Is it necessary and/or advisable to attach the XC to the work surface?
If so, what’s a good way to do so on a 3/4" MDF surface? Thanks
I do not have mine mounted to the table. I put some rubber type shelf paper on top of my table to put my machine on. Seems to work for me so far.
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I don’t see how fixing the X-Carve to the work table would hurt it. On the contrary, it should help stiffen things up more (not that mine has needed it so far for wood).
I will fasten mine down too as soon as I come up with a custom table design with a removable enclosure (this may take a while…).
Chachin…
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I currently have mine clamped to the table. It seems to work well, and I can un-clamp it and move it around if need be.
If you are not putting it on a tilt table, there should be no need to physically attach it to the work surface.
With mine, I simply positioned 1"x 3/4 " X3/4" high blocks of wood along side the y axis makerslide inboard of the end plates front and back on both sides and screwed them down.
It keeps the machine from sliding around on the 3/4 MDF and since I have no gravity fluctuations in my region, vertical movement is not an issue. Yet if for some reason i want to lift it off the table, it comes right up with out a need to move the blocks.
I used 4 of these brackets to bolt down my XC:
https://www.inventables.com/technologies/extrusion-brackets-double-slot
I found they worked best at the corners.
I wanted to have as flat a wasteboard as possible. After reading about the sag in the center of the wasteboard, measured by some guy with a runout caliper chucked up in his spindle, I decided to do this mod, where you put several sheets of MDF under the wasteboard and the bolt down the whole mess. Well, I went even one step further. I made a 3" tall torsion box with 1/2" MDF, then put bolts through the whole torsion box and through the wasteboard and standoff MDF sheets. I think I ended up using 5.5" 1/2" diameter bolts in the end, then sealed the whole assembly with waterproof caulk to keep moisture from warping stuff. It’s tough to see in this picture, but those little four bolt heads are all that peaks through the top. I use carriage bolts to minimize the amount of visible metal.
My 1000x1000 x-carve was sitting on a wire platform and was way too flexible.
So, I built “half a torsion box” (3/4 plywood with a 1x3 ladder type structure underneath but no bottom skin).
Then I removed the MDF wasteboad and the center extrusion that was supporting the wasteboard.
Then I clamped the base to the box, squared things up, drilled holes for M5 bolts through the plywood, so that I could use two pre-insertion t-nuts in each of the remaining four base extrusions.
After a final squaring up, everything is quite rigid, and not at all flexible.
Then I screwed down T-Track to the plywood, sliced up the old MDF wasteboard to lie between the T-Tracks, and Bob was indeed my uncle.
-Kelly
If I visualize this correctly, the waste board rests directly on the top of the 1/2 torsion box with t track for the hold downs? Hmmm, thinking outside the box. Does this increase your workable z height by the thickness of the waste board that was lowered ?
And say hi to uncle Bob for all of us here…
Yes, the top of the t-track is just slightly lower than the top of the MDF, which worked out nicely.
The max workpiece height was increased by the thickness of the extrusion that I removed (IIRC that’s 20mm).
I’d take a picture, but the lift is currently retracted to the ceiling, and the pinewood derby car that (hopefully) will race this weekend is suspended from it so that I can paint it.
-Kelly