Cool. You still have the Z axis bolted on backwards, but other than that its looking good! Nice to see its making chips fly, and the results of your cuts so far.

Posted at 1:30 am on Nov 22nd, 2008 by stunmonkey

How is the z backwards? The blocks should be mounted
to the x and the cold-rolled plate and motor should slide?

Posted at 11:50 am on Nov 22nd, 2008 by chris

Yes Chris. I do believe that is what Stunmonkey means.

There has been some discussion about this and I can see the advantage of that method. I get over 3 inches of z travel using my current method and that’s good enough for me. I I did move the entire z axis rather than just the plate then I’d have 5.5 inches of z travel.

The reasons I don’t use move the whole z axis are:
1) It’s more complicated method since I am currently able to mount the x axis lead nut to the z axis and if I moved the z axis I’d need another plate to handle this.

2) It is theoretically less rigid. Not sure if this would affect the real world system.

3) 3 inches of z travel is enough for me so I’m just going to follow KISS. One reason 3 inches is enough is because any router bit that can cut more than 3″ is extremely expensive.

Posted at 4:08 pm on Nov 23rd, 2008 by ribblem