Hey all. I’m finally about to get around to starting my build and am a little overwhelmed with all of the upgrades and posts over the last 2months. (Good work!). I’m about to order a triangular kit.
I plan to wall mount my kit but have a few questions.
Motor mount 2x4: if I’m screwed and bolted into a wall, there should be minimal flex, right?
Sled: early on, there were discussions about sled material. Any consensus on this? Less friction? More?
Angle: I’m reading 10-15 degrees, I’m guessing this depends on sled material also?
Frame design: how sturdy does it need to be? I’ve been accused of over engineering before also but how much movement is in the frame part (motors mounted to wall)
Vacuum: I have an extra shopvac or a 1hp dust collector- either?
Other design improvements?
When I do build this, I plan to document it and will post it back for others. Any help is appreciated.
I don’t have too much to say beyond “Dust Collector”. You can get a dust collector add on to go on a shop vac or a system. The steeper the angle obviously the more space it will take at the bottom.
basically, with a top beam design (a solid piec of wood between the motors) you
have the stiffness that you need, fastening it to the wall doesn’t change things
noticably
The rest of the frame just needs to be stiff enough that it doesn’t let the
material you are cutting warp so much that the sledcan end up riding on high
spots and not cut the low spots in between (which means it doesn’t need to be
especially strong, a piece of plywood wih one 2x4 cross the back of it is
enough)
angle and sled have not seen significant experimention recently, and none since
we have chain sag compensation, we need to have soemeone test this again
either of the two triangular kits should work, unfortunantly nobody has had the
time to do any accuracy tests of both linkage kits and the ring kit (we now have
a good way to measure the accuracy)
I repeat my offer that if someone is going to compare the kits, I’ll send them a
top mount kit for free.
As for other improvements, if you are planning to cut thick stuff (over ~1 inch)
you should probably plan to have some way for the top beam to move forward of
the rest of the frame so that the chains can stay parallel to the frame.
See the topic I posted last night on chain takeup for a possible improvement for
dealing with the slack chain.
it uses five 2x4’s (plus some scrap 2x4), a piece of 1/2" conduit as the hinge, and a 10’ piece of unistrut for the top beam. The supports for the conduit hinge are pocket screwed into the wall framing.
