CNC Z Axis with 150mm or more of travel

Many of the hobby priced CNC machines have limited Z Axis movement. This coupled with limited clearance on the gantry force a limited number of options for work fixtures. For example, it is very unlikely that there will be clearance for a vice on the cutting bed of a cheap machine.

I started tinkering around with a Z Axis assembly which offers around 150mm of travel. The assembly also uses bearing blocks that should help overcome the tensions that drilling and cutting can offer.

The assembly is designed to be as thin as possible. The spindle mount is a little wider which allows easy bolting onto the spindle mount plate which attaches to these bearings and drive nut. The width of the assembly is important because it will limit the travel in the Y axis if it can interact with the gantry in any way.

Construction is mainly done in 1/4 and 1/2 inch 6061 alloy. The black bracket at the bottom is steel. This seemed like a reasonable choice since that bracket was going to be key to holding the weight and attachment to the gantry.

The Z axis shown above needs to be combined with a gantry height extension when attaching to a hobby CNC to be really effective. Using a longer travel Z axis like this would allow higher gantries which combined allow for easier fixturing and also pave the way for a 4/5th axis to fit under the cutter.

CNC Alloy Candelabra

While learning Fusion 360 I thought it would be fun to flex my new knowledge of cutting out curved shapes from alloy. Some donated LED fake candles were all the inspiration needed to design and cut out a candelabra. Yes, it is industrial looking. With vcarve and ball ends I could try to make it more baroque looking, but then that would require more artistic ability than a poor old progammer might have.

It is interesting working out how to fixture the cut for such creations. As of now, Fusion360 will allow you to put tabs on curved surfaces, but you don't get to manually place them in that case. So its a bit of fun getting things where you want them by adjusting other parameters.

Also I have noticed some issues with tabs on curves where exact multiples of layer depth align perfectly with the top of the tab height. Making sure that case doesn't happen makes sure the resulting undesired cuts don't happen. So as usual I managed to learn a bunch of stuff while making something that wasn't in my normal comfort zone.

The four candles are run of a small buck converter and wired in parallel at 3 volts to simulate the batteries they normall run of.

I can feel a gnarled brass candle base coming at some stage to help mitigate the floating candle look. Adding some melted real wax has also been suggested to give a more real look.

Non self replicating reprap 3d printer

The reprap is designed to be able to "self replicate" to a degree. If a part on a reprap 3d printer breaks then a replacement part can be printed and attached. Parts can evolve as new ideas come along. Having parts crack or weaken on a 3d printer can be undesirable though.

A part on this printer was a mix of acrylic and PLA, both of which were cracked. Not quite what one would hope for as a foot of the y-axis. It is an interesting design with the two driving rods the same length as the alloy channel at the back of the printer.

A design I thought of called for 1/2 inch alloy in order to wrap the existing alloy extrusion with a 3mm cover. The dog bone on the slot is manually added in Fusion 360 so it is larger than needed. The whole thing being a learning exercise for me as to how to create 2.5D parts. The belt tensioning is on a 6mm subassembly that is mounted on the bracket in the right of the image below.

The bracket and subassembly are shown mounted below. Yes, using four M6 bolts to tension a belt is overkill. I would imagine you can stretch the belt to breaking point quite easily with these bolts. The two rods are locked into place using M3 tapped grub screws. The end brackets are bolted to the back extrusion using two M6 bolts.

The z-axis is now supported by a second 10mm alloy custom bracket. This combination makes it much, much harder to wobble the z-axis than the original design using plastic parts.