Gavztheouch's Mk2 Laser

Post your build logs here

Re: Gavztheouch's Mk2 Laser

Postby educa » Sat Jun 23, 2012 12:16 pm

Bent ballscrew ? RETURN TO SENDER! You don't pay that amount of $$$ for a bent screw
educa
 
Posts: 239
Joined: Thu Dec 22, 2011 9:13 pm

Re: Gavztheouch's Mk2 Laser

Postby gavztheouch » Sat Jun 23, 2012 2:43 pm

Picked up some 10mm aluminium tooling plate today. I intend to use this for various brackets and mounting surfaces on the redesign. Its very hard, unlike most alu I've seen before and it has a ring to it when struck. Hope it won't be too hard going for my router.

P1050677.jpg
P1050676.jpg
Timothy hay for rabbits delivered over the UK http://www.timothyhay.co.uk
gavztheouch
 
Posts: 144
Joined: Sun Dec 12, 2010 11:08 am
Location: (Stirling) UK

Re: Gavztheouch's Mk2 Laser

Postby gavztheouch » Sat Jun 23, 2012 6:26 pm

Tearing down the current laser build in prep for ball screw installment.

Timothy hay for rabbits delivered over the UK http://www.timothyhay.co.uk
gavztheouch
 
Posts: 144
Joined: Sun Dec 12, 2010 11:08 am
Location: (Stirling) UK

Re: Gavztheouch's Mk2 Laser

Postby gavztheouch » Sun Jun 24, 2012 2:59 pm

Dual servo motors running off one lightobject DSP port.

Timothy hay for rabbits delivered over the UK http://www.timothyhay.co.uk
gavztheouch
 
Posts: 144
Joined: Sun Dec 12, 2010 11:08 am
Location: (Stirling) UK

Re: Gavztheouch's Mk2 Laser

Postby gavztheouch » Thu Jun 28, 2012 9:36 pm

Routing out the aluminium tooling plate to form the linear rail mounting brackets.

Timothy hay for rabbits delivered over the UK http://www.timothyhay.co.uk
gavztheouch
 
Posts: 144
Joined: Sun Dec 12, 2010 11:08 am
Location: (Stirling) UK

Re: Gavztheouch's Mk2 Laser

Postby SpacedCowboy » Fri Jun 29, 2012 4:33 am

Bit of an aside: what spindle-speed, depth-per-pass, ipm and drill do you use for routing out Al ? I'm going to have to do some soon, and I've never routed Al. Are you using any coolant or directed air blown / sucked to help out ?

Cheers,
Simon.
SpacedCowboy
 
Posts: 41
Joined: Sat Nov 06, 2010 4:44 pm

Re: Gavztheouch's Mk2 Laser

Postby gavztheouch » Fri Jun 29, 2012 8:24 am

Simon, this was my first attempt, but these are the settings that worked best for me. I used mm/min

Plunge speed was kept at 40mm/min for all cuts. The router complained most when the plunge speed was much higher than 40.

Spindle speed was set as low as I could set it before I heard any strange noises. Wood routers like the little Bosch are not ideal as they generally spin way too fast for aluminium cutting.

Pass depth was 1mm.

End mill was a 5mm carbide up cutting bit.

No coolant or directed air.

Speed was 100mm/min for the holes then 300mm/min for profiled outside.

The aluminium was also a free machining type.
Timothy hay for rabbits delivered over the UK http://www.timothyhay.co.uk
gavztheouch
 
Posts: 144
Joined: Sun Dec 12, 2010 11:08 am
Location: (Stirling) UK

Re: Gavztheouch's Mk2 Laser

Postby SpacedCowboy » Fri Jun 29, 2012 6:04 pm

Thanks :) Much appreciated :)

Simon
SpacedCowboy
 
Posts: 41
Joined: Sat Nov 06, 2010 4:44 pm

@ Spaced Cowboy : Routing Aluminium

Postby gavztheouch » Wed Jul 04, 2012 11:32 am

Spaced Cowboy, I routed out a few more parts yesterday.

I had problems routing out the outer profiles at a speed of 300mm/min the alu melted and stuck to the bit causing the router to stall. Slowing down the router to 120mm/min for all cuts seem to work better. My spindle speed was about 17,000 Rpm.
Timothy hay for rabbits delivered over the UK http://www.timothyhay.co.uk
gavztheouch
 
Posts: 144
Joined: Sun Dec 12, 2010 11:08 am
Location: (Stirling) UK

Idea for laser gantry alignment safety feature.

Postby gavztheouch » Wed Jul 04, 2012 11:54 am

I have a motor and a screw on each side of the gantry. If one motor decides to move and leave the other behind, it was cause damage to multiple parts of the laser.

I have an idea to create a safety system to de-power the servo drives if the gantry runs out of parallel. It would be based on an ardunino laser trip wire project of which there are many iterations online, here is one for example



Like the example above I would have the laser mounted one side of the gantry and an LDR connected to the other side.

When the gantry moves out of alignement the laser would move off target and sound the alarm, instead of a buzzer I would have a relay which would supply 12v to the servo enable pins.
Timothy hay for rabbits delivered over the UK http://www.timothyhay.co.uk
gavztheouch
 
Posts: 144
Joined: Sun Dec 12, 2010 11:08 am
Location: (Stirling) UK

PreviousNext

Return to Build Logs

Who is online

Users browsing this forum: No registered users and 4 guests

cron