:: View topic - CNC Router build

I haven't posted much on this yet, figured I would wait until things were nearly complete.

I've been wanting to take on this project for a couple of years, I've just been waiting until I had the time, and the money. This year I had both so I took it on.

I knew building a CNC machine would be expensive. I had a goal of doing it under $2k. In the end, I was a factor of two over that... ouch.

A disclaimer: I definitely could have done more research before just buying/building a bunch of stuff. I am not a member on the CNCZone forum (similar to SkiBuilders but for CNC stuff), and probably should have been. Had I done some things different I could have brought the cost down I'm sure.

I wanted it at least big enough for ski stuff, but I was constrained by shop space so I couldn't do 4x8ft which seems to be pretty standard. I settled on 3x7ft. (actual lateral working area is more like 2.5ft).

I designed the entire thing from scratch in Solidworks, and had virtually the entire thing designed/assembled on the computer before I bought a single part. That made construction go very quickly and smoothly. Everything went together exactly as-designed with no issues. Pretty proud of that!

The frame is made from 4" tall steel c-channel, the gantry is 6" c-channel. I had a number of parts laser cut out of 1/4" steel by a place in Bellingham, Wa. That saved me a lot of machining.

Mechanical parts were purchased from a mix of McMaster-Carr, Ebay, and a few CNC Router suppliers.

The X-axis uses a gear rack and spur gear on each side, powered by a single stepper motor with outputs going to each side, with timing belts/pulleys, sliding on 7ft long 20mm linear bearings.

The Y-axis uses a ballscrew/nut direct drive from a stepper motor, sliding on two 20mm linear bearings.

The Z-axis uses a ballscrew actuator thing I found on ebay, that I had to machine an adapter for to mount my stepper motor (used my small CNC mill to made the adapter

)

I built a rolling cabinet for the machine that includes a space for the computer, some drawers for supplies, a few cabinet doors on the front for parts/ski materials, and one LONG cabinet on the back for long ski materials.

Photos:

Some other details:

I'm using a Geckodrive G540 controller, and Mach3. I got the controller box from a local CNC guy that has the G540, power supply, e-stop button, and relay/output to turn the spindle on/off.

Once everything is all fine tuned I will be offering up ski-building services if there's a need for it (templates, mold parts, etc). But that's still TBD right now.

wow steel gantry hea-vy.

Very impressive Twizzstyle!

Ha, yeah tell me about it... the c-channel plus the hefty side supports (1/4" steel), plus all the hardware/steppers, its probably upwards of 60lb+. And that doesn't include the z-axis which is easily another 20-30lb. It's heavy but it glides smooth as butter with very little effort. Pretty amazed how parallel/square I got everything, using a mixture of levels and lasers.

That's wicked! Don't beat yourself up too much about the financials, you're going to love that thing man.

Nice burly design. I would have been afraid to do that much welding to avoid possible alignment issues. What size motor are you using to drive the x-axis? Did going the rack and pinion route cost much less than using an 8' ball screw? What kind of backlash are you going to have on the x-axis?

Yeah, I had a good bonus from work this year so that covered everything. Plus I figure, unlike any of my other projects, I can actually put this one to work to make a little on the side.

All 3 motors are 495 oz in. I haven't done any cutting to really measure the backlash yet, but it should be pretty close to nothing. The rack and gears are from mcmaster. Again something I likely could have gotten cheaper elsewhere. Was certainly cheaper than the ballscrews I was looking at, and made the design a little bit easier. There is a rack on either side, and when I tighten the belt it pulls the lower pulley up, pulling the gear against the rack, taking away any slop.

Wow Twizz! I am impressed. Taking on a challenge like that is very brave. Looks like you nailed it. What software are you going to use? Are you going to install a vacuum hold down?

Using Mach3 (thats what I use on my mill, a small grizzly I converted to CNC a long time ago).

For holding work pieces I am going to drill a grid of holes (I'll have the machine drill its own holes of course!), about 150 of them or so, every 3" roughly (I can't remember off the top of my head) and put 3/8" t-nuts in. Going to use normal machinist clamps with the t-nuts.

