For Glenn Ashmore 1" rods

I finally settled on some Thomson linear bearing rails. Machined the supports from 3/4 x 1" 6061 aluminum milling the top with a 1" ball end mill. No way to drill and tap those hardened rods so once I got everything lined up use high strength Loktite to hold it together. 90% of the gantry load is straight down so side load has not been a problem yet.

Machine turned out pretty well. I did find out that the steppers from an old IBM printer didn't have the oomph to get the speeds I wanted on the X & Y axis so I invested in a couple of 270 oz motors. Max travel is now up to about 200"/minute. The cheap Thomson rolled ball screws work well enough. Only about .004" error over the whole 46" X travel. Not good enough for any real milling but plenty close enough for woodwork.

While I once swore that I would never put a computer in the shop I have to admit this CNC stuff is fun. Amazing how much free CNC software there is out on the net. The demo version of Mach2 does everything I need. I have learned enough G-code to clean up the files ACE Converter generated from my DXF drawings and have milled a number of pockets for the hatch lifts. Mounted a 1/4" end mill in the PC690 router and cut a mount for the trim router out of some cast aluminum tooling plate. Worked pretty well except that the noise running the endmill at 3,000 RPM was a bit scary. May have to invest in one of those HF speed controls. Wife is after me to mount a small PCB router bit and cut out some jigsaw puzzles for the grandkids. That actually got me started thinking about building a cutting laser but I need to keep focused on the boat. :-)

Going to start cutting the inlays for the mahogany, cocobolo and holly salon table tonight. Gotta be careful though. If I get too enthusiastic with this machine the inside of this boat could end up looking like a tattooed lady. :-)

No updates to the site YET? Inquiring minds want to know. Pete

Bit of a problem there. Last fall I had a disk get pegged by a lightning strike. When I reloaded the source files for the web site they were totally screwed so until I get time to rebuild everything I can't make any updates.

Some web design software will download a web site to local files FrontPage

Mike

Thanks for the update. Sounds like a great project. lg no neat sig line