"Origami" CNC Plasma Build - folding 1200 x 600mm cut area

A little more work over this weekend.  Not as fast as would like as hitting a few minor snags.

First off (which I have still not fully solved) is the bearings are reallt siff from an alignment angle.  These are self aligning but they are VERY stiff in the housing meaning when clamped on either side of the plate with the shaft in them the alignment aspect does not move and the shaft wont rotate. I think I am going to need to use some pentatrating oil and get them wiggled enough to have a bit more motion.
 

Other than the above little issue I have made some progress in making the motor mounts and the stand-offs.
 
 

The moving on to proving my CAD was not a disaster and the pulley centre and belt lengths for the gearing ratios all work.  Spoiler - seems to be perfect.
 
 
 

Slowly winning.

Cheers - J.

Very nice, indeed !
Soon all that will be covered in black dust !

Yeah horrible black dust.  Hopefully the water table would keep that to a minimum.  I'm thinking about options to cover the ends.  I can 3d print some plastic plugs for the mounting holes that I made for the CNC work.  Then either a plastic or sheet metal/aluminium to keep the motors and pulleys more clean.

Oh and soved the stuck beaing alignment issue. A little bit of 3-in-one oil and some leverage.  Some of these were not too bad others were so solid I thought I was going to bend the bar before they clicked loose.


 

tommylight wrote:

Very nice, indeed !
Soon all that will be covered in black dust !

Yes, you quickly forget how clean they are at the start of their life!

This is a bit hacky but heck if don't care, its first real world movement.  Seriously ...  FIRST MOVEMENT.  Yeah I know, nothing new for many here but I'm stocked.  It's always so cool with a bunch of design and thinking and advise taking and machining actually has a good result. 

First up some photos of the setup to get things working, just to prove what I have made isn't going to be an epic fail.

 
 
 
 
 

Video time:

 

Just a short clip of rapids at 30m/min and acceleration of 3m/s/s.  Obviously "real" plasma tables can do higher speeds but I'm impressed what these relatively small nema23's can do with this 3:1 gearing.