3. Ultimate Bee CNC Router - Base & Spoil Board Assembly
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- Опубліковано 6 жов 2024
- This is the third in my Ultimate Bee Assembly series, this video covers the spoil board, base and drag chain guide assemblies.
If you’d like to grab one of these huge CNC routers, head over to www.Bulkman3D.com and check out what they have, this particular build is the Ultimate Bee 1515.
In this video I use a set of Metric Hex drivers which are indispensable for getting into all of those hard to reach places and super cheap:
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I also used a mini machinists precision square that's not bad to have for use later once you get to actually running your machine:
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This step is where the machine really starts to take shape and I highly recommend you take your time, square everything, and then re-check your squareness when you're done. An out of square base will only lead to headaches later on.
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When I assembled mine… I left the base assembly lose and let the x axis assembly pull it into line and square. It worked really well.
yup exactly, i left the left side loose and then moved the gantry around to square it in the front, rear and middle. That's in the next video though, where the x axis is added.
Following along. Thank you for the amazing videos!
Thanks for the support! Hope they’re helpful to you
i was looking for the spoilboard assembly but you simply forgot it :D
Ahh, I named it by the sections in the bulkman manual- are you looking for making the actual spoilboard?
Nice job!
Thanks for checking it out. How similar does it look to your killer bee so far?
😅 was looking forward to this video.
Did your machine come in already? If you ever have specific questions feel free to hit me up. Also, I ran into some funny instructional discrepancies while I put the x axis together yesterday so I’ll try to edit that one down fast for you
@@G28CNC I opted for the longer shipping to allow me some time to build a table for it. I was originally going to build a 6x6 table but I wanted to see how yours fit because I know with the extra table top space, I’m gonna have a hard time keeping it clean. And no worries lol I’m gonna be bothering you with plenty of questions 😂😂
@@AkinetikFitness gotcha, I think my 68”x 68” will be enough room for cleaning but I planned to have the sides of the enclosure slide so I can clamp material in the back of the machine and clean. We’ll see how it goes when I get there haha😅
Decided to pull the trigger on the 1515 Ultimate Bee. How is the base holding up? Have you done any aluminum yet?
Seems to be holding up great- I haven’t done aluminum on this one yet, only my smaller queen bee. I grabbed this one specifically for wood/mdf for large format signs, carving etc. I’m sure it would perform just as nicely as the queen bee for aluminum but I’ll try to do a video of it soon so you can see for yourself
I have a few questions if you’re interested in answering. I have the queen bee in boxes still due to moving and seen this updated version. I have the v5 grbl with a 2.2kw spindle.
1. Why did you upgrade over the queen bee?
2. Is it worth upgrading
3. What is the overall size of the machine? Do you gain any z height?
4. What’s a good software to use? I plan to model in solidworks but need a cam program.
Are you planning to do tutorials on setting up jobs for tool paths, start to finish?
Thanks
I’ll start off by saying I love my queen bee- I also have a 2.2kw spindle and run it on an arduino nano and it’s always delivered. That aside, when I bought it I was doing smaller pieces so I went with a 750x750.
Flash forward almost a year exactly and I’ve been getting requests for much larger pieces now and seeing the ultimate bee I decided to give the ball screws a whirl hoping that I’d get some more rigidity over the 1500mm.
I think you’ll be happy with the queen bee and if you already have it I don’t know that cost and waiting is going to gain you enough for the trouble if you decide to switch to the ultimate. The biggest difference is the ball screw, which has a nice ball nut of course, where the lead screw has a nut made from delrin which if pushed hard could probably strip.
The 1515 gives roughly 49” x 48” of work area and that could vary slightly depending on you accessories like a dust boot, etc and how close you can get to the side rails. The z height is slightly better as well, I think and inch or so more travel but I’ll measure that when I’m in front of the machine so you have an exact number.
For software, I use solidworks for cad ( both 2D and 3D), and both a paid version of fusion and carveco for toolpaths. I like both for different applications. I run the machine on universal gcode sender platform 64bit. It’s been great and much better and reliable than candle which I started out using. I have one start to finish tutorial starting with solidworks and going through to running the machine but I will definitely be posting many more in the near future-
@@G28CNC The 1500mm is the overall max size including the motor over hangs? What about height? I'm trying to see what space I need for a silent enclosure I'm designing
For the upgrade, I was thinking on buying the upgrade kit and selling my queen bee frame. It appears the side plate are bigger, heavier linear rails, taller z height, ball screws to remove whip and stiffer / bigger extrusion frame. Please correct me if I'm wrong.
Thanks for taking the time to reply.
If you’re aiming to fully enclose then tha area is 1750x1750x750 to have some clearance around everything. I’d recommend more like 800 for z
Thank you for this video! I’m contemplating the Bulkman CNC. I was considering the Longmill but the plastic wheels kinda makes me shy away from it. I’m looking for rigidity. Do you think having a 1500 mm x-axis rigid enough? Thanks
Thanks Carl- I really like my Queenbee Pro from bulkman, I’ve had that for exactly one year and put it through some abuse and not had issues. That has a similar construction but is half the x travel. I have found it to be pretty rigid- it handles aluminum just fine and mdf, woods and plastics (which is the bulk I f what I cut) are absolutely no problem. I have a very heavy 2.2kw water cooled spindle on that and I definitely see some twisting but it hasn’t greatly affected me yet. That being said, I think the 2.2kw on a 1500mm x-axis would be much more noticeable so I went for the 1.5kw spindle and took the hit on not having the ER20 collet.
We’ll see how the 1500mm gantry performs once I get it up and running but I’ve seen many people with the same setup getting great results. I think the key is just squaring, tramming, calibrating and adjusting your feeds/speeds to the machine just as much as the material.
I highly recommend the bulkman machines, they take some time to assemble and are often missing an inexpensive component or two but for the price it’s hard to beat. If on the other hand you don’t want to assemble it yourself and you want top notch customer service and support you could go with oozenest or cnc3D for a queenbee or workbee
Thank you for your reply, I appreciate it. Just one more question. You mentioned that you had a queen bee as well. Do you think any rigidity is lost because the ultimate Bee only has one linear rail on the y axis but the queen bee has two linear rails, on the y axis per side. Sorry I don’t mean to wear you out with these questions. Thanks again!
It’s not bother at all Carl. My goal is to help others. That’s a good question, one I also echoed in one of these videos, I think the y. I mean, in my mind it seems only logical that two rails (as on the queenbee) must be more rigid but I’m not sure if having only one will make a noticeable difference. I hope not because my queenbee runs great. I’m hoping to wrap this build up in the next week so I can start posting some process videos but I’m feeling pretty optimistic about it now that it’s close to finished
Thanks again for your help. Do you think the twisting you noticed on your Queen bee could have been caused by the depth of cut? I’m just about to order mine and you’ve got me thinking about which spindle to pick. Maybe I should wait until you do some test cuts on yours then I’ll decide. I was going to use mine to make some kitchen cabinets so I don’t want to make a poor choice. Again thanks so much for helping!
The twisting is actually just from the weight on the gantry- if you’re looking at across the x axis from the side of the machine imagine the spindle rotating forward since it’s sticking out a few inches in front of the gantry itself. I imagine you can compensate for this by reinforcing the back of the c beam with something more rigid than aluminum and it’s more exaggerated at the center of the x travel.
no spoilboard.....☹
Ah haha, I could see where that would be confusing- I named the videos by the steps in the bulkman 3D manual- I do have a short up about the spoilboard though and can definitely post a video for making it if that would be helpful to you