We’ve been following [glaciawanderer]’s CNC build for quite some time and he’s recently added a few upgrades to make for an even more interesting machine. He’s been trying out new bearing blocks, anti-backlash nuts, and z-axis plates hoping to get some improvements. In the case of the bearing blocks, he went back to the older style because of the added safety and smoother movement. The final addition he made was a dust collection system. It’s just a couple support hoops and duct tape, but it should keep dust out of the threads and rails.
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.
How is the z backwards? The blocks should be mounted
to the x and the cold-rolled plate and motor should slide?
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.