Art has passed away RIP #2 - Lancaster Texas
 

I am Art Ransom located in Lancaster, TX on the south side of Dallas. I am a retire network engineer (mainframe, Novell and Microsoft) and I started my business TurningARound on 2001 as a tax write off for shop and toys. I do custom and architectural woodturning and am having a great time. I have been using a Legacy Ornamental Mill and reached the point where it is boring and machine doesn?t have the capacity to do what I want. After researching CNC I decided to build my own, a commercial machine to do what I wanted was 200K. Unfortunately I didn?t discover MechMate till I was 95% complete on my DIY machine. Plan on starting a MechMate around the middle of 2007. My machine is teaching me a lot of things not to do.
I need a machine that will turn a 24? by 12? column along with fluting, rope/barley twist and carving. The bad part is I have not found anyone that is doing woodturning so any suggestions that you metal turning guys have please let me know. My web site is www.turningaround.org and am documenting my machine on it.

Dear Arthur,

Your stuff looks super. Maybe One day I will need to have a indexer fixed to the mechmate which I am developing at the mement. At that moment of time I may need your inputs.

New to CNC - Lancaster Texas
 

I started building prior to finding this site and I used 4" box for the frame. Now I have started building the Mechmate gantry and have made it too narrow. The photo has a 1/2" piece of Al taped to the frame for reference. Open to sugestions to correct my oops.

Sorry Art, can't think of anything simpler than lengthening the gantry, or making the table narrower. http://www.mechmate.com/Forum/clipart/sad.gif

**@*%^*^@#@(*&^%@)@#@!^_$^@!#$!!!

You could put 3" box on top of the 4" box you used for the table?

Art,
I certainly understand your frustration of finding Gerald's plans after starting.
Same thing happened here.

Even after backing up and redoing several items, I found it more than worth the effort.

Best of Luck,
DocTanner

Gantry streacher
 

Well I used my woodworking experience and solved the problem. Soaked the box beams in water to soften them and put the gantry on my metal streacher and streached the length by 2.8":p Sorry Gerald but I went with yellow and black color scheme instead the blue. Had a friend make me the Z slide. He thought the stock on the plan was too thin so he made it out of 1/2" thick material. Now that the wife is out of the hospital( 11 weeks) I can get back to work on the machine. Will post some pictures soon.

pictures
 

here are pics of my gantry. I still have to get the gas shock and wire up the limit switches, input for solid state relay that turns on the router and dust collector.

Gee, when you said your gantry was too short, I didn't realise it was that much! :)

Nice job! What were the surprises or headaches?

That's a funky little machine....

What are you planning on making on it... you are a little handicapped in plate sizes...!!!

Have a look at Art's website and then notice that his "table" above has no cross-supports, also see this thread: Mounting 4th axis rotating indexer or lathe under the gantry

Oooohhhhhh, that's going to be a huge indexer.... nice.....

Indexer
 

Gerald where did the bumble bee go? The machine is designed to do columns up to 24" by 10'. Wish now that I had made it wide enough for a sheet of plywood but the next one will have full sheet capability. Look closly and you will see the proxmity switches on the X rail and the AC outlet on the Y car. The AC outlet is controled by a solid state relayid that turns on with a M03 command and turns off with M30 command. This turns on/off the dust collector and router. Interesting fact on solid state relays is that they need to have a load on them to work. This led to some real head scraching when the lamp I used in testing worked and when the router and DC were plugged in they worked but when the electronic controled router by it's self didn't work. I used 4" cable chain because I got 60' of it for 100 USD. Looking for a cool bobble head to mount on top of the Z plate. Anyone have any suggestions?

Nah, that bumble-bee was too big and it stole your thunder - was just a time-filler till you posted the promised pics :):)

That solid state relay observation (with an electronically controlled router) is well worth remembering.

You should be able to make a bobble head of this:

Up And Running!!
 

So what is my serial number? Guess it should end with .5 as it is a hybrid. Need to post final picture after getting the cabling cleaned up. A real fun project. I would like to build the gantry for anyone but unless you are close to pick up the machine you should build the table. This time of the year It gets too hot in the shop between 1100 and 1700 without the AC on and I don't do turning without the dust collector on and the DC sucks all the AC out. If you are interested contact me. [email protected] Gerald what is the royalty fee? Here is my hybrid,
http://www.turningaround.org/4_axis_mill.htm

Hi Art, your serial # should be something like 1SYB - the first short yellow & black one. :)
When there is a photo of it carrying the logo, and looking ready to cut something, it gets the next serial number. No.2 is still officially vacant.

