I have always had issues with these parts as well as the clamps breaking on my plasma machine. i also have a LR router table. Those parts never break on it… im guessing it has to do with the speed, UV light or maybe the cutting fluid i use in the water table that gets everywhere while cutting. Could also be the fact i use 2 X motors / belts and run them fairly tight to minimize slop at high speeds. Really im not sure why i have this issue so i thought id decide to try my hand at a design i hope will hold up better for my application. While im at it i thought id upgrade to 1.25" X rails to add rigidity when making hard corners cutting at 6000mm/min. also the belts now hold the X together by backing on the tube ends. the yellow, 1st gen parts used shims and the black 2nd will have adjustment for this to make it possible to track the Y movement by making wheel alignment possible… hopefully… i also have had issues with and have had to measure everything manually on the machine. i wish there were simple dimension drawings available. not cad but simple tube spreads, belt offsets etc. i am kind of dreading making the X rollers because i think it will take much more trial and error… any input is always great. and as long as everything works out in the end i will post the stls if there is no objection. the reason for the nema 23s is because i want way more speed on Z. there is tons of Z movement with plasma and it is the bottle neck on my machine. i will also be adding 23s to the Y drives, now that i have felt the weight of one i am sure i wont be able to cut at 6000 and make sharp turns with all that extra weight on top.
That thing is a beast! Nice work!
I know I mentioned this to you before, and I’ve since actually seen it done on another build: had you given any thought to making this part out of steel tubing? I want to say the post I saw made it out of 2"x3" tube. Ill see if I can dig it up.
Yea I have, and if I went that route I’d use aluminum to keep the weight down… these weigh about 1lb per side plus the NEMA 23… I was thinking angle rather then tube… Or machined plate then bend to angle… I figured more ppl could use it this way and I thought being able to track it might b neat…
Here it is Say hello to my Lowrider
If mine doesn’t hold up I’ll likely give your design a shot before trying tubes. Thank you for sharing.
What kind of speeds do u cut and rapid at?
I just got mine running. All the testing I’ve been doing has been on scrap, the smallest was 3/16 at just 85 ipm. I’ve limited the steppers to around 280 ipm, I’ve been jogging around at that speed. Based on the cut charts for my cutter the fastest I’ll probably cut at is 249 ipm.
Ya I have my rapids somewhere around 800ipm and I can’t go anymore then 6000mm/min on 1/16 for quality reasons… Part of the reason I’m gonna try 1 1/4 tube. Be awesome if I could get 50% faster quality cuts on the thinner stuff too although I try to do mostly heavy plate work
i have changed it again and again… this will not b the final version as u can see i think ill put z motors on the y plates. but i am just going to go with it as i have changed so much i still need it to work. every part is different but the z rollers and this will use the bottom 2 to mount the motor plate.
There,added some photos of it all going together. This all started because I was wanting a stronger xz main and one thing led to another…