Gary Monroe published a new build:

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Thanks Sonny. I took advantage of the OpenBuilds Parts Store free shipping last night and ordered more parts. This is going to be a bit more expensive due to all the extra rails and wheels. I'll just buy parts as I can afford them. I was shocked how much the low profile screws are. I'll have to buy those in small quantities, I guess.

I do need to find someone that would be willing to make my axis plates for a reasonable price. The 4 main plates, the X and Y plates I would like machined out of 1/2" (10mm) aluminum so they are as I've designed them. I can see myself trying to do those on a drill press and really messing them up. I'll post some pictures of my electronics package as I work on it. More to come.

I guess I was not paying attention trying to order screws last night after a long day at work. The screws come in a pack of 25. Hello! No wonder they were so expensive when I tried to order a hundred of them. Man I hate it when I do that!

 

Ha, that would be like me to do that. But not this time. I ordered enough of them to mount all my open rails. So, Sonny, do you have any suggestions of someone to machine my plates for me?

 

This is the Controller box I bought from AutomationTechnologies, Inc. in IL. It's just large enough for everything. It comes with e-stop button, switch, outlets, and 4 of the quick screw-in aircraft type plugs. It had all the holes pre-drilled to place and fix most of the components. I'm not sure where I want to put the I/O smoothstepper board, yet. It fits very nicely above the power supply, but I'm concerned about the RF noise and it's affect on the I/O board. I'm not sure what I'm going to do about it. I may just mount the power supply in an external box leaving room for more electronics in this nice controller box. I need to get 2 more motor drivers. I'm planning for 5-axes with 6 motors because of the 2 for the Y axis. The kit I bought that included the 4 stepper motors with drivers, and power supplies and the ESS smooth stepper board as an upgrade. I also bought the optional end caps for the stepper motors that had the aircraft style plugs in them. It finishes off the stepper motors nicely without any wires showing from the motors. I bought the end caps from CNC4PC who had the proper size for these 570 oz/in steppers.

 

This next picture is the back of the controller box showing all the plugs installed. As you can see, I have lots of wiring and soldering to do. I'm looking forward to that, but I'm studying the documentation to know where everything has to go.

 

This is another picture of the front of the box showing the power button and E-stop switch. I am impressed with the quality of this aluminum box. It cost me about $90 and I got it 2 days after I ordered it. I live in Michigan, so it didn't have to travel all that from from Illinois, but this company is very responsive. I also ordered the wrong thing, and returning what I ordered was no big deal. I simply sent an e-mail to customer support, and they just said to send it back. I had to pay shipping, but I figured it was my error, and so paying shipping for the return was my cost for messing up the order. I decided on the Ethernet Smooth Stepper board because of the extra shielding properties of cat-6 ethernet cable. I work in IT as my profession and know a little bit about this. I didn't want any electrical noise causing any problems with the signaling to the I/O board from the computer. The BOB I ordered from CNC4PC and is a very neat package. It plugs directly into the ESS without any cables and has the push-down wire keepers. I think it's going to make for a neater install.

 

These are the stepper motors that came with the electronics kit with the end-caps installed. I soldered up the aircraft style plugs with the female plugs installed. I figured that was a safe place to keep the female plugs until I get them wired up. I'm not sure how long the wire needs to be yet. These are 570 oz/in motors. I wanted to go with something a bit stronger because of the size of my build.

 

If you are a member on Autodesk Fusion360's site, I should be able to share my project with you there. If not, do you want me to upload them here, or e-mail them to you?

 

This is the first time for me to try this, but I think I can look u up by name, or Fusion account to share my project.

 

I think I have you set up sharing my project on Fusion360. I also provided public URLs for all the plates that I need machined. Fusion provides the ability to access components using a unique web URL. So, I also included the unique URL for each plate. If it's possible, it would be really sweet if they could machine these plates out of black aluminum. However, I will be happy with traditional if that's my only choice.

 

Does anyone have experience with this system:
LattePanda - A Powerful Windows 10 Mini PC 4GB/64GB (Unactivated)
This is a single board computer that has amazing capabilities, and comes with Win10 home preloaded for $150. I'm going to buy this for my PC to install Mach4 software and drive my CNC machine.

 

This version doesn't, however, I see on their website that they will be shipping, starting around the end of this month, a version of this with a Win10 Enterprise LTSB activated license for $209. Pretty sweet deal, I think.

 

I've been looking at the minimum requirements for Mach4 software, and they want a 2Ghz PC, and most of these Single Board PCs have sub-2Ghz Processors. So, I guess they may not be best-suited for this. Searching! Searching!

 

Hi Atomist, Thanks for your input. This is why I submitted my build on this site. I have received the open rail, and it looks to be more than anodized aluminum, but I'm likely to be mistaken. They feel heavier than aluminum. We'll see how they wear once I get this thing built. I'm still collecting parts for it. I haven't even bought the wheels, yet. I'm focusing more on the controller right now. Your concern is the same as mine was when I was doing my research before I designed this. I just couldn't see the hard plastic wheels in the v-slot being any more durable than steel wheels. There are other alternatives to the open-builds open rail using a similar wheeled-bearing approach. If this is not viable, I gotta believe the OpenBuilds Parts Store would replace it with something that should work. If my design becomes a problem, I'll redesign it using a different linear motion scheme. By the way, my goal for this build is to be able to work with 6061 aluminum, wood, and carbon fiber sheets. I'm not planning to do anything with heavier metals. Thanks again for noticing my build.

 

Hey Rick 2.0, I wound up buying this off eBay: Aaeon GENE-QM77 3.5" SubCompact Single Board Computer intel core i3-3120Me. It has a Core I3 3rd Generation processor in it, 4GB RAM, 32GB Storage. This mini supports up to a Core I7 processor. It comes with WIn7 Pro 32bit 2 x GigE connections and more. I'm going to load Win10 Home Edition 64bit on it. The designers of this thing crammed a lot of stuff on this little SBC. I'll let you know how this thing works. I haven't received it, yet. I should get it next week.

 

OpenBuilds really knows how to pack this stuff. Every order I've received from them is beautifully packed and very well protected. Nice Job!

 

Here's the open rail installed on the Y Axis. This black anodized aluminum rail looks really nice. We'll see how well it holds up. I need to order way more 8mm screws and t-nuts. Sheesh!

 

Got my table started. It's still too wobbly. I'm trying to figure out where and how I want to install the control box. I'm thinking right under the table top about the center of the table using a drawer slide to that I can pull it out and access the inside.

 

I was very surprised to find some of my C-Beam Rail came already tapped for installation of the end-caps. Very nice surprise!