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Im developing a Computer vision welding automation for aluminum blades. So far the CV trials have been made with a Shapeoko T. Everything runs under ROS. When I got the Shapeoko it was for mounting a TIG pen, but now we’ve been testing laser welding and we are gonna go for that. Therefore the setup wasnt meant for the laser head.
The idea is to mount a welding head like the one in the picture, not that model/brand in particular :
Depending on the welding head model/configuration it can be up to 5kg.
So Id like to hear some thoughts about how the xcarve-1000 will perform for this purpose. So far the on-paper precission suits the needs, as well as the workable area and so on.
The laser method, power and so on is more or less stablished, as well as the laser safety measures, etc.
Does anyone have mounted such load in the Xcarve 1000 carriage? how about vibrations?
inventables guys advised me to maybe try a sturdier Z axis mount, such as :
5kg is more than double the weight of the Dewalt 611 that most people use. You may be better served with something that is more robust such as a C beam and less likely to roll the gantry with the cantilevered weight.
I’ve just double checked with the manufacturer, the weight of the welding head its 2Kg, its slightly higher ( 200g) than the dewalt 611. would it be fine ?
I would not expect that weight to be an issue.
There are some in the community that are mounting heavier spindles on the X Carve.
Does laser welding produce spatter? That and the radiant heat would be my concern.
The welding spatter will be taken in care by the argon flow for the gas shielding and the crossjet compressed air for cleaning the optics. About the heat, the weld is an overlapped spot seam weld of about 5-8 mm long. The time that the laser is welding is about 1/8th of the time the cnc is moving. All the structure where the pieces are going to be welded will be aluminum/steel based so, I guess there wont be that many heat related problems, but yes, I will keep that in mind.
What is the required rate of travel? If it’s fast, you will need something beefy to control slamming that heavy head around. And not just the C-Beam, belts and motors as well.
If you go with XCarve, swap up to 9mm belts from the start. The 6mm belts are too rubber-bandy. You will need to get 4m of belt, 9mm idler wheels, and 30mm M5 bolts, and wider belt clips. OpenBuilds will have the wheels and belt. The bolts in their wheel kits don’t have bolts long enough for an xcarve conversion though. Your industrial local fastener place will have the M5 bolts if OpenBuilds doesn’t.
Wider belt clips: you can widen existing ones, make some, or there’s a couple people who make and sell them reasonably cheap.
