fusion also. Started off with Tinkercad because I had to make stuff NOW! and didn’t want to get bogged down by a steep learning curve. Since the new year though I’ve been using fusion, did a few tutorials to get my head around the basics and now I’m just learning by making designs and figuring out the features I need to use to facilitate my ideas. The parametric penny dropped the other day and it was like an epiphany! Now I can get from an idea to a functional prototype in maybe 2 iterations tops, there was a lot more trial and error with Tinkercad. Fusion is so much more powerful and I know there’s a ton more features I’ve not even used yet that will improve workflow. I’ve not looked at the CAM yet though. I’m guessing that’s going to be a little more involved than using a slicer with all the different types of tooling these machines can use. But, I’ve built the machine now so I’ve no choice but to figure it out, probably at the expense of a lot of endmills! At least now I know who’s brain to pick when I’m struggling with fusion.
That’s something I still need to do actually a touchplate. I figure you can just Macgyver something together out of a washer a crocodile clip and a few bits of wire?
