Rods "Spaceship" Scratch built Plasma Cutter build

thefabricator03 wrote: You see a lot of those aluminum extrusion tables wobble themselves apart at those speeds. I dont care what anyone says, a proper made steel table is hard to beat!

I have to agree. The convenience of extrusions is vastly overshadowed by the additional cost!

Anyway after another tuning session, I set the X axis to 36 m/min and 8 m/s^2 acceleration (just over 0.8 G). At these settings, it started to bounce around a bit and expose the spaceship's weakness. That is the 6mm folded aluminium gantry ends.



I always knew this was likely to be a problem but never knew how much wiring was going to be in there so I never designed any braces for it. So now I am working on designing a H shaped brace that will go full length top to bottom and pick up bolts through the top lid and the linear carriage mounts down the bottom. The crossbar of the H will be bolted to the gantry rail so it should stiffen it up enormously. I'm planning on using 80 x 40 x 3mm square section but might end up converting it to a U shaped section.



I'm not sure how much this idea will need to be butchered to allow for the wiring. But I think its a job for another weekend!

This weekend, I replaced the two Y axis motors


The new motors are the smaller ones with the pulleys on them. With shipping these cost about 4x what the other cheap ones are and are 7 amp vs the larges 4.2 amp motors. ANyway a bit of wight saving to offset the proposed braces.

Getting the pulley on worried me a bit. the Pulley had a 5mm keyway and the new motors had a 1/8" keyway. The old motors had a flat on the shaft and no keyway so I just used the provided grub screws. But this time with the forces I'm expecting I really thought I needed to use a keyway so I managed to machine a couple of stepped keys.



Anyway, I have not tried very hard, but this axis will easilly kept up with the 36 m/min and 8 ms^2 Acceleration after a couple of test runs. And that was only on 5 amps.

The Z axis motor is still to be replaced!

I learnt again the value of walking away when things go wrong today.

I've still had my machine apart with no water in the pan because during the week I hired a scissor lift had an electrician in to add a fair bit of wiring and some high bay lights. I wanted to be able to wheel the table around so every cable was disconnected. I think I must have the brightest workshop in the Southern Hemispehere now!

And I got rid a lot of powerboards and extension leads.


I needed to get some parts cut before the table goes into its final position and off its casters so I poured back in the pretty dirty water with additive in it that will have to do for a few days. So I set up for a cut and had no ArcOK which was quite annoying. So a couple of hours troubleshooting and making sure I had not broken something while I was upgrading my motors and drives.

Clearly, there was a fault tin the plasma cutter so I went home in disgust only to realise half way home that I had not bothered to connect the work clamp!

So I ordered some welding cable connectors so the work lead will plug into the table and I'll have another flylead coming off it to attach a clamp to the table. Thats something I've been meaning to do for a while!

The good news is that after rapiding to a new cut location with massively faster velocities and acceleration, the table stops wobbling during the probe event so I might get away with it for a while until I upgrade my gantries.

I remember now. I wanted to make the gantry out of 10mm folded plate but the laser cutter said they would crack when he folded them so I downsized to 6mm plate which I knew would be an issue.

rodw wrote: Clearly, there was a fault tin the plasma cutter so I went home in disgust only to realise half way home that I had not bothered to connect the work clamp!

It is amazing how a drive (or ride) can get the brain back in focus...

phillc54 wrote:

rodw wrote: Clearly, there was a fault tin the plasma cutter so I went home in disgust only to realise half way home that I had not bothered to connect the work clamp!

It is amazing how a drive (or ride) can get the brain back in focus...

The silly thing, I wasn't even thinking about it at the time!

rodw wrote: This weekend, I replaced the two Y axis motors

The new motors are the smaller ones with the pulleys on them. With shipping these cost about 4x what the other cheap ones are and are 7 amp vs the larges 4.2 amp motors. ANyway a bit of wight saving to offset the proposed braces.


The Z axis motor is still to be replaced!

Rod you need bigger motors.

Nah, Clive the Spaceship will get into orbit quite nicely with what it has...