Відео

Likewise. Lol

hello Rock, I ended up cutting the whole machine up into pieces. The roller chain still had some stretch in it when doing thin material and that was what I was intending to cut most of. There was a little sawtooth cut in each corner for about 8-10mm when the machine would do a 90 deg turn at 12m/min. I have since sourced some cheap 20mm square rack and pinion drive gears so I may rebuild it again one day. Rack and pinion is definitely the way to go with these machines. The machine was fine cutting over 6mm thick material. I also had a wire come off the power pole at the front of the house which stuffed up the motherboard in the plasma cutter so I got that repaired on insurance but it was out of action for 5 months while the claim went through. I think you need a spare just in case of this happening in the future when 1/2 way through a long job. Rich.

Hi, Where have you sourced the racks and square drives? Is it an online store? Thanks! I have been looking for some but seem too expensive.

Thank you for your response. Wish you luck Richard.

For a chuck that I paid less than $500 for I am pretty stocked with the quality. I would love a Bernard chuck but can't afford the few thousand dollars for one. This will suffice for now. My Taiwanese 3 jaw independent chuck that came with the lathe is still within 0.0015 total indicator run out after 22 years of average use. I oil them each time I use them (and get sprayed with oil for a few seconds on startup :-) ). Sometimes you just get a good one where all the parts just line up beautifully. Thanks.

I owe you an apology. I didn't realize you were using a 0.0001 clock on this. Having no zero before the decimal point threw me. So yes, that is an extremely good reading. Cheers Rob

Hi jose, It all depends on how accurate the central spigot is that holds the scroll on self centering chucks. If there is any play in that spigot then you will get runout by the amount of that play. All these people that just grind the jaw faces will still get a small amount of runout due to this spigot being worn as well. The difference between the number of jaws is just the holding power and with 6 jaws a thin part isn't able to deform as much as, say 3 jaws and gives you a bit better grip. 4 jaw independent chucks are better if you want accuracy and you can dial these in to about 0.0001" depending on how good your spindle bearings are as well. Does that answer your question?

+Adriana Sá de Souza Hello Adriana. Do you have air assist on your machine? You need to blow out the flames that it makes. You might also increase your power and speed because if the laser is in one spot for too long it will burn a wider cut making more carbon. Let me know if this helps. :-) Richard.

+Richard McMahon Hello, Richard. Thank you for this quick reply. Yes, I do have air assist. I have made many tests increasing the power and speed, but I'll try more. I'll tell you the results.ok . Thank you again.

Aluminium reflects CO2 laser light so you need a very powerful laser in the size of kilowatts. For 2mm probably 3-4 kilowatts. very expensive. Yag lasers cut Al better but I wouldn't know how big you would need one of those.

Hi Alin. It's a CO2 RF air cooled laser made by Universal.

1mm you will need at least 150watts and 5mm probably 1.5 - 2Kw both with oxygen assist. I can just pierce through .6mm stainless steel with 100 watt but it heats the steel up a fair bit and would warp it to cut it so you would also need some form of auto height sensing to allow for that.

Hello Sebastien, I got my laser tube from eBay and the rest I scrounged up from other places on the web. There is heaps of stuff for lasers now all over the place. Just do a search for them or join up on cnczone.com and get some help there.

Do you mean like a hand held laser pointer I could kill small birds and insects with?

30 watt could probably cut 3mm baltic birch ply but very slowly. My 100 watt laser tube has trouble cutting through 7mm ply. The glue tends to reflect the beam and causes the cut width to widen greatly due to the air assist. Ply is probably the hardest thing to cut in wood.

It's coupled with 6mm wide HTD belts geared down to about 2.5:1 on both X and Y. The only hassle I have with it is keeping the outrunner cool as it gets quite hot after a period of time but it doesn't seem to have affected it too much that I can notice.

ta, whats the dia of the pulley ? and what would you say is your max cutting rate in wood ?

Richard McMahon Since I made this I have modified the X axis to gear it down and I have a 14 on the motor and a 32 tooth pulley to a 14 driving the belt. I'm not sure what the cut speed would be as I have never measured it. With a sharp cutter and a depth of about 0.050 probably 50mm/s but that's just a guestimate. The direct drive on the Z axis works better than I had hoped for and the belt has never slipped off. The resolution is good for what I do with it.

Hey Dan, Yes they are very cheap and you also get what you pay for. A very small bed size with really bad software and a tube that lasts a few hundred hours. Good for entry level if you like pulling hair out. I haven't seen a good word about one of the cheap lasers at all. :-) The laser on my table is on the right hand side of the table, the rectangular shaped object. It's an RF one so is not made of glass.

Richard McMahon how is the light transferred? optical fiber?

I just used first surface mirrors from an old photocopier. They are more resilient than the common gold ones found on the web and work well for a 30 watt laser. The beam is bounced around the table to the lens assembly.

Richard McMahon If you did it again, wouldn't you use a laser head directly?

Dan Frederiksen Not really Dan. It's all about the weight on a small system and being able to run the lens assembly back and forth at 500mm/sec or faster for engraving or cutting very thin stuff. If the bed was a few meters long and wide, say for sail material cutting, then it would probably be better mounting it on the X axis rail as the laser power drops off over distance so keeping it close would be more beneficial.