EVO CNC 1.infinity

[LGF]

This is the reason for my long absence from UA.


History:
I struggled getting lures in Colours I wanted, so I started importing molds from the states, even had my luggage busted open by the NTSB (broke the locks on my gel case) so they could see what caused the suspicious images on their scanners, turned out it was a bunch of aluminium molds, some 4ounce bottles of plastic colouring, all the laptop and other necessary cabling for when I travel and some 12 odd containers of glitter for the soft plastics.


This was expensive and even more so when it came to shipping these blocks of aluminium, so the next logical step was to make molds. I tried (with some success) using gelcoat and fiberglass, but obviously making the blanks, then gel coating and glossing took lots of time and then there's always my deteriorating eyesight, so frogs ended up looking like mice.


This then brought about ideas of mechanizing the manufacturing process, which had a quick turn at 3D printing, and laser cutters, but then I realized that I could build my own machine and it could function as both of the above with an added function of being a CNC milling machine, so it started!


Research:
I did a lot of research, had various ideas of what shape, how many axies and dimensions the machine should have. I ended up with the following:
An aluminium plate frame constructed of 10x100 aluminium profiled plates.
It was going to have 4 axies, X,Y,Z and a rotational axis A on the Y axis.


Required parts:
At first I struggled getting parts, info and then there was the quality, cost and accuracy of these various parts that took a while to sort out, and although there are extremely high end and very accurate products available, I had to opt for the best balanced between cost, quality and accuracy.


What I needed was the following:
4 x Stepper motors (I got the Nema23 with the 3N/M holding torque and a micro stepping capability that would get me roughly 2000 steps per revolution)
4 x Stepper drivers ( got some from Fong Kong and not the hugely popular "Gecko drives" they are the better option, especially for eliminating false singing allying during high speed usage and limiting noise (electrical noise that is) but they are rather expensive.
Cabling, meters and meters and meters of different gauges and so forth, all to be replaced as the build went on ( 5 times in total!!!! Was a nightmare)
I needed an old pc that could still operate on Windows XP and that had at least one parallel (old wide printer port) LPT port.
There was a requirement for a break-out-board to assist with controlling signal to the steppers drivers and onwards to the stepper themselves.
A multi- output power supply that delivered 48, 12 and 5 volt.
I needed a spindle, bought an industrial router 1,5KW Ryobi (which overheated such in that a long mill, overheated the bearings and the entire shaft sagged out of the plastic casing, so I bought another, and soon realized I need a proper milling spindle) so I ended up with a rather complicated Chinese thingy that had to be controlled by means of a VFD, variable frequency drive, YES FOLKS THAT's WHY THE CREATION IS NAMED EVO 1. INFINITY, it is forever evolving!
Bearings 12 linear ones (needed up milling my own Vesonite bearings)
Stainless (true round) rods for the linear bearings to slide on.
Drive screws and anti-backlash nuts and couplers to connect the drive screw to the stepper shafts.
Lots and lots of hex-nuts, drill-bits and taps. The latter had to be replenished at regular intervals as aluminium is quite tricky to drill and tap and does not work as easy as say mild steel.


Sources for require parts:
Well this is quite a list, but the most important ones are:
Micro-robotics and Communica for the electronics and some of the earlier linear bearings
N.K. Cutting in Centurion for the aluminium and the stainless rods.
CNC-Direct in Edenvale for the proper drive screws and ballnuts (zero backlash)
Alliexpress for the 3rd and proper spindle and drive.
Tool fanatics for various specialized taps, mill bits and measuring tools, including cutting fluids.
The local pet shop for "fish tank piping" for flooding of the workpiece.
Builders and Acorn fasteners for the bags and bags of hex-nuts.




And so the build started. Post to follow.

[Lenny]

Meneer , can't wait to see this , it's been a while coming henk , don't leave us hanging bra .

[LGF]

ASAP, shot three vids last night, tricky holding the iPad and working the controls, so most of the clips is very very shaky, so I 'll try a different aproach, will see what works best, still have a digital Canon that I can use, or perhaps one of the 3 iPhones, but I' ll get a good enough clip to post/upload.

[Fishlus Mark]

I repair cnc machines for a living. CNC Solutions.
You could have bought an old cnc machine for around R20 -40k, spent maybe R10k getting the bearings done and you would have a 100% cnc up and running, down side is that you need 3 phase power. You could have got a 1000x350x350mm travel pc based machine for that sort of money. Servo drives run on 220vac and inverter 3k5w spindle. You could change the inverter to 220V to run the spindle motor, this obviously needs a little more Rond's.

Good luck on the build.

[Capt. Hook]

That's awesome LGF, am really impressed. CNC was my game before charters. a 5 axis would have been fantastic if you could have got the budget, I always found an A (4th) axis to give over heating problems which became expensive repairs

[LGF]

Now you tell me


If I knew what I know now, I probably would never have started th build, albeit I learned such an immense heap, which I have no regrets for, however, I made some expensive mistakes but yet again I learned from them and can now more confidently say what works and what doesn't work, i.e. The initial setup was going to make use of an Arduino Mega dev platform using Mach3 via modbus. Far far simpler and easier and cheaper to to just get a Mach3 compatible break out board and a LPT printer port and cable.


No need to start learning C++ as I did (crossing the threshold some years ago) at this tender retirement approaching age.


