progress

Hard to believe it’s been two months, but the holidays are crazy and the cold set in a bit sooner and harder than is normal for Georgia, so my days in the garage have been sparse (I know excuses, excuses…). But I have made good use of the time I have had and I am happy to announce that all of the parts are cut, drilled (~100 cross dowel connections), and ready to assemble.

This is my first time going from a 3d drawing to a physical machine, which very exciting for me. I expect things should move relatively quick from this point on, since I believe I have everything else I need. I may decide to buy some new motors rather than pulling the ones off the Rockcliff Model ‘D’, as they are only 116oz and I was planning on putting 2 on the X axis to handle moving the gantry, it would be a lot easier with just 3 more powerful motors.

Hopefully I will make enough weekly progress to make posting worth while, this should not take more than a month even for me.

Here are a few pics of the parts waiting for assembly… Let it begin… let it begin!!!

Wow, six months since I last posted something, not sure what happen there.  I guess between work, family, home improvement, and critter control (bats in the attic vents) the time just whizzed by, kind of depressing…  But no I am not dead yet, and neither is the new build, in fact it should have its maiden flight in the next week if I don’t break something again.

I left off in the last post with having just cut some new parts to replace one that I broke while running some tests…  well after sanding, priming and painting those…  I was unable to fit everything thing together due not pre-fitting the pipes before I started assembly, it was too tight and I split the pieces trying to pull it apart…  there is no photographic evidence, but it wasn’t pretty when I was done with the rubber mallet.  Re-cut the parts, drill, sand, prime paint… and I split both of pieces clamping down the z axis pipes… not happy.  At this point I went back to the previous version of the parts, I did not sand anything, but did prime and paint, and I had no issues with the assembly, of course the parts are rough looking, but it is together.

So the next step was to mount the router.  I purchased a Rigid R2400 back in January, but looking at the router and the machine, I realized I had been thinking about the Dewalt DW660 when I design the mounting plate.  The DW660 is a much longer tool than the R2400, so I could not use all 4 holes that I had planned for mounting the router.  I ended up cutting a simple clamping mount out of some Trex decking I had left over from re-cutting the lead nut carriers,  I think it came out well and it seems plenty solid.

No, I am not dead.Read More »