DIY CNC Plasma Table - Lots of Pictures

This CNC plasma table is my senior project for college, I started designing it in the lecture class which was in my Spring 2012 semester. The summer gave me a lot of time to rework the design and get rid of useless parts as you can see in the different versions of the drawing below.

I will put these in order and add some info after my class.

Solidworks Drawings - These are in order of date drawn/updated. The blue drawing was started about February/March 2012 and the green ones were updated over the summer around July/August 2012 before I actually started to build this.









Here are the extrusions used for the X, Y, and Z axis.


And here are some pictures of the real table.

**Z axis




First design of Z-axis, after making this I realized that if I attached a router similar to the way the torch is attached then it would have too much leverage and flex so I redesigned it.





This is the new design of my Z-axis, I remade it to get rid the long plate that was required to reach the water table and to strengthen the axis and as a side effect I also lost some weight on the Z. I still may cut the Z down because I have a lot of wasted space and I am having trouble with Z stepper stalling. Cutting about 5 inches off the extrusion, screw, and linear plate should drop the weight considerably.




This bracket here was cut on the table itself while it was running before I redid the wiring, this is used to house a plug from a CB that I use to connect my probe so when I need to switch to the router all I have to do is unplug this and loosen 4 screws and I can slide the plasma head off.

This is the bracket that holds the torch right after it came off the Wire EDM at the school. Drawing was done in Mastercam X5, post processed and cut on a Mitsubishi. I then drilled the flange and the mounting holes, I forgot to add enough to the clamping area to thread it so I had to use a nut but it works fine and the nut is self locking anyway.

This is how the Z currently looks on the table, you can see much of the wasted space in this picture. The probe is right above the torch, it is an inductive proximity switch, currently it travels about .700" before the switch trips and I plan on adding a bolt to the aluminum right below it so I can make this distance much smaller, just havent had the time. I have also added a spring to that so it has a little room before the switch is in a bind. The Z-axis limit switch is also in this picture, it is tripped by a small screw (#8 I believe) that is on the back of the bracket holding the torch and the bracket at the top of the picture. Everything above the top bracket is wasted space at this point which is what I may remove to lower the weight.


These last 3 are the latest pictures I have of the Z axis, all complete and running, very good for seeing how much extra travel the Z has.






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