I just about finished with my build. I went with a double unistrut top beam, 12 feet long. Most of the things I incorporated, I shameless stole from months of reading posts here. The frame is on wheels, and has storage for sheet goods. I had a space pc and monitor, so I made that work. There are a lot of little quirks, so I won’t get into them. I have yet to carve anything with it, I need to do some final touches, sand the inside of the ring, reattach the heat sinks and install a usb fan for driver board cooling. I also have to come up with something to support the z-axis cable. I’m really happy how it turned out and even the calibrating went smoothly.
I just realized these photos were taken yesterday. Today I had taken care of the slack side of the chains with a pulley and counterweight system with two “idlers” for feeding into the x and y motors.
love the smaller router and z axis. I have same one on order from China, paid $25 for it. the router clamp from invetibles.com looks great, wish I could find chinese one that is similar. Why not use one piece of rectangular metal for the top pole? why two pieces of unistrut, that appear to be tack welded together.
I know for my Maslow I have been running the power and signal for the sled from below and have not had an issue with it yet. Also, I love the Z axis, very similar to mine but I didn’t buy the complete axis from Openbuilds I hacked it together, mainly because my spindle is the larger Dewalt (might have been overkill). How are you attaching that Extruded aluminum to your sled? I had someone ask me and mine was with some spare 1/8" steel I had lying around but if someone doesn’t have that I would love to know what works!
Also, if you come up with a great idea for dust collection, let me know! I have been working on making a 3d part that will have an out chute to go to a vacuum with a cyclone attachment but I have yet to get it working. I am just enjoying cutting stuff currently haha.
I was able to pick up the unistrut and hardware for no cost, and it is easy to connect together, so I went with that.
The Z axis is connected to the sled by 4 bolts that hold the end cap of the extrusion channel on. I also added a piece of angle for reinforcement. I was willing to spend a little more money and time to make a more precision z axis.
I agree, I thought it was totally worth spending a little more for a better Z axis, and next week I hope to put a faster motor (less gearing) onto my Z and see if I cant speed it up a bit since the V Groove style has very little resistance when moving.
