Researching lowrider 2 from Canada

LowRider CNC Your Builds
1

Hi,

I am somewhat familiar with cnc themed devices, delta 3d printer, large laser engraver, draw bot, sadly all from China. I think the motion part is fairly straight forward, my issues have all been with the bit that actually does things, that and my customer support being Google (aliexpress sourced kits).

Cons:
3d Delta printer (nozzle clogged, locked down firmware so no starting point for mods, one sentence instructions in bad English, control board with the iffy Chinese usb serial controller, random disconnects).
Laser Engraver (power supply under powered, causes endless missed steps with the two stepper motors per axis design, laser turned out to be more of a commodity to be replaced. Same Chinese usb controller, random stops, software OK but underwhelming, tried a few.)
Drawbot (the part that lifts and lowers the pen is a commodity actuator, buy bags of replacements, Chinese usb serial bit, so ditto.)

Pros:
3D Delta Printer (I was able to create a few tiny things, I think by accident more than anything, motion of the machine was very cool, more work to be done than I had time for, random controller board with no support, would have to reverse engineer somehow or replace and guess settings.)
Laser Engraver (After creating another power supply I got some good use out of it, burnt a lot of wood, caught styrofoam on fire, put Looney tunes characters on a few t-shirts.)
DrawBot (still working, well have to replace a rubber band, but lots of drawings, used as a plaform for experimenting with the code for lasergrbl and mutile passes to create shading / multi colour.)

One lesson learned, buy a open controller board with a working data connection (or headless or pi based), and stay away from China unless it is something that is entirely self contained or very simple that needs zero support. :slight_smile:

So now I am looking into using a router of some kind, and the most appealing kit to me is the lowrider 2. A beginner yes, but some idea of what is involved.

First concern, specs of the metal tubing, I am in North America (Canada) so 25.4 or 1" and 16 gauge / 0.0695 mm walls.

First attempt at searching was this:
https://www.homedepot.ca/product/stz-galvanized-steel-pipe-nipple-1-inch-x-12-inch/1001157732

Not sure what gauge that is though.

Cheers!

2

Welcome to the forum,

That pipe is going to be quite a bit larger than 1" OD. Pipe is sized by ID.

You’ll want something more like this

https://www.homedepot.ca/product/paulin-1-x-48-inch-round-steel-tube/1000140995

Ryan recommends Stainless, but you probably won’t find that at a box store. Most towns big enough to have box stores probably have a steel supplier, you might try a search for one. They might not stock the stainless either, but should be able to order it.

There are also online steel suppliers.

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3

Thanks!

My plan is to go around town with a caliper and see what’s available. :slight_smile:

4

You should be pleasantly surprised from your experience. The software, and electronics are all open source. They are reliable and we have a well beaten path from start to sawdust. Ryan’s machine is not open source hardware, but you can build it yourself from printed parts and hardware store stuff, or buy from Ryan and get it all at once, while supporting this and future designs.

A lot of the components are off the slow boat from china. But that is pretty hard to avoid. The ultimachine boards (rambo, mini rambo, from Ryan) are made in the US and are great quality. The motors, the power supply, the screen are all made in China, but they are commodity parts and are all pretty tough.

Welcome. Please share as much of the process as you’d like.

5

It’s not stainless, and you can probably get it cheaper somewhere else, but in a pinch…

6

Not sure where you are but in Calgary I was able to find a metal place locally that cut my stainless to length while I waited they also do mail order.

7

Thanks for all the responses, more active than I thought. :slight_smile:

I am in Newfoundland, I am sure there is a metal place somewhere, just have to look, the covid 19 thing is hampering things, lineups everywhere. I probably can’t justify $400 on metal tubes to the wife though. :slight_smile: I am thinking along the lines of a frame where you pop in a stock sized board for an easily replaceable spoiler that is screwed down. 48" pipe means max 3 feet wide projects, next stock size up I found was 72" but would only need 56", I may start with 36" though for rigidity. First idea for a project is a pool cue case, I did one by hand using a ghetto router table and much elbow greese, but having the exact dimensions of the cue cnc’d would be better. :slight_smile:

Cheers!

8

Price shouldn’t be anywhere near $400… there are different grades and thicknesses… you want the thinner tubing it’s not as heavy. Checking some online sites looks like more the $4 a foot range.

9

I paid $5/ft for ss tubes here in edmonton, that’s an all day every day price. There are lots of canadians on here too.

If you can swing $400 for tubes I can be your supplier, shipping included, cut to length, and deburred too! Ha ha

10

That was more of a comment on the princess auto pricing. :slight_smile:

I emailed a place locally, but got an email back saying to call them, I mean, if I wanted to call them I wouldn’t have sent an email. That seems to be the pattern locally, everyone wants a phone call, no web sites, emails or chats, phone calls when I am working from 9 to 5 and not able to phone anyone. Well I had Monday off but everything was closed. I have trouble enough ordering a coffee at Tim Horton’s, if I could collect whats I would be energy self sufficient. :slight_smile:

Cheers!

11

Good luck, aside from a few modern metal supply places I thinks it’s a little more old school type of industry. Given the tube lengths that could be needed whatever work it takes to get them locally will probably save you a fair bit of shipping cost.

