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CNC Plasma - Group Build?


simonr

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Some of you will have been following the thread http://forums.lr4x4.com/index.php?showtopic=89125&hl= about building a DIY CNC Plasma Table.

Out of the thread (plus a few years thinking about it) grew a design which I had laser cut and have successfully built in to a pretty good machine! Several people asked if I could produce one as a kit? The answer is 'kind of'! Most of the Electrickery is available at low cost on eBay and the like so I have put together a bill of materials including where I bought said item from.

My involvement in it is just the design and sourcing the laser cut parts. The price of the laser cut parts depends on the number cut. I'm not doing this as a commercial enterprise - the cost of the parts is just what I'm being charged inc VAT and delivery from the cutters to me.

The quote from the Laser Cutters was as follows:

1 set - £380
10 sets - £200
50 sets - £150

The design has evolved a little from the original set I had cut just to make bits of it work better. I suspect that the revised design will add no more than 10% to that.

The purpose of this thread is just to see if there is sufficient interest to get a set (ideally 10 or more) made? If you are interested, post below.

These are the pictorial assembly instructions. I decided to make them on Solidworks for clarity - and so I wouldn't have to dismantle my machine.

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Sorry about the picture overload - but it gives at least an idea of the work involved in building the mechanics at least. I'll post the bill of materials once I've updated it.

Excluding the Plasma Cutter & PC to run Mach3 Software, the whole thing will cost about £600 to £650 including the laser cut bits. If you are looking at this as a guest of the forum and thus cannot post, mail me on simon1@psi-design.co.uk instead.

Si

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Why do these things happen at bad financial times for me!

So your costing is for laser cut parts, on top of that to complete would be mechanical hardware (nuts bolts etc etc) plus the electronics? i stopped following the thread as i couldn't keep up with it! i'm assuming its belt driven, what size is it?

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I'm interested at the 10x or 50x price bracket

Edit: forgot to ask - is it scaleable? Can I used longer lengths of box section to cut full sheets? Being able to cut 8x4 or 10x5 would be handy

Yes - the box section and drive belt can be pretty much any length within reason. I chose this size partly to fit in my workshop and partly because you can make all the bits out of a single 6m length of box section. It gives me a cut area of 700mm square.

On top of the laser cutting you need:

50x50x1.5 wall box section to suit size of table (X travel + 150mm) x 2 + (Y Travel + 150mm) x 3 + Z travel + 100mm roughly.

20x20x3 Angle (Y Travel + 100) x 2

20x20x3 Angle for bed runners (X Travel + 100) x number of runners

M6 studding - length of box section + 1m

M12 studding - 300mm

8mm Bright bar (Y Travel + 300mm)

8mm shaft collars x 2

IGUS 8mm bushes x 8

M6 x 20 bolts (about 50)

M6 x 25 bolts (about 10)

M4 x 20 bolts (about 40)

M6 Plain Nuts (about 30)

M6 Nyloc Nuts (about 50)

M4 Nyloc Nuts (about 40)

M12 Plain Nut x 1

15mm x 5mm pitch timing belt - to suit size of table.

6x Torsion springs to tension belt (I have about 90 left)

29mm Steel V Roller bearings x 16

21 tooth 5mm pitch 20mm wide belt pulleys x 6

19x6x6mm bearings x 4

2x 4Nm stepper motors

1x 1Nm short stepper motor

3x Stepper drivers

1x Break out board

1x Old PC Running XP ideally.

The above is just from memory so I've likely forgotten something - I'll list the full BOM when I'm at my PC.

Si

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That's pretty close to 10.

I still need to do a bit of work on it to produce a decent bill of materials with suppliers etc.

It might be possible to get someone supply all the steel in pre-cut lengths. I guess the trouble is, everyone will want different table sizes!

Although mine at 70cm square (cut size) might seem a bit small, You can feed in a sheet from the side and cut a bigger part in several goes so long as you can reference the parts accurately.

I had figured the way to do this is to accurately drill a series of small holes in the sheet in a line 70cm apart then use these to set the X=0, Y=0 point for successive cuts. However, to date the largest thing I've ever wanted cut was only 60x60cm - hense the 70x70 table size.

Some of the videos on line have used a laser cross hair projector to set the zero reference - which seems like a good idea to me! A project for another day though!

Si

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Springs?

Actually, I'd figured on just chucking the springs in with the laser cutting.

It was the support for the torch cable - which is made from the same 8mm bright bar as the axle that transfers the drive between the two sides plus one 8mm shaft collar. You'll probably have the 8mm bar left over if you've bought a whole length of it and the collars cost about 2.50GBP

Si

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