Very nice!! I like your choice of the size... it's nice to have a machine that doesn't take a acre in the shop

nice one!

I have gotten a fir way down the road of doing this a few times but never went through with it. Well done!

Wow Twizz you really stepped it up a notch (or 2 or 3)! Will you be profiling your skis as well as shaping with the CNC?

That's the hope... but time will tell. (already preparing myself emotionally for ripped off sidewalls!)

[quote="twizzstyle"]

Profile core.

Profile sidewall.

Rip profiled sidewall

Attach.

No emotional pain.

Still surprised when I see people trying to profile with sidewalls attached. Much easier ways....

AGREED100%! Twizz, I tried for months to figure out how to not rip the Ptex sidewalls off. Its so much easier to do the above.

Looky what I did just now

Got all the holes drilled for the t-nuts (had the machine do the drilling, of course, 126 holes total, it was the first test operation of the machine and it did it without a hitch!)

Then I grabbed a big piece of scrap MDF and clamped it down with some quick squeezy clamps, just for the hell of it, to cut out one of my skis. 5 minutes later I had the above.

Needless to say, I am so damn proud of the beast I have created!!!

Still some fine tuning to do in a few spots. I don't like how the z-axis mounts to the y-axis, but I have a solution in mind that should make it better. I have a TINY amount of freeplay there right now. X-axis is SOLID. Also need to actually setup the dust collection properly.

That is awesome!! I covet, just wish I could afford.

Damn this skibuilding can be expensive

Right on! looks great!

Looks great, nice work!!

Amazing.

Most impressive is that you still managed to keep everything square with that much welding. Did you pay attention to your weld pattern, or did you just get lucky?

Has to be luck - I like to consider myself pretty good at the metal work I do, but I am totally self-taught, so... certainly no expert. I jigged everything up pretty solid before welding, then I tack welded things at the edges to keep it as it was jigged. That's usually how I do stuff - then do solid beads in between the tacks. Good method? Bad?

I took the entire thing apart today, cleaned it up and re-painted. Then re-assembled with gloves on to keep it all clean, looks real nice now! Just for fun I cut out a mini-ski with "stumpysticks" in the middle out of 1/4" MDF, to hang over the door of the shop. This thing rocks.

That's pretty much how you have to do it. If you weld one side completely without tacking the other you get pretzels.

There are a lot of gates out there that look like potato chips, because the builder welds one side completely and then flips it over and welds the other side.

Really impressive work. Looking forward to seeing you up on the hill with your new creations which I am sure will come.

One thing I've been dying to do with this thing, before I even get to making new skis - I want to get some topo data of snoqualmie pass and machine a relief map of the valley (from alpy to hyak). Will probably just do it in foam and them spray some gel coat over it? Going to be hard finding usable data though.

http://gis.ess.washington.edu/data/raster/tenmeter/byquad/wenatchee/index.html

Enjoy

That was easy! Thanks Mike!

Cut out the logo of my mountain. Pop can is for scale. Took just over 30 minutes to cut this, at 75 in/min, it's 0.25" deep, I did it in two passes of 0.125"

Nice!

Nice work Twizz! I've been dreaming of doing this for quite awhile. When you get to it I might be able to help you with a 3-D profile of the Snoqualmie Area. I am a GIS Analyst here in Oregon and have all sorts of access to data and the software to manipulate it. What sort of format would you need it in to work with your CNC code? Cheers.

CAL

Thanks for the offer to help Cal, but I think I've got what I need.

I was able to use the data from the link Mike posted a few posts back. I've now got the 3D model in an IGES format, and it looks pretty awesome... but it's so detailed, when trying to generate tool paths it crashes. It doesn't help that my shop computer is pretty old/crappy

One of these days I'll buy myself a new computer, but I'm too cheap (ahem... didn't I just spend way too much building this machine??)

Cheap!? You're a ski builder. You already have many paychecks devoted to this bottomless pit :-D btw- awesome cnc machine.

I can just picture the "Ski Builders Anonymous" meetings...

My name is Sean, and I'm a ski builder.

Nice build! Did you do all of the machining yourself on the cnc grizzly?

