[thasatelliteguy]

I thought somebody might get a kick outta this.... everyone I talk to has never heard of such a thing.

CNC Pics Photos by thasatelliteguy | Photobucket

[kennl]

Interesting, how well does it work?

[thasatelliteguy]

Pretty well actually. Just this afternoon I got it to cut a 4in circle out of plex for another project, and it cut very close to a perfect circle. I need to redo the X axis as I barney'd the runners when I PVC glued the center piece on that contains the nut for motion. I got some glue rundown on the runners and it hosed it up a bit, but even still, with Mach3's backlash correction set at .050, it cut a circle that was within a 16th @ 4.25in. Y and Z have no discernable backlash. I don't think thats too bad for a first attempt at a router built outta plastic... I think when I rebuild the top end, I'll use sch80 and stiffen it up a bit.

[kennl]

Well have to give it to you for a unique machine. What kind of speeds are you running? Going schedule 80 should definitely stiffen it up. Curious why you choose PVC?

[thasatelliteguy]

Dont know about speed yet. I'm still chasing bugs. I just got re-assembled a lil while ago from the latest upgrades. I'm waiting on Windows 2000 to format my 80gig drive at the moment and it's taking FOREVER! I decided not to do the sch80 thing. It really wasn't all that stiffer. More pressure, sure, but stiffer, no. Instead, I opted to use some fat rebar I found in 3ft lengths at HD, and then backfill with concrete. There aint no flex now. As a matter of fact, one of the things I'd been putting off was a set of proper limit switches. It's one of the things that took me so long to re-assemble this time, cuz I installed them. Up to now, it has been real forgiving about crashing, but that's over now...lol. If it crashes now, sumpn' bad a gonna happen!

I was having computer issues with the laptop I was using, so I changed to an old desktop I had, and it's worse now. For some reason, my speed drops so low the motors start growling and knocking. It's really the computer too, cuz the speed shown on the screen is slow too. Then, for no reason, it'll speed back up and run full speed. Sometimes after I jog a different axis, sometimes I have to exit and re-enter, sometimes it just does. I am killing the old OS and reloading Win2K fresh. Hopefully, it was some old garbage in this machine.

BTW, I chose PVC because it's generally easy to work with, cheap, cold-weldable, drillandtappable, and cheap. It'll be a decent machine to play with for the moment until I decide to upgrade it to real materials. My endgame is really a 3D printer, for which I just need no backlash. Deflection shouldn't really be a problem. The reason I'm even messing around with it as a router/mill is that I have a Dremel, but I dont have a 3D print head yet. And it's kinda neat to be able to cut stuff out and engrave and stuff. It's interesting stuff. PVC is like "grownup legos". lol