2+2+3 More Plasma builds, double the joy ! 3X2M and 2.5X1.5M cnc plasma build.

rodw wrote:

I'm sure the goat with a bag of electronics would not look suspicious at all!

LOL

Started building 6 more machinies, 3 for cutting plates with the following dimensions (so far):
1 @ 2X1.25M
1 @ 2X1.5M
1 @ 1.2X ??M
2 more for cutting round tube @ 3X0.3M and 3 or 6 by 0.5M, have not decided yet on the last one,
and one more for square tube also at 3 or 6X0.4M.
The one for square tube is causing me headaches thinking to pull that off as i would like it to have 5 axis so it can cut sections for trusses without the need for further work cleaning the prats.
So far i have cut the 150X150X4mm sections for the 3 plate cutting ones, today cut the 300X980X3mm plates to be bent at 90 degrees for legs, already cut the rails at 2.3m x4 and 1.4 x2 - supported round tube as usual at 25mm (still overkill), gathered almost everything required for 6 of Z axis as can be seen below:


Last 3 days spent learning FreeCAD and designing parts for the Z axis with floating switch to replace all the aluminium parts that take forever to measure, drill, tap, chamfer, clean, bolt together, test fit, dismantle, adjust-scrape-grind-redrill-retap .... and they are still heavy !
So cue in the 3D printers, been designing and testing and ... oh well have a look:




There is also a half full trash can, quite big, but does not look presentable to post here.
From scribbles to actual functioning parts took some doing and some testing and as usual the road to success was riddled with failures, while the strength tests proved way better than expected ! Watching someone testing 3D printing materials and showing graphs with MPa (Mega Pascals) is all nice and dandy (looking at you Stefan of CNC Kitchen fame on youtube) but does nothing to show how many times you can throw a 3D printed part against a wall till it breaks.
Public service announcement: Do not bother adjusting your monitor, the following picture is of a 3D printer upside down !

machinedude wrote:

... and it looks like someone got a 3D printer  

I have 8 and building some more, not that i need that much but i am a hoarder !

machinedude wrote:

i think i said i wished i had half you drive i think i would be happy with about 10%

You would not, for sure. I avoid reality by keeping myself to busy !

shpatb wrote:

Here before this topic reaches 100k views .

Wait what ? When did that happen ?
Dang if i could do that on youtube, i would be set for life !
Nice,this was mild, now the storm approaches ....

Grotius wrote:

I was thinking a little bit about how to solve the transatlantic problem's for Tom.
 

Sorry for the late reply, somehow i missed this.
I am still working on it ....

Grotius wrote:

Is it possible to switch over to other interface's, or produce something local.

It is but i am not going to, i love LinuxCNC and adore HAL !
Locally, nothing is produced. We import everything and export money.

Grotius wrote:

There is a producer in Russia that contacted me in the past. They also produce plasma machines
and they produce also interface's. Russia is not far from Kosovo i guess.

I like Russians, i would love to learn to speak Russian, but i do not like Russia = they were d#ck$ all throughout history, just look for invasion of Finland, North Korea, East Germany, etc. All these are very recent.
And it is about 3 to 5 thousand KM away, it is a big country!

Grotius wrote:

Ethercat would be a professional solution. Selling price of machine's may go up. Ethercat is produced in Germany,
not extremely far from Kosovo.

This i would like to use, i like Ethercat, i just can not justify the price for what i do. Looked several times at used stuff, not much cheaper than new.
And Germany is 1300 to 2200 KM away, still a big-ish country !
I like Germany for a lot of things, punctuality, work ethics, no sense of humor ...

Grotius wrote:

Using a Parport break out $5 is nothing to be ashamed off. It is usable for windows and linux. Cross platform and is usable for plasma machines.

I never use break out boards, had plenty of them and just gave them away to whoever asked for them, but i do have several machines using parallel port, plasma cutters mostly, in use every day for several years. The only thing that bothers me with it is the low step rate so low microsteping and the subsequent vibrations during slow moves, although when plasma is actually cutting nothing can be heard !
Thank you.

Finished one, waiting for linear bearings should be here today or tomorrow, the finished one came in at under 2.5KG, compared to all aluminium ones i built earlier that were nearly 4KG. Old ones used 16mm diameter rods, this one has 12mm rods while one will have 10mm for testing, should be enough for sure but not sure how they handle raming them into slats at 24M/M !


Also thinking of using mechanical switches for homing/limits as inductive ones i can find have no shielding on the cables so occasionally they do trip.
Moving on....