I figured I should start up a buildlog for my most recent project. I recently acquired a used chinese cnc table router from my work. (it is basically the same unit that
automation technologies sells) I saw it in the back one day marked "For Disposal" and offered to take it off their hands. The unit was in pretty rough condition, and was missing motors and drivers. They removed the spindles and used them for custom pick and place machines to assemble/waterproof our products. Since this was their first/prototype machine it was pretty much covered in half hardened epoxy and had a lot of modifications and parts missing.
- Initial condition...
After spending a couple weeks going through countless paint scrapers, shop cloths, and acetone I managed to get all the epoxy off of the table (and the t slots). I also removed the stock rubber sheets that come pre-attached to the cnc, not really sure why you would want this material but I guess it is a kind of sacrificial layer (even though it is glued on and isn't replaceable). I also don't really understand why they painted the aluminum table surface in the first place.
- Table surface before cleanup.
I don't plan on repainting the table surface, but I am going to give the stand a nice coat of black after I get it cleaned up.
- The clean table surface.
- CNC on my fancy rolling cart.
Luckily my work happened to keep the spindles and vfd drives for the machines which will save me a lot of money. Luckily the unit also shipped with a 110V to 220V transformer because the vfd drive requires 220V. I do still need to source some stepper motors and stepper drivers. I plan on using either Gecko
G201X's or
G251X's depending on my motor rating. I cant decide if I should get the 3.5A
280oz-in motors or the 5A
400oz-in motors. I have already purchased a 48V 10A power supply which should be sufficient but might be cutting it close.
- Driving the spindle at 400hz.
- My power supplies and din distribution blocks. (220VAC 110VAC 48VDC 12DC)
As for control I plan on using Mach3 (already own it because of my laser cutter) and because I am out of fast computers with parallel ports I will most likely get a USB controller like the
KFLOP (and not a smoothstepper thanks macona). I already bought another cable track for the X gantry, but I still need to buy everything to build the spindle liquid cooling system.
I still have a decent amount of work to do to get this thing up and running but hopefully I should have it going in a couple more weeks. As an update
my laser has been doing great my tube just passed its first birthday so hopefully I can get another year out of it. I am looking forward to being able to cut things other than acrylic, but I still love the laser for its ease of use and cut quality. As for
my hadron I still havent finished wiring it up been really lazy recently but I did preorder the
Azteeg X3 and couldn't resist his heated platform so if anyone wants to buy my never used (or even soldered too)
Ultimachine Prusa heated bed let me know.