How many of you have wanted a 4th axis?
Originally shared by John Lauer
http://www.youtube.com/attribution_link?a=B_R9cz_9l7w&u=/watch?v%3DK_r8y_T8rsY%26feature%3Dshare
“good connector”? Where is the shielding?
“this piece here” is called a tail stock.
“aircract connectors”? These are old style microphone connectors. They fell out of use with the introduction of XLR and Mini-XLR.
If A1000 is moving just a few degrees. Your steps per degree are off. 360 should be a move by 360°.
A feedrate of 10000 is supposed to move 10’000° per minute.
If you get it with your machine it’s mounted outside the build-space with an L. That doesn’t limit your small Y travel as much as mounting it on the T-slots.
Replace that 4th axis like I did.
The stepper is too weak. You can turn it the other way when it is supposed to run using just 2 fingers…on 48V while your original electronics uses 24V I think.
The belt is an XL belt. These are made to never change direction. They have visible play.
The gearing down is 1:8 while it should be more like http://www.youtube.com/attribution_link?a=B_R9cz_9l7w&u=/watch?v%3DK_r8y_T8rsY%26feature%3Dshare&t=1m50s or http://www.youtube.com/attribution_link?a=B_R9cz_9l7w&u=/watch?v%3DK_r8y_T8rsY%26feature%3Dshare&t=1m10s0 with a harmonic drive instead of a flexible belt.
The original 4th axis is too weak even to hold soft wood in place while milling perpendicular to it’s axis.
The mount doesn’t allow to use the full Z-travel of this machine even as that is barely 7cm. Useful objects with at most 3cm radius are few and far between.
Raising the gantry to make 7cm of diameter into 7cm of radius had a big improvement here.
(Right after throwing away the original electronics and fixing the grounding into a proper star configuration.)
Wow, interesting feedback. I found I was able to mill a thread into an aluminum cylinder which was pretty exciting to me. The hardest part was getting it centered and indeed I failed to. I do plan on milling aluminum cylinders that are around 3 to 20mm in diameter so I’m within the range you’re saying is rare. I guess I’m rare. My timing belt is so tight that it’s hard for me to turn the 4th axis by hand. I also found the clamping pressure on the aluminum cylinder to be quite strong. Overall, though, I tend to think I’d have better results on a real CNC lathe.
Using a dial gauge or (mechanical) touch probe should allow you to check your center easily. Even adjust things in software if you just can’t get it lined up in the end.
For Aluminium I’m using the 2.5KWh water cooled spindle on the 6040 with a cheap alcohol mist cooling.
It worked but I was at the minimum on all the feedrate tables for the tools I used.
Wouldn’t do it on the 3040 with 250W. I guess it works out but I wouldn’t trust the stiffness of gantry and even the stiffness of the spindle itself that much and you can’t go arbitrarily slow. So I guess tool wear will not be plesant.