Royalty should be 5% of profit, or 2.5% of total fee, but don't ask me how to pay it yet - the currency might be a return favour, or something.

Hey Art,

I have looked at the Legacy Ornamental Mill. Never did decide to spend the money. Your machine is very interesting (and very yellow). I think that there are about 20 people that can't wait to see what you can 'turn' out.

Good Job.

Post some project pictures - please - as soon as you can.

Thanks,

Marc

Gerald you need to start a serial # regestry. Here is my MechMate # 1SYB. See it at http://www.turningaround.org/4_axis_mill.htm .

Looks good Art!

The serial number thing is a bit tongue-in-the-cheek because no two models will ever be really alike and nobody is going to follow all the drawings, colour schemes and logos exactly ;)

What really is going to count points is if you can produce one signed by the designer! ;) ;) Those will really become collector's items. :D

True it will be rare that someone follows the plans exactly. But it would be cool to have a rogue galley of the MechMates built around the world. Great news, the Lancaster School District has finally ordered the router and it is in build mode! Only took them 4 years. At this rate we may be actually be able to start building MechMates within 2 years,

Art, the ** sticky threads at the top of the Personal Pages forum are the completed machines. Or, at least some of them. Doc Tanner was the first guy to actually cut something with his machine built off the website plans, Fabrica was the first to publish smart pictures of a smart looking machine. You are the third person to have this "blog" go into the completed (sticky) section of the Personal Pages forum. Yours is the first indexer. Mine was the first machine. Doc Tanner's was probably the first built alone (no staff). Etc. Each to their own - it is about personal satisfaction and not a race (I hope).

Refresh my memory on the Lancaster school project - it rings a faint bell.....:o

I too have done a Indexer. Maybe I will have time today to uplaod some pics.

Art can you please post some pics of some jobs that you have done. Also can you please send me some links where I could find detailed pics of columns which could be turned out in a indexer such as the one you have turned out.

Gerald the Laser is still in progress. I am building a separate table for this purpose. Work is pretty slow since I had to get myself involved in some other urgent work.

First production job
 

Finished the three 6' posts and spent most of the day getting an extra 3" in length so I can mount the 10' posts. I am mounting the posts between centers using 4 jaw chucks ,http://www.grizzly.com/products/h8049, so I can center the stock. Turned out that the vender sent me a chuck with wrong threads. Naturaly 3 months ago when I used one of the chucks on my wood lathe I grabed the one that was what I ordered and yesterday when I tried to use both chucks I discovered the error. I had to use my 10" chuck which is 5" thicker and 30 lbs heavier. What a real PITA!
This project was a perfect training project. I had two 6' and three 10', 8" by 8" fir posts that needed 6" long 8" square ends and the rest milled to an octogon. To keep it simple I decided that I would mill the flats and do the 4 sides to 8 side transitions by hand. I used the surfancing wizard in Mach3 to create the G code and then edited it to add a M3 at start to turn on the router and a G91 A90 at the end to rotate the stock 90 to the next flat. The entire file was set up as a macro that repeated 4 times and I had an octogonal post. Slicker than snot on a door knob! Running at 300 IPM it took about an hour to do a 6' post. It was nerve racking when I hit start and left to run errands. I was wondering if I would come back to a $100 piece of scrap wood or a finished product. Every thing worked right! I should post pictures on my site by Monday.

A axis help
 

I am running a 920 oz stepper with a 4.5 belt driven gear reduction on the A axis. I realy need more torque and holding power. I only see two options. I could mill a large gear or get a 900+ stepper with gear reduction. Rotation speed of 15 RPM ( 276 IPM at 6" diameter) should be OK. Any suggestions appreciated.

Art,
Your A-axis stepper @ 920 oz*in is about as big as I've ever used (or tested). Also, your 4.5:1 gearing is higher than the 3:1 and 3.6:1 belt-driven transmissions that I've built. All of the Oriental Motor steppers that are commonly used use a PK296 size stepper, which has about 300 oz*in. The gear box supplied with those motors (PK296A2A-SGx.x where x.x is 3.6, 7.2, etc) limits the available torque to well below the mechanical torque expected with a 300 oz*in motor geared down 3.6:1, 7.2:1, etc.