I made a motor mount adapter for the z-axis to mount my stepper motor to the ballscrew thing I got (which had a smaller mount), and I made these setscrew adapter things that bolt onto the x-axis timing pulleys. Both of those things I did machine on my CNC grizzly mill (made by a CNC machine, for a CNC machine!

)

Everything else was cut by hand with an angle grinder, band saw, drill press, or hand drill, except for some of the larger/more critical parts, which I had laser cut by some place.

Twizz,

I'm blown away. That is very impressive. Love the use of steel. If you're going to be carving away in bamboo, you just did it right. Kudos.

Finally got the gcode worked out for the Snoqualmie Pass terrain.

Cut a test piece out of normal pink insulation foam. This was small, about 12" wide, took about an hour to cut.

Next I want to glue up a bunch of layers of light colored wood (maple maybe?) with black epoxy, then machine this on that so the layers form topo lines. It will be 2ft x 3ft, that I can mount on the wall

Now that is cool!

sam

Very nice machine! I am still working on mine...

Cheers, Christoph

Wow cool! Make a mini 3d relief on a pair of skis.

Oh no... The ideas start flying... I could machine a long chain of mountains (real ones or not), say 1/2" tall, out of similar foam and then glue that to the top of a pair of skis. The foam would add basically no weight, and wouldn't change the stiffness of the ski at all. I'd want to seal it up with something, epoxy or something, and it would get torn up real bad after just one day... But the novelty of it would be pretty cool!

.. or pocket sized topo models for wayfinding in the BC!

Twizz - That's exactly what I was thinking! Novelty factor off the charts.

Well done reliefs of the Alpental valley in nice wood with topo lines would sell like wildfire.

Or, at least elicit a great donation at the Bark ball.

Love it, nice work!

Good call!

I did a larger, 20"x30" version of the pass yesterday. Took a LONG time to cut - I roughed it with a 1/2" end mill, but then did the finishing passes with a 1/8" end mill doing really small passes. Looks epic though! I may try to pull a mold off of this one, so I could easily make some fiberglass ones to give to friends.

Unfortunately, 20"x30" is about as big as I can go, because I'm limited by vertical height - I've really only got 4" of realistic vertical working area. I knew it wouldn't take long before I found a limitation I didn't like with my machine

After machining there was a lot of little fuzzies, so I went over the whole thing with a heat gun. It did a really nice job of melting the fuzzies away, while ever so slightly melting the top surface, giving it a glossy hard shell. Should be perfect to paint with some epoxy to seal it up.

The bummer is that the glue that is holding the two hunks of foam together (I used two blocks of 2" thick foam) didn't shrink/melt like the foam did. So I have this ugly layer that looks like a mineral deposit in the terrain

Other than that - damn this thing is cool! You can actually see a path of I-90 on the west side of the pass (for those not familiar with this area, dont' worry about it)

Trusty coke can for scale

This is a view of the entire Alpental valley. Detail is pretty damn good if you ask me.

Next up is gluing a bunch of wood together to do a wood one, with black elevation lines.

I think this link will work for everyone. Short clip, nothing special, but shows the router going up and down.

http://www.facebook.com/v/10101294932551688

Impressive work!!

That is really cool! Any thoughts of a self portrait? :-)

Twizz that thing is sick! What a fun toy. I'm not sure what your long term plan is, but my guess is that it will be impressive. I'm sure the steel press is next. Is the CNC going to be for hire?

How about some skis?

Well this is still, and always will be, primarily hobby-based for me. I will never give up my day job, as I can't imagine doing anything cooler than flight testing (other than moving up to the front seat, test pilot).

A larger press is low-priority. I still really want a nicer press, but mine works fine for the limited number of skis I do (3-4 pair a year), and I'm already strapped for shop space.

As for will the CNC router be for hire - yes, absolutely. I still want to exercise the machine a bit more before I "officially" offer my services, but I figure if folks need templates or mold parts cut (especially locals), then I can be a good cheap source.

How about some skis?

Make some skis? Now that's just crazy, why would I do something like that?

Now I've got the idea of doing bamboo electric guitar bodies!

You should probably make a relief map of Alta and area, maybe we can locate Chad's Gap ;p