This was originally posted as Shapeoko: Part 6, because I apparently can’t count.
A while ago I ordered a 300W ER-11 DC spindle kit from China to install in my Shapeoko. I finally got to the post office yesterday (stupid recipient-must-be-present shipping) to pick it up, am impressed with the whole process. Most of this post is about the spindle, there is some more belt tensioner tinkering down at the bottom.
I got some more time to work on my Shapeoko over the last few days, and now have mostly correct 3-axis motion. As before, details under the fold.
Naturally, this post is a follow-on to Shapeoko: Part 1 and Shapeoko: Part 2. I’ve basically put the machine together now, and can move the X and Z axis around from the host computer, but still have to figure out belt attachments for the Y axis, and run the wiring in a sane way. I was holding up a microswitch to the various relevant spots for end-stops as I went, and everything but detecting the upper extreme of the Z axis should be easy. As in the last two posts, there is an assembly gallery under the fold.
This continues from where I left off in my previous post Shapeoko: Part 1.
I alternated my Sunday afternoon/evening between tackling my grading backlog and building pieces of the Shapeoko. This pattern works well for tapping since they are both exceptionally tedious tasks, but in different ways. Gallery with captions below the fold:
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My Shapeoko kit arrived from Inventables while I was away at SC.
I’ve been trying to build myself a small CNC milling machine since 2009, and contemplating it for longer than that. It became clear that my original design, however educational, was a dead end sometime last year. I’d been idly watching the Shapeoko project for some time as it had similar aspirations to my design, and a couple months ago I was in a particularly mechanical mood when I saw that a batch had reached enough buyers to be produced, so I bought in for a mechanical kit to mount my existing electronics on.
The Shapeoko community is really excellent, and the kit was designed to be flexible, so I’m starting off with some suggested modifications – I’m using NEMA23 motors instead of the usual NEMA17 on the X and Y axis, because I already had some nice Lin Engineering 130 oz-in NEMA23 motors and the frame can fit them. I’m configuring for dual Y motors, which give more even force across the Y axis, and routing my belts on the outside of the frame, since I needed to buy different hardware for the NEMA23 motors anyway and this particular modification is widely recommended.
There is a gallery to document my first round of assembly below the fold (captions don’t display properly in the RSS feed).
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