Building B-Carve

I agree to put the limit switches on top of your list, imagine what your stepper motors would do with those spindles at full throttle.

i’d so love to have plans of this!

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Ok, I will try to export something meaningful once this is done.

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Limit switches. I use them as homing switches with soft limits. The positioning facilitates cable management. All cables will exit from rear left as the controller will be on the left.

-X

+Y

+Z

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Those are the same limit switches I use and love them. I have 6 of them on my machine that serve both homing and limit functions. They work beautifully and Kevin has wonderful technical support and service.

Do you have a link for these? I remember looking at them a while ago.

Yes, these are the ones and, yes, Kevin is professional. The switches are great and so is his communication and support. I’ve been using them for about half a year and they have been flawless.

TIP:
If someone gets these, there might be one thing that you need to tune. At least I had to. My original $27 (homing pull-off) was set at 1mm when I was using the mechanical switches. Depending on your magnet-to-switch distance & orientation this might be too small to “clear” the switch when pulling off after homing and, if so, this will trigger a homing alarm. I was getting a low signal at 4mm, so I settled at $27=5mm to be safe. Also, as this is a global and not a per-axis setting, it represents your “worse” value.

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Btw, happy

day.

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I use the same limit/homing switches and also had to adjust my pull-off. One axis would not clear the switch after homing, but changing to 2mm (instead of 1) sorted it for me

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I got some L profile to make a couple of brackets

and then mounted the drag chains.

Most of the GRBL configuration is tuned too.

Approved. :wink:

It shows that the configuration with the two motors on the back allows you to make a proper installation. Too bad you have to take it apart to replace the wood for aluminium.

It’s not such a hassle. Having planned the steps in advance it takes less than 30mins. Probably even less now that all the bolts & washers are the correct size and in place.

Next on the to-do list are the Y dust guards.

Dust guards, check.

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I had ordered the 1/4" & 1/8" Elaire collets for the Makita even before getting the router itself and I never bothered using the original ones.

I recently realized that I had a gem hiding in a box for over one year. This is a stock 3/8" collet which was included as standard along with a 1/4" one in the RT0700C package (EU model). I got this from a UK eBay seller if I recall correctly. I suspect that DE/NL/FR dealers ship the same one with 6mm & 8mm collets.

The single split design is not perfect and it may not be the best for precision work, but for roughing it opens up a whole world of possibilities… and gives me some ideas for this build as well.

Here’s a 1/4" and a 3/8" of drillman1’s 2 flute upcut Kyoceras side by side for reference.

All other parameters being equal, GWizard shows half deflection on the 3/8" one.

Spindle mount revisited.

This is where we left off.

Then I thought to remove any suspicion of vertical flexing. What if we stuffed a middle layer and bolt all together in a nice sandwitch.

And then the collet fairy revealed the 3/8" collet and brought a 1" LOC bit. Which means we can machine a 2" tall part from both sides.

No crazy fixturing and half moons this time. We have Adam’s kick-■■■ low profile self-centering vise, right? So all we need is to make the front flat(er) as shown above… and pick a good origin, set it as G55 X0Y0 and keep it for all operations.

Like this one.

Rear part, top side.

Rear part, bottom side.

Rear part, front side.

Rear part, back side.

Front part, top side.

Front part, bottom side.

Front part, back side.

Front part, front side.

Those cutting ops deserve a video I think!

You start to sound like a German engineer, they make a tunnel longer as soon as they see light at the end of it. I think the mount is rigid enough anyway.

The Clamp is very well made but looks a bit flimsy when compared to real machine clamps. You have to go really slow in feeds and plunge rate to make that work.
This is what happened to a good friend of me when it jumped out of the clamp, it should have been a 19mm bearing block.

Maybe they just want to keep going. Maybe it’s their raison d’ etre. It’s a good discussion topic to bring up at the next Upgradeholics Anonymous session. You bring a German engineer, I’ll bring a Duracell bunny.

(The dual ring setup that I test cut out of MDF some time ago was flexing like jello, I knew I was not going to be happy. It’s like Sheldon Cooper knowing there is a rogue sock lost somewhere in the appartment.)

I tried out the last design with 50mm Delrin. Here are some snapshots.

First setup.

Cutting the mushroom top. Lots and lots of chips (they actually look more like hair). First time to carve Delrin. It cuts like butter and leaves a nice finish.

The seam turned out better than expected. Some state of the art dust protection for the gantry shown here as well. :smiley:

Mounted.

@Ebr
Here’s some BTS footage. Total was about 4h.

PS. I am saving the 50mm 6082-T6 for something else. To be discussed some UA sessions later.

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PPS. I also put a scrap piece of spoilboard on cause there’s a fair amount of WD-40 expected to be showered soon. And we don’t want to spoil our good spoilboard. Am I spoiling the good spoilboard too much? Maybe I’ll call it spoiledboard.

PPPS. I forgot to mention that the new setup also brings the spindle 12mm closer to the gantry.

Looks like Fusion360 and 2D Adaptive clearing strategy.
Bit ramp down to full depth (or specificed DOC)