I made my build area 24" x 24" but I need to cut a few parts that are longer than 24" Give me some recommendations on how to deal with this? I am imagining I could cut part of it then slide the board and cut the rest but I am thinking there is a large potential to screw up doing this so I am thinking it may just be easier to cut it in more than one piece and join them somehow.
If I were to try and cut it in one piece could someone give me some tips? and if I do it in more than one piece what would be a good way to join them. I am making this in 1/2" plywood.
My solution for that situate was to get another belt from Amazon and 3 more stick of conduit and temporarily build it to 60x60. I set it up on a couple of old doors, made the cuts and then shrunk it back down.
For $20, I have the parts and a tested path that lets me cut a half sheet now… Then, next time I need a big cut, my incremental cost is 8 zip ties.
I went to a used building materials store and bought a couple of old doors for $1 and set them on saw-horses. since I was going to tear it down after I made the cut anyway, it just needs to be level/stable enough to make the cut and then disassemble. I like Benjamin’s idea too…
Actually I just realized that due to my 2’x2’ table, the resulting build size is around 13". This would cause 4 setups per side on my 46" part. Starting to look not feasible.
This leads me to a question… How much of a pain is it to go from small build size to large. I imagine it requires unscrewing feet, one side of the belts on the expanding axis, then put in new tubing, screw it down to new surface. I guess the real question is, How much will this mess with your setup, like belt tension and such. Is it less than an hour to have everything working again?
I recently sized up my machine. I built a new table for it (before it was just on a flimsy card table) and then expanded the machine. If you have all of the parts ready you can do it an around 45 min if you really planned it out and used connectors for the motor wires or didn’t run the wires through the conduit. My upgrade took about an hour and a half but I had to splice in extensions for some motors and didn’t really plan it out that well. That isn’t counting cutting the conduit to length.
it took me about an hour or 1.5 hours to move it from 2x2 to 5x5.
squaring it was easy (<5 min) and it worked the first time I powered it up…
but, I also didn’t have to unplug much and the existing extra wire I had hooked up let me go to 5x5.
expanding felt a bit rough (since it was new territory).
shrinking was simple because I had already made it larger and so the process was pretty familiar.
Yeah, the belt is what concerns me the most. Thinking of not cutting it, but leaving it long, then tucking it out of the way so that when I expand I don’t need a new belt. Not sure yet how much belt comes in the kit. I need to expand from 2’ to 4’ in the Y to cut the part I have in mind, then go back to 2’
Not enough for 4 feet in the kit. I got a 10 meter one from Amazon and cut it into 5 foot sections. Then I just use either the longer or the shorter belts depending on the needed size…
since I was going to tear it down after I made the cut anyway, it just needs to be level/stable enough to make the cut and then disassemble. I like Benjamin’s idea too…