If I were looking for a higher gear ratio, I would probably resort to a multi-stage belt-driven transmission. By doing that, the 920 oz*in of the the stepper would be multiplied by the gear-ratio. The drawback is additional complexity; however, from the photos that you've posted, it looks like you have room for a two-stage belt-drive.

Art, would a worm-drive gearbox have too much backlash for you? Example

options
 

Brief search and I found a 1800 oz stepper without gear ratio. I was thinking of a geared stepper of the 900 oz range or better with 5:1 or 10:1 gear ratio toreplace my present stepper. The stepper would be cheaper and easier than adding another gear or the speed reducer. With a 5:1 stepper and present belt wouldn't that give me a 22.5:1 ratio or 22470 oz to the A axis shaft with a 900 oz stepper? This brings up data transfer rate limits of the printer port. How do I determine the max data transfer rate of my printer ports?

Art, did you see my question on the worm box? If that type of backlash is acceptable you can pick up a worm box very cheaply (less than the price of a stepper).

Mach sets your data transfer rate (over 70 000 pules per sec, or 2000 rpm).

Some of the really large steppers are hard to tune. I think that it has something to do with the large inductance ratings that large motors typically have. I've misplaced the email that gave the range of inductance for each Gecko G20x stepper driver, but I seem to remember that the G203 works best with motors that have an inductance rating of 0.5uH to 20.0uH. The G202 stepper driver is designed for motors in the 1uF to 40uF range. (Gerald, please correct these figures if I've remembered incorrectly.)

Some of the inductance ratings of large motors can be well out of range. For instance, the Oriental Motor PK2913-0A1A motor is rated at 76.8uH. That's a worse case example, but it seems to support the 'problem' posts made on other forums when the user can't get a large motor to run smoothly.

I like Gerald's idea of using worm gears. I've never tried using them - mostly because I assumed that they could only be run at low speeds. My assumptions can really get in the way of finding workable solutions.

gear box
 

All the gear boxes I have seen were very expensive. Gear box was my original ides but were too expensive. Where do you shop? As for the data transfer rate I am worried that the port itself can handle the data rate.

Art,
I think you'll be okay with 25:1 final reduction at 15 RPM. The math says that you'll need:
25 X 2000 pulses = 50,000 pulses per revolution
15 X 50,000 = 750,000 pulses per minute
750,000 / 60 seconds = 12,500 pulses per second.
So, even at the slowest rate of 25,000 pulses per second, you would only need 1/2 of the available bandwidth to spin the rotary axis.

(I've downloaded the 100K speed version of Mach3, but with my particular computer, I actually end up with about 60K. In fact, there really isn't much discernable difference between Mach 3 running at 45K and my setup. A faster computer would help. This particular computer is a 2004 model running a 32-bit AMD processor. In today's world, it is a dinosaur.)

Mike the G202 can handle 1mH to 40mH inductance range while the G203V can handle 0.5mH to 20mH.

Art, worm boxes are typically used for roller shutter doors or conveyor belts. Most metalwork (milling) indexers are worm driven.

I have to brag!!!
 

http://www.turningaround.org/4_axis_mill.htm
http://www.turningaround.org/MechMat...onProjects.htm

Art, you said the other day that you would be posting new photos soon, but the links above go to old pages? Am I missing something?

The second one is the first job that I posted today. I will be posting more as I get them done. It is a thumbnail to the details.

Okay, it was the December 2006 date at the bottom that confused me.

Did you also cut the overall square outside shape with the "MechMill"?

(PS. MechMill is a rare word - only 10 obscure results in google - mechmill.com is still up for grabs - if you like it, you can have it :))

No the timbers came as S4S 8 by 8's. Actually they were exceptionaly true for wood though on several faces I had to adjust a end and up to .15" and rerun the last surfacing pass to get the face with same at both ends. As a point of interest these were radio frequency dried. This involves usinf a vacumn kiln with RF transmiters inside. Think BIG, DAMN BIG, microwave in a vacumn. Fir cured this way mills and turns better but still has a lot of tear out. Easy to tell if large timbers are RF dried is that they have few if any cracks in them.

Art,
Do you have any more recent pictures? I really like your site. Also your rail modification is pretty neat. How is it holding out for you? Do you have any more close up pictures in case anyone else would want to try this rail arrangement?

Gerald, do you have any comments on the type of rail system and its use with the specified rollers? Feel free to move this part of the post to another section if its out of place.