Biggest regret is the cost and most of all the costs I had to bear more than once for making mistakes not doing proper research and suffering from my perpetual impatience!

[LGF]

@Capt


Just typed a lengthy reply that got lost trying to refresh the page, "female dog"
 Wish, will type again, but the short was don't think I'll have issues (overheating) on the 4th, not yet used it, connected, commas 100%, etc ect.
 Will explain later.

[LGF]

I hate predictive text functions


Wish should've been EISH and commas should've been COMMS

[LGF]

Kay, so I have taken some video and pics of the current machine, not sure where the others are of the previous as the build progressed. However, I ran into yet another hurdle to cross/ hoop to jump through EISH!!
 
The flooding system generates fine mist and the heat from all the steppers heating the aluminium frame doesn't exactly assist with this moist content in the air, that, as i made the mistake of opting for an air-cooled spindle, gets sucked into the top of the spindle and that is more or less where the 3-phase electrical connections to the spindle starts, going on down to the coils windings etc etc and as it is stated somewhere, apprently these two elements are not really particularly great companions when running a spindle milling material at the other end. 
 
So the spindle keeps tripping the mains of the house and apprently every single time at the worst possible moment, right when there's some climaxial point in the vast array of DSTV programming that the wife watches, needless to say..................................
 I need to fix it, so i have ordered a water-cooled version of it and am awaiting delivery, and as soon as that's done, well then it's off to find the next issue, NOT, it should then all be fine.
 
Anyhow, will post the pics I have ASAP, I have to because I started yet another project today, building a small yet powerful enough foundry/forge to melt the flopped aluminium blocks/molds that is heaping up in the corner of the garage, and that will interfere with the posting of pics if I don't do it now.

[Plugger]

Fishius Mark do you have any idea where I can get a45-52 c spanner for tightening the collet on our CNC ? I've tried all the obvious places without any luck.
Sorry for the hijack

[Drew]

As a person who programs 4 Haas machines on on a daily basis i look forward to your progress

[LGF]

Fishius Mark do you have any idea where I can get a45-52 c spanner for tightening the collet on our CNC ? I've tried all the obvious places without any luck.
Sorry for the hijack

Have you tried Tool Fanatics in Hennopspark, PTA? Address: 295 Galway Ave, Centurion, 0046Phone:012 654 1555Speak to either Ben (Owner) or Zuleika (Sales assist)

[LGF]

As a person who programs 4 Haas machines on on a daily basis i look forward to your progress

Me toooo, just waiting for the new spindle to arrive and yes I know I was supposed to have posted the pics, but as mentioned, and I knew it was the probability for it to take place was huge, i started the other project in conjunction with an upgrade to the lure injection station in the garage, which is now almost done, just some drying out and controlled burns of the foundry/forge i\ve built and some shelving that needs to be installed in the station this afternoon, nonetheless herewith some pics of EVO 2, still need to look for the pics of EVO 1

Mechanics from the front (pic1)
Z axis improved  (pic2)
Table front top (pic3)

[LGF]

Electronics LED lights @ the bottom of the Z axis (pic1)
Moveable DIY Toolsetter (pic2)
Controllers, drivers and Mach3 PC  including VFD relocated LED display (pic3)

[isivuba]

Nice.......got any pics of what you've made?

[LGF]

Nice.......got any pics of what you've made?

Hi Mike,
 
Not really, it's just some of the rough-cuts that I did in a mold, well many of them (teething problems, design and CAM software side|) but will see if I can upload them, this was basically just the surfacing and roughing with a 6mm end mill, if memory serves me at all.
 
I have some mold sides that was done with extreme small stepping over parameters (finishing with a 1mm ball-nose) but haven't taken any pics of those, will do that this eve and post 2morrow

[Plugger]

Fishius Mark do you have any idea where I can get a45-52 c spanner for tightening the collet on our CNC ? I've tried all the obvious places without any luck.
Sorry for the hijack

Have you tried Tool Fanatics in Hennopspark, PTA? Address: 295 Galway Ave, Centurion, 0046Phone:012 654 1555Speak to either Ben (Owner) or Zuleika (Sales assist)

Thanks LGF, I was hoping for someone in Durban

[isivuba]

So far looking pretty awesome Henk. 

[LGF]

So far looking pretty awesome Henk. 

Thanx Mike
 
Took lots of sweat, long nights, sick leave, blood, tears, some swearing mostly after the blood escaped form hands and limbs, and constant stirring of the rusted grey matter to get to this point, and then there's my default flaw, I am a perfectionist and although it was never intended to manufacture the quality similar to that of machines that cost the ammount of a small idyllic destination (or Ziggy's planned fishing trips) in the shadows of the Alps, I want it better and better and that also causes alot of re-do's, re-building, re-this'es and re-that's. Notwithstanding the getting to grips with the un- or lesser-known capabilities of the CAM software.
 
Some of the guys reckon "I am full of it" and that it is fine as is, and given that it is a diy build, that I should let-up and use it as is,    one thing i do know, is I cannot give up (I know when to, and should've done so a long time ago) but I just can't.

[Fishlus Mark]

Fishius Mark do you have any idea where I can get a45-52 c spanner for tightening the collet on our CNC ? I've tried all the obvious places without any luck.
Sorry for the hijack

Sorry for the delay, MJH machine tools in Pine Town have two sizes of the 32 to 40 in stock.