MegaMax is Too Noisy

As part of my effort to reduce the noise and vibration in the Y axis, I am going to try using a screw drive instead of the 5mm pitch belt.  I rescued a screw drive assembly from a big XY table but it uses a 200W servomotor for which I have neither power supply nor drive electronics.  Never fear!  The motor was a NEMA-34 size, so I designed an adapter to mount the NEMA-23 stepper that MegaMax uses in the NEMA-34 motor mount.  Next I needed a shaft coupler- the screw has a 9mm diameter attachment and the NEMA-23 motor has a 1/4″ shaft.

Adapter plate on NEMA-23 motor

Adapter plate on NEMA-23 motor

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

I used DesignSpark Mechanical to design the motor mount adapter and  flexible shaft coupler.  I uploaded the motor adapter to Thingiverse (http://www.thingiverse.com/thing:526424) and it proved surprisingly popular so I designed another that adapts a NEMA-23 mount for a NEMA-17 motor (http://www.thingiverse.com/thing:526443).  I had to make two attempts at the flexible shaft coupler- the first design proved a little too springy and flexible, so I tried again with a more beefy design.  It turns out it is pretty easy to design this sort of thing in DSM.  I probably spent 30 minutes on the first one and about 10 minutes on the second one.

I sliced in Cura because Slic3r was having some problems.  The prints look a little rough because of all the support material required to print the springs, but they work fine.

Flexible shaft couplers

Flexible shaft couplers- not-so-springy and super-springy.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Adapter and shaft coupler on motor

Adapter and shaft coupler on motor

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Motor mounted on screw assembly

Motor mounted on screw assembly

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

I’ll post an update when I get the screw mounted on the machine.

 

 

CNC Mogul Introduction

A few weeks ago Mike Stone of CNCMogul.com visited the Milwaukee Makerspace.

Mike donated one of his machines to the space for testing and feedback as well as to use for the membership. It should also be mentioned that Mike is local and has his shop and distribution in Wales, Wisconsin.

Joe Rodriguez built one machine and I also put one together at our shop at home. So here are some thoughts on the process as well as some pictures. It isn’t a review as these machines haven’t really been put to the test as of yet. Time will tell.

The CNC Mogul is a general purpose 3 axis CNC kit that is relatively easy to put together and can be used for anything that you like. I’ll be using ours for routing and Joe wants to make a CNC plasma cutter with the one in the space. The basic kit is affordable and it uses the Makerslide as it’s building blocks. The stepper motors are run with a rack and pinion setup on aluminum tracks and gearing as well.

The controller is a Chinese Tb6560 Stepper Motor Driver Controller that is controlled via parallel port.

The power supply is a 24V 14.6 AMP 350W Max Power Supply.

The whole kit can be ordered online from 2ft X 3ft up to 4ft X 8ft. Custom dimensions are also available.

So here is the kit before assembly. This is a 3ft x 3ft kit that I will be building and using with a router.

This is the kit right before opening.

This is the kit right before opening.

Inside the kit there are a bunch of baggies with tons of little parts. You can look at the manual here

I’m assembling the quad rail kit. Once I start pulling things out of the box there is an amazing array of parts that explodes out of it. Fortunately each bag and part are well marked.

Everything that you need to build your own CNC controlled machine.

Everything that you need to build your own CNC controlled machine.

cncmogul03

Everything is labeled really well.

Everything is labeled really well.

Everything is labeled really well.

Everything is labeled really well.

The kit took approximately 3+ hours to put together. The documentation in the manual is hit or miss. The pictures are extremely good and really help in putting this together. The accompanying text is also great for the first 1/3 of the manual and then you’re left to interpret pictures from there. There are a few questions that came up while building this but fortunately I was able to figure it out.

Little by little the parts are being built.

Little by little the parts are being built.

After the gantry gets built and all of the wires are connected it’s time to test. CNC Mogul recommends using Mach 3 for your machine control. And even has a few pointers on how to setup Mach 3 on their site.

I decided to go with LinuxCNC because it’s open source, I’m comfortable with Linux and it’s low cost (free). I loaded it up on a spare computer and after running through the instructions I was able to control the stepper motors on the Mogul.

What I had difficulty with is that the CNC Mogul uses an “A” axis and “Y” axis slaved together. LinuxCNC can do that but you can NOT test for that in the setting up process. You essentially tell the “A” axis to use the same step and direction pulses as the “Y” axis. I also inverted the “A” axis so they would turn the same direction when they are facing each other.

One of the other difficulties I had was figuring out the leadscrew pitch to enter into LinuxCNC. After some experimentation 1.27 inches per revolution seems about right but some more testing is needed.

Once you’re finished building the whole thing you need to mount it to something. I picked up a Craigslist find and the Mogul fit perfectly.

I generated some G-code from Vectric’s Vcarve Pro Zeroed each axis and started to cut.

I still need to put a waste board down and face it off flat and put some type of work hold-down system in place.

After the unit gets setup in the Makerspace the members will have access to the machine and we’ll see how durable it is.

The CNC Mogul with router mounted and ready to cut.

The CNC Mogul with router mounted and ready to cut.

Total time to build, test, and implement the whole system has been approximately 6 hours. There is still some testing and tweaking to be done as well as putting in a dust collection system.

If there are any questions feel free to ask me either on this post or in person. I’ll be putting this through it’s paces as well.

My 2nd test using the CNC Mogul with 2 types of router bits.

My 2nd test using the CNC Mogul with 2 types of router bits.

Gothic Arch Room Divider is Finished (Sort of….)

Sanctuary and More 102Silversark put together an amazing fashion show on Friday to showcase pieces she made inspired by church architecture and her trip to the Netherlands. This is something I cooked up for a background piece for the show.

The design work took several months and the actual creation of the piece took about a week, working 12-16 hours a day.  The frame is made from CNC routed aspen (thanks, Jason H.!) which is a rather “fuzzy” wood and required two days to hand finish, including the use of a set of needles files to smooth out the inset edges.

The acrylic panels were hand-stained with Gallery Glass stain and simulated liquid leading. They’re not quite finished yet, but I plan to complete the staining within the next week.

I’ll also be using this as a backdrop for various events including the Sustainability Summit coming up as well as the Concinnity sci-fi/gaming convention on April 5th. Additionally, this might be making its way to Embellishments in the Grand Avenue Mall for a window decoration.

I can’t wait to make another one!

Our 4′ X 8′ CNC Router takes a step forward!

With a lot of hard work from Ed H. and Steve P. our 4′ x 8′ CNC router has achieved a milestone, instead of the X axis sitting on the ground it has taken a leap up and is now mounted, ready for the Y and Z axis to be mounted to it along with the electronics and motion control.

beam mounted

The X-axis is ready to be milled here.

The X-axis is ready to be milled here.