Saturday, 26 January 2013

CNC Mill Build - Just Like Lego

Last gime I gave a bit more info on how I got interested in CNC and where this kit came from. Now I'm actually putting it all together.



Everything in this kit was so beautifully packaged and labelled it reminded me of cracking open a fresh Lego kit. The sheer delight of all the tiny bags of sorted pieces brought back many a childhood memory.

Anyway all this organisation prompted me to tackle the build in a very measured and precise way, not at all how I usually work.




So for each step, I laid out all the parts and took a picture. 
The first step is bolting one of the Y motors to a motor plate.


Bolt on 2 smooth idler wheels. These just guide the timing belt in the right direction.



Bolt on 4 V-wheels. These are what will actually grip the Makersilde rail. 
Those two small parts in the bottom left are eccentric spacers, they're slightly offset so that you can adjust how tightly the wheels grip the rail. It's this kind of simple problem solving, that makes this design so good.


That's one of the Y drive plates finished (the other is simply a mirror image).

Next time I'll be assembling the X carriage.






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