Desktop Router

[John S]

I posted in another thread that I used my destop router a lot nowdays to do simple plate work, I think it was Rake who asked for more details.

Well here goes, I bought the router off the homeworkshop. org site, it was one of about 15 that a guy was selling. These had all been robbed in some way to keep a production line going.

Mine was the only gantry style router, all the rest had moving tables.
I wanted a gantry type as the footprint although being larger, is fixed. A moving bed tends to knock into things if you are not well organised [ like me ]

It was complete mechanical but missing the motors, mountings, couplings and all electronics. Motors nowadays are easily sourced and are cheap, mountings are always hidden inside a lump of aluminium and Oldham couplings are also cheap or even possible to make yourself and just buy the cheap torque disk.

Shows the motors fitted but not fully assembled, i.e. lacking screw covers etc.

Time to see if it all works.

Shows it linked up to my test controller which is just an aluminium case with breakout board, power supply and 3 drives. This enables me to quickly plug into a machine to test motors etc. Everything worked and onto the next stage of finishing off and building a dedicated control box.

More to follow if there is enough interest.

One teaser though is this badge, done as a spoof / test piece.

It's place in Wales with supposedly the longest name in the world, many people go to have their photo taken on the railway station platform. Note the tails of the six 'g's, all perfect and identical.

John _S.

 

[ksouers]

Holy Crap!

And just how many sneezes, burps, belches and coughs does it take to pronounce that name? :

Though it looks like the machine does some very fine work. Do you have a planned use for it?


Cheers,
Kevin

 

[John S]

It's pronounced Klan - fair - pwell -ginn - gill - [ hawk spit ] silly gog - gog - goth ;D

It's in regular use doing things like Tufnol [ Phenolic ] brush rings for DC motors, badges, signs etc

Did this for my brother who's dawg died recently.

 

[BobWarfield]

John, I've got a similar, though smaller router made by Widgitmaster (CNCZone). Love your case to carry your electronics. I made a similar one out of a toolbox. These days you could make all that work off a laptop with a Smoothstepper too, which would be cool, though you seem to have a laptop with an actual parallel port?

Would be great to see a video of your router in action cutting something.

For comparison, here is my much smaller Widgitmaster router:

What spindle are you using with yours?

Best,

BW

 

[John S]

Bob,
I have seen these small routers by Widgetmaster on CNC Zone and they are very nice things, pity you can't get similar over here.

My case has been built for a job, that of checking out machines suitable for retro fitting, usually we can find the motor cables, hook into them and ignoring everything else on the home machine enable it to work to prove the machine out.
This case can power up to Bridgeport sized machines as the drives are 8 amps max at 90 volts.

That laptop is just a normal laptop, no parallel port, the case runs off a USB powered NC Pod card.
They looked promising when they came out but they are a big disappointment in they they are unreliable and un-supported. It will work well enough to act as a test bed as if it trips on test at least we know it's the Pod.

At the moment I'm using a 800W Kress spindle, adjustable from 10,000 to 30,000 rpm via a thumb switch on the handle.
Between 10,000 and 12,000 they are reasonable, you can work at the side of them, flat out they are just like a full sized router - bloody noisy.

I have been promised one of those 24,000 rpm water cooled spindles from China, they are basically 400Hz motors running off an inverter and are very quiet.

Here's a pic of the router as it is at the moment.

Ignore the marks on the bed, they are just dust trails and only show up with the flash.
The black diagonal marks denote the cutting area that the tool can reach, about 12" x 12", you can alter it by moving the spindle but the sizes remain the same.
The small angled piece at the bottom of the spindle is the laser edgefinder, it's put there so it's out the way but can be used at anytime, you don't need to fit it to the spindle. A switch on the side of the E_Stop triggers it from the 5v USB Supply.

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[Maryak]

Guys,

These things appear to have a remarkable similarity to a drawing plotter. Is it possible that a CAD package could operate one by designating it as the plotter ??? ???

Asked in total ignorance of all things CNC so please humour me.

Best Regards
Bob

 

[John S]

Bob,
Some of the simple ones are just that.

Without trying to get too technical and I'm very rusty on plotters, CNC uses G code.

G01 x3.3 f12 which means move in a straight line 3.3 units at a feed rate of 12 units per minute.

Plotters use a language called HPGL [ Hewland Packard graphics language ]
PD100,0,100,100,0,100,0,0; put down the pen and move to the following locations (draw a box around the page) where the x and y co-ordinates are given in pairs.

So for a plotter there is no Z move, only pen up and pen down, some people have used this to control an air solenoid so it can feed in to a stop,

There are also programs out there that can convert HPGL files to G code.

BTW Bob did you ever get that drawing book with the steam engine plans ?

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[Maryak]

Thanks John :bow:

As a 2D man that dreaded Z axis has still got me

.

Best Regards
Bob