I got a good solid evening in today.
I decided to drill the holes to attach the Y-axis rail, because it was bothering me. That was pretty easy, although I busted a 1/8″ drill bit. Probably needed a new one of those anyway. Both the holes in the table and the holes in the angle went fine, and everything lined up without much drama at all. Oh, I installed one set of cross-dowels backwards. oh well. I’ll pop those around at some point.
Once the rails were on, I could concentrate on the Big Problem, boring out the holes for the Y-transmission nut (which are cut in the Z-gantry bottom, naturally). I decided to do it by running a drill bit through the axis bearing, and pressing the piece up against the end stops. That worked fine. The Y-leadscrew went in fine, without rubbing on anything. nice. The Y-transmission nut took a little work, mostly to get the hold-down bolts in place with the minimal room I had left (and without uninstalling too much stuff). Once that was done, I hooked up a drill to the Y-screw and had fun running the Z-gantry back and forth. Cool!
I decided to get the X-transmission nut installed, too. A short digression on my WA workspace.
I am trying to stay as low-profile as possible, since this is Not My Shop. So I brought as many of my own tools as I could, and cleared out my own space in my father-in-law’s shop. I did borrow a couple of sawhorses to set up the rig on, but if you can imagine trying to balance a 3/4″ piece of plywood edge-on atop a sawhorse, and then do another one 4′ away at the same time, well, you get an idea of what I’m dealing with. I look forward to getting this thing back on the table at home. In addition, the space I cleared out is large enough for the machine, but only barely. It has about 1′ of room on the machine’s right, about 2′ of space on the left, about 6″ of space (or less) in front, and a decent amount of space (3′ or so) to the rear. It’s a tight fit, and there is not a lot of room for a person to maneuver around the machine, so every move takes a little forethought.
I appreciate my father-in-law’s generosity, letting me take up a decent sized chunk of floor space in his shop. I’m just saying that it’s a scramble, OK? Back to the show.
I decided to install the X-transmission nut in the same way as the Y, run the gantry all the way to one end, mark the spot through the bearing (I tried directly drilling; between the end stop on the rails, and the transmission nut being centered in the Y-gantry bottom, my bit wasn’t long enough. Workarounds. So I put down a pencil mark, ran the gantry back out, and drilled the hole. I was doing a 3/4″ hole because the 5/8″ hole had been giving me problems in Y, in retrospect, 5/8″ would probably have worked just fine here. No biggie. The nut went in fine, I needed to throw some washers on the hold-down bolts, a fine idea that I will probably implement in Y at some point. I used the drill to run the axis back and forth, and marveled at my working X-axis!
I installed the fully-complete motor mounts on the Y-axis. I temporarily installed the almost-complete motor mounts on the X-axis (they need counterbored holes for the motor mount screws).
I installed the rails on the Z-axis (they are held on by friction). I have decided the the bottom Z-gantry side is OK at its current width, although it will be a tight squeeze. I may still cut it down a little while I’m cutting out the final pieces.
At this point, I have a 99% complete X-axis and a complete Y-axis. The Y-axis simply awaits the motor to be installed. The X-axis needs holes counterbored for same.
I suppose I could have done the counterboring, but I decided to hold off.
Instead, I moved on to the PC, intending to clean it up a little and get the software installed, so I could test out the new cables I built the night before last.
After wiggling the table a little to see if it would support the PC (seemed promising), I got the PC hooked up and turned on, and that’s when I found out that my mouse is dead. sigh. The PC also needs to be wiped. It was complaining about low disk space, and it’s generally unhappy. I spent some time deleting stuff, and finding all my old junk on the machine, seeing if there is anything worth salvaging. There is some stuff, so I will continue my testing while I’m in WA, then save off all the stuff I want to keep once I get back to CA. Actually, I could probably blow away a memory card and fill one up (a 32GB card would pretty much get anything off of the 80GB HDD I wanted). We’ll see how that goes. I got myself about 8GB, then gave up in frustration when the mouse really wasn’t going to work.
I tried the mouse out on my Macbook and it’s really dead. sigh. I knew I should have brought one of the wireless mouses.
Topping the todo list:
– counterbore the motor mount holes in X (that will complete X)
– cut the router gantry pieces
– drill the Z-motor mounts (including counterbores)
– cut the Z-axis screw to final length (keep the “good” end)
– install motors
– borrow usable mouse
– archive PC files to memory card (archive memory card files to Macbook first)
– install CNC software on PC
– test cables
– install router
The end of the build is getting really close. I can taste it.