The coupler on my Z axis came loose and started making an awful noise. I was able to reach up in side and tighten it again. Get the spider straight and everything.
But it was still making noise so I decided to switch the motors and see if I burnt up the motor. When I unscrewed the motor and lifted it off the axis fell and hit the table before I could grab it. I mean it was moving with a lot of speed.
So I don’t know if I burned up the motor but I definitely burned up the brake.
The tool in the spindle broke when it hit the table but the dust manifold is fine despite being mostly plastic. So that is a good thing.
Sorry, I am not in a good mood right now. If I sound cranky, I am. Just not at you. All of the problems I have had with this machine has been with these vertical axis.
I don’t think its a power problem. Even my overloaded axis is way lighter than the stepper motors and ball screw can handle.
No, its too small of a set screw on the brake and couplers. To compound this problem it is virtually impossible to monitor the system without disassembly of the axis.
Add to this this the lower strength screws which strip so easily. Yeah, I just spent over an hour drilling out screws on these things… again… for like the 4th or 5th time…
I get scared every time I strip a screw on the slotted plate that holds the spindle. If you can’t take that plate off you will have to cut the middle screw head off on the red cover plates on each side to remove the axis. It get exponentially worse if you have two of the axis together. The center part with the two red covers is a pain in the… sitter.
So now I can’t figure out what is wrong with the brake. I am going to put the motors back on and see if the noise follows the motor.
Nothing will break the beefiest stepper quicker than a off-center on that shaft. I think I killed that motor by not stopping immediately when the noise started.
I’m not disagreeing with you, and I sympathize with your mood - I’ve been there before too. I’m just thinking, having TWO things keeping the spindle from dropping is safer than just one. In fact, with the springs, if anything falls off or breaks , the spindle falls UP out of the way.
Plus, the springs are on the outside so can be visually inspected easily.
(and yes, I have almost stripped one of those ten tiny screws too, so I have to be careful when removing them now )
Ah, ok. I see what you are talking about now. My brain was in a different place. Maybe so? This brake has been a real pain in the butt. Now the coupler?
Now I am taking the vertical axis apart before each session? That just doesn’t sound right.
I can check if I burned up a motor tomorrow night… ugh.
Have you thought about using a brake for the motor? Originally I had the Avid 8 H.P. motor and after shutting down the machine the Z axis would slowly drop. The brake on the Z axis screw wouldn’t hold. Here is a link to the break.
I looked at brakes before springs, but the power they use when not braking was pretty high for something that just sat there and did nothing all the time.
The springs don’t require power, keep the spindle from dropping, and let the motors have an easier time of it. If they weren’t dangerous to install they’d be a no-brainer.
This project has proven hard to beach but I think I am down to the final testing. The dust manifold is working, the carousel is spot on, the software is usable but will only become better with time.
All that is left to do is get the support site set up and the write the documentation.
“Regarding legal documentation, reverse engineering is often prohibited by end-user license agreements (EULAs). But the US Digital Millennium Copyright Act specifies that reversing a piece of software is legal if it is ’’done to improve compatibility with other products.”
All hardware is working as designed. No more changes. Waiting again on the powder coaters
Software is usable (software is never done so that is why I will be going with subscriptions when it is released).
The big challenge to the “end of April” deadline is the website. I have no desire to give Patreon or any of these other people my money so this is 100% direct to me website
RE: Website - you can pretty easily setup a WordPress site with WooCommerece. You only have to pay payment processing fees (ie: PayPal), around 2.9% or so. Let me know if you find a cheaper way to process payments!
I have chains on the 4 corners of the water table so I can take the 2 ton 86" engine crane and lift it onto the table. So my machine is a PRO60120 thus a 4x8 water table fits perfectly on the bottom leg braces under the machine.
The spoilboard (what in on the machine is just a 4x8 jig right now) or the flow-through fixture (against the wall) can me lifted with the crane as well. Give me a 1-man operation for most of that. The Flow-Through (FT) still does require 3 people to set the spoilboard though. I think I can weld up a crane attachment for the FT table but that’s a project for this summer
Yes, it is amazing just how clean your shop gets with a tuned dust manifold.
If I had mounted the springs all the way at the top, I could have bolted the ends up much higher and left room on the sides for mounting other things, too.
And yes, sawdust gets stuck in there. I clean it occasionally and assume a dust collection system will mostly solve that.
Are you talking about 3d printing jigs? I am intrigued . I’d like to see some ideas or links to using 3d printing to assist cnc. Sorry for the slow response time. I’m printing Corbin’s dust boot now.
I actually build all of this stuff in-house. My employees are all Angular 15 / Java 17+ / Spring Boot 3 on top of being PCI compliant. I have two employees who are full time and yes, I walked into their offices and ripped the rug out from under them twice so far, thus the delay.
The biggest change was firing PayPal + Braintree. What utter and complete garbage.
Stripe, Square, Amazon, Google Pay are all either cheaper or same price. Most offer more value-add services that PayPal + Braintree will never give you, for instance localized tax and filing.
Here is a sampling of slotted jigs (T-Slots), bench dogs, bench dogs with with vacuum fittings, vacuum hose fittings for flow through fixturing, stand offs (the star shaped doohickies to the right).
Most look like square blocks with a bite taken out of them. The coolest ones are the ones that fit the t-slot and have the brass M8 threaded inserts. They self-align and the parts made with those are every bit within the 0.0254 mm or 0.001 inch tolerance range of that X3 conversion.
I produce an incredible amount of plastic in my shop. Almost all of it is jigs and fixtures. In fact, I print jigs and fixtures to cut jigs and fixtures on the CNC!
A neat trick is to print extra thick walls and tops/bottoms and then come back in and mill it as close to perfect as you can. So you print it slightly larger than needed and the machinability of most printable plastics means you can creep into much closer tolerances than what the printer could achieve.
So my Ultimaker 5 is pretty reliably withing 0.15mm or about 0.0059 inches of what I need so I come in and secure the jig or fixture where it will live and then mill it perfect to the installation.
I knew a old guy who would always say, “I never spend time building jigs cuz they don’t fly.” But his airplanes were always the ugliest things!
Yes, he was right though, not spending the time building jigs did in fact increase his productivity with the actual subject, the aircraft he was building. He did in fact turn out many aircraft in the same period most would get halfway done.
Thus the power of the 3D printers and CNC machines! 90% of what I print is a jig or fixture. 90% of what I cut on the CNC are jigs and fixture for aircraft.
Now you CAN have that jig that “don’t fly” AND you can focus on the airplane! Ha! Yes, get the pretty and straight airplane and get it much faster.
)