I went to metal supermarkets locally for me but I believe they also ship and have an online store. They’re not the cheapest but they’re quite modern.

12

These guys ship and do online quotes…

https://quote.metalpros.com/

Like Brent I dealt with metal supermarkets and they were great. Haven’t dealt with the other guys.
I was working a lot and had my tubes shipped even though they were local and it wasn’t too awful.

13

Thanks for all the help, appreciate it, will get around to it eventually, metal supermarkets would cost me $180, not too bad, just wish shipping and taxes wasn’t $110. I have to build a table (going multi pupose) and wait for other parts to arrive since the kit was sold out, so no rush.

Cheers!

14

Hmm how big are the tubes you are after for your build lengths? For $110 shipping I bet I can help you out for less. I paid $50 for 12ft I believe. I bet there’s a cheaper way to ship.

15

I got a quote for $100 for 20 foot long welded 304 stainless steel tube 1" OD 1/16" wall, does welded make a difference? WIll keep looking in the meantime. How do you guys cut the tubing, I have an angle grinder, which would be the closest I can think of that might do metal of that type. I have a copper pipe cutter but doubt that would make a dent.

Cheers!

16

You can buy special pipe cutters for stainless but I bet they are $$$. I have an abrasive disc for my miter saw that is good for steel and cheap. Just make sure not to use them on soft metals like aluminum or copper they can be dangerous for that. Angle grinder would work too.

That said I just ordered my tubes to length they do a nice job cutting them and shorter tubes means cheaper shipping. That really sucks it’s over $100 for shipping to you.

17

I used a tubing cutter on the Chrome-Moly tubing I used for my Lowrider. I don’t think 304 is appreciably harder, so I think it would work.

It takes a lot more turns than cutting copper of course, but makes a nice cut, and it’s easier than the angle grinder to get consistent lengths. Quiet and clean too.

1 Like
18

Hi,

Had some fun in the hardware store line ups yesterday, you would think it was a doctor’s convention.

My probably stupid decisions:

I am going to try regular steel with a shorter width to start 36", it’s cheaper than stainless and it’s an easy upgrade later, compared to other designs. I picked up 4 pieces at Home Depot at 36" for fairly cheap, it has the right wall thickness, having a feel for the various tubing out there and thinking about my router use in the past I can definitely say steel is the way to go for rigidity, I doubt that is the sole reason for stainless though, it nothing else it would be smoother and cleaner. It will be an experiment, I will see if it lasts at all or needs to be smoother or have much wear. I was able to cut it with my copper pipe cutter, apparently I forgot I overspecced my purchase and it was able to do 1" and it was fine. So, I have 2x 36" rails by 4x 16" Z, the ball screws I ordered from Amazon at 400mm long, not 300mm, (same spec otherwise) can’t hurt to be longer and I can always cut them to be shorter. This will limit be to around 2 feet wide work area, but for a pool cue case I don’t need nearly that, just long, probably won’t be doing custom doors or huge signage to start anyway. Oh, the V guides are dirt cheap at Kent building supplies, which is almost across the street.

I also picked up a Makita RT0701C for the router, it was much cheaper than the DeWalt locally and has the same specs or better, reviews seem OK. I used my drawbot to draw the flat parts on some quarter in plywood with limited success, as it isn’t quite wide enough for the y frame (I edited the gcode and did some math to get the slope for the right hand side), but after I cut itI can flip it and trace the contour to get the rightmost wheel support. Using one piece of quarter in plywood sheet, will do 4 y frames and glue pairs together, figure it wil be slightly easier with a jig saw for accuracy and I would likely go through multiples anyway. Once I have something working, fingers crossed I can use the machine to create more polished bits, would need a slightly different base plate anyway.

For a table my inial idea is to have something that is variable width, just enough of a frame to support a spoil board and have some minor adjustment to square it up, essentially a large clamp, since I don’t have a shop I am thinking of using a small room downstairs, it’s around 8" wide, I can skip the legs and use the studs in the walls for legs (think waist height book shelves where you clamp wood across the room, plus X support), which would probably sag but that is my first thought. I hate drywall, I have used 2 inch strips of wood along the ceiling to mount curtain rods. :slight_smile:

I plan on putting in an order with V1 Engineering for most of the rest of it, of course the main missing ingredient for me is the 3d printed parts which is now out of stock, lol.

Cheers!

IMG_20200526_011705
IMG_20200526_0117051512Ă—2016 1.16 MB
baseplate.gcode (29.5 KB) yframe.gcode (25.6 KB)

19

I placed my order with v1 Engineering with the wrong size 3d printed parts, hopefully Ryan gets my email and will just delay the order until the right size comes in.

Edit 2: Ryan did get my email and the order is on it’s way with the right parts. Yay!

Edit 1:
Just noticed some things were not in my original cart, the out of stock thing is getting out of hand, lol. Oh, well, nothing I can’t get elsewhere.

20

Hope it all goes smoothly for you. The Makita is a nice choice the RPM goes lower than the Dewalt which is an advantage.

You mentioned ball screws… the printed parts are designed for lead screws?

Also for your table just remember the carriage forms a C around the edge of the table so you need an unobstructed area an inch or two under the edge of the table for the carriage to travel.