I'm in for a coffee break, so here's some new pics from this morning.
Once again, the old computer parts coming into play - The brackets here are a rackmount kit from a Dell ethernet switch. I thought I'd take a leaf out of Niki's book and use a bit of laminate flooring for the base.
The shortest screws I had were 5/8th, so I decided to grind off the ends where they protrouded.
The threaded bars allow me to ensure that the base is flat and allow a little torsion to be applied to add rigidity. Conveniently there's enough space around the router to get the spanner in for bit changes.
Rather than hijack the 'on the other side' thread on the General forum for my CNC project, I'm going to respond to some of the posts here.
WiZeR":30dmk0en said:
Going into production with the FecnCNC is a great idea Fecn. One thing that attracts me to the CarveWright is the apparent ease of use. The software seems idiot proof. You would probably have to do some work on the software side to make is commercially available, or perhaps ship it with Mach2/3.
Gill":30dmk0en said:
I'd definitely be interested in a FecnCNC machine, but the software would have to be completely idiot proof :lol: .
I certainly wouldn't want to get into the software side of things. Shipping with Mach2/3 sounds like the way forward, although that's far from an idiot-proof solution, it does have some simple functions such as the jpeg import for carving and the 'write' wizzard for doing text. I haven't had much luck carving on a large scale, but the rubber stamp turned out OK.
ByronBlack":30dmk0en said:
I think any small affordable (sub £500) CNC machine or atleast a kit version would do really well. Even for doing things like signs and wood 'art' I can see it being quite a useful tool. If you could hook it up to some kind of scanner, you would have a great replicater for mouldings and carvings.
That'd be a very hard price to hit. For this project, we're looking at about £285 of electrical/electronics, £15 of metal bits, £50 of drawer slides and £58 of MDF. Because the whole machine is made from MDF, it struck me that it could be sold as an Ikea-style flatpack furniture item. Ultimately I reckon it could be produced as a kit for about £500, but at that price point, the kit would have to contain a reel of wire rather than nicely made-up cables. It may be more feasible to produce the MDF/slides/threads part as the kit and leave the user to buy and install their own motors and controllers. Leaving out the electrics would simplify things from an insurance/liability perspective too. I can see how the MDF bits of the kit could be CNC produced at a reasonable cost. With mass-production, maybe it'd be possible to hit kit price of around £150-200 for the non-electric bits, that doesn't leave much profit for the guy who has to saw up the panels and keep the CNC machine fed. I expect that with a redesign, the amounts and types of raw materials could be optimised for lower costs.
WiZeR":30dmk0en said:
If you could make a CNC machine that could easily do everything a top of the range dovetail jig, then my view is it is worth double the dovetail jig.
Now you've made me realise something I missed. I should have installed an end-clamp on the leading edge of the X-Bed so that it's possible to clamp boards vertically in the same way that the leigh D4R does. Fortunately it's not too late for me to add that on. I'll need to cut a bit out of the base to allow the board to dangle down, but I was smart enough to ensure that the tool could overhang to make tool changes easier, and that should be good enough for cutting dovetails too.
.. and now.. I've finished my coffee and I'm going back to the shed.
I might even have some of those drawer runners somewhere.
