I have a few suggestions that might help you. Make sure you are using the timing belts that have fiberglass embedded in them. If you don't, there will be a lot of stretching with belts that long. I would also recommend you get a machinist dial indicator and use it to measure how parallel the two extrusions are that guide the x axis. With your current setup there could be a mm or two difference between the x axis guide extrusions on one end of the machine vs the other.
Hey! Just a heads-up : I commented when I started the series but I'll second it here. I am fairly certain that the beam coming out of the CO2 tube is not collimated. That means that you will have problems focusing depending on the position of the stage or rather that the focusing will be position-dependent even if your stage is level. I will slip into the comment a tangent on CO2 tubes : they are a type of gain medium that we went away from in research because (among other factors) their power drops significantly over time and when I say over time, the lifetime I am talking about is in 500 hours of operation. The tube you have seems to be watercooled which is good but the effect will still be present. Great adventure nonetheless!
You can probably remove your eccentric v-wheels when you need to detach/reattach sub-assemblies like your gantry. There's usually enough play before snugging down the v-wheels and positioning the eccentric nuts to do things like this. It's more tedious, but may help for other parts of your assembly (or for when you inevitably have to install a component you forgot about).
just add back the extrusions at the ends, put some 3d printed guides in them to align with the already existing pieces, and you can take them off whenever you need to disassemble and then put them back on to have more area to cut
That's fantastic, I am ordering my parts soon to start with my built, could you share the specs of the motors, controllers, and the belts? Thanks in advance bro!!!
To get full width, make your inner rail the full length. Then just move one end crosspiece either up or down (probably up). Another option just make the end cross piece removable.
That's not quite the belt arrangement I would have thought to use. I don't remember what it's called, but there's a way to run the belts where both motors are stationary, driving each side, but instead of attaching to the gantry, cross over and hook to the head, making it so the sum of motion controls X and the difference controls Y, thus reducing the moving mass and the need to have wires moving.
4:39 pre-assemble the full length 4 axis gantry, no need to cut it and lose the dimensional area, prior to installation? Maybe i am not understanding the problem? Looks like you had the solution at 3:51.
"If something doesn't fit just start drilling". I like that. It reminds me of a saying I've used for years: If at first you don't succeed get a bigger hammer.
I guess you will end up with 2 problems. 1. Low speeds (especially for engraving) due frame rigidity 2. Fumes extraction. Cutting with high power makes a lot of smoke, think about that in advance. I was pretty much through the same adventure, ended up buying whole whole machine. Good Luck!
Oh damn that stepper motor noise.. is it possible to upgrade to TMC stepper drivers? On my 3d printer going from a4988 to tmc2209 was such a good upgrade.
Hey that tool you used to clamp wires in there for the terminal bock. What is that tool called and what are the little pieces you put the wire in? Something like that would save me so much time in my builds!
@@bytesizedengineering But you put the grease on the outside of the bearing surface, that part is supposed to be tight on the housing and not lubricated, nor rotate, the ball bearings under the rubber cap are the things that need lubrication.
any chance you have a link for that controller/display? i built a cnc router with an arduino board last year and that looks like an amazing and easy upgrade to it
Yes, sorry I just added it to the description. It's the Ruida RDC6445S laser controller. I think it's more designed for a CNC laser, but I guess you could give it a shot.
those ferrows you are using on all your wires just wanted to let you know that you dont have to use the crimping tool on them. you can just simpley slide them on the striped wire and insert wire into connection point and tighten connection point allowing it to crimp ferrow instead. car audio installers use this method when installing amplifiers because it causes ferrow to take the natural shape of the clamping force wich is usally diffrent than the square shape the tool clamps them at. if you pull one of your wires out after it was installed and inspect the ferrow chances are you will notice that ferrow re crimped itself to new shap or your connection point wasnt snugged down enough to take new shape wich means ferrow isnt making 100% contact
you can see in one part of the video where he puts the belts into near-tension on the block they are held by, then he loosens the idler pulley's mounting block and pulls it snug to tension the belt, then locks it down tight to the frame.
I wish i had the Ability at your age to accomplish what i am trying to do at 55 :). Some men take the long path to become men, but are wiser none the less.
I cringed, watching you tap those holes in the 80x80 aluminum extrusion. I've snapped off a tap, doing the exact same thing, in the exact same way. These days I don't use power tools for tapping, and always use oil lubrication!
You know, I used to feel the same way about using a drill to tap holes. But after working in a machine shop, I learned quite a bit about tapping. I think the biggest things that contribute to taps breaking are low quality taps, the hole size being too small, and not breaking the chips as you tap. We tapped holes all day long using our CNC machines as well as a special tapping tool on a drill press. I was amazed that we hardly ever ran into taps breaking because we addressed these topics. There's also the fact that aluminum is really soft. I make sure to back the tap out and break the chips often. You'd be surprised at how well taps work when you use them correctly. I will admit that I should have used some cutting oil to reduce friction and heat.
😂 you think it's nerve racking wiring up a few stepper motors by hand and not knowing for sure everything is wired right? ... I'm in the process of swapping out the ECU of my car with a diy unit and I'm having to wire everything up by individually mapping out every ECU harness wire to figure out where it's going (there are no accurate ECU wiring diagrams online for this car), and then wire each pin of the factory harness to my diy ECU. Talk about nerve racking lol
I have a few suggestions that might help you. Make sure you are using the timing belts that have fiberglass embedded in them. If you don't, there will be a lot of stretching with belts that long. I would also recommend you get a machinist dial indicator and use it to measure how parallel the two extrusions are that guide the x axis. With your current setup there could be a mm or two difference between the x axis guide extrusions on one end of the machine vs the other.
That crimping tool looks so satisfying haha 😂
Hey! Just a heads-up : I commented when I started the series but I'll second it here. I am fairly certain that the beam coming out of the CO2 tube is not collimated. That means that you will have problems focusing depending on the position of the stage or rather that the focusing will be position-dependent even if your stage is level.
I will slip into the comment a tangent on CO2 tubes : they are a type of gain medium that we went away from in research because (among other factors) their power drops significantly over time and when I say over time, the lifetime I am talking about is in 500 hours of operation. The tube you have seems to be watercooled which is good but the effect will still be present.
Great adventure nonetheless!
You can probably remove your eccentric v-wheels when you need to detach/reattach sub-assemblies like your gantry. There's usually enough play before snugging down the v-wheels and positioning the eccentric nuts to do things like this. It's more tedious, but may help for other parts of your assembly (or for when you inevitably have to install a component you forgot about).
Yaaaas! This is one of my favorite projects you’ve done
It's alive!!!!
Good stuff, thank you for sharing! Love the music too 👍
just add back the extrusions at the ends, put some 3d printed guides in them to align with the already existing pieces, and you can take them off whenever you need to disassemble and then put them back on to have more area to cut
One thing I noticed from the first 2 videos, buy a decent set of hex drivers, the quality of life improvement over Allen keys is small but amazing!
That's fantastic, I am ordering my parts soon to start with my built, could you share the specs of the motors, controllers, and the belts? Thanks in advance bro!!!
Following
Well done! I am on a similar journey, by a slightly different route. 😁
Kinda sad, initially looked like it might become a CoreXY system :) I love those
To get full width, make your inner rail the full length. Then just move one end crosspiece either up or down (probably up). Another option just make the end cross piece removable.
Great video!
That's not quite the belt arrangement I would have thought to use. I don't remember what it's called, but there's a way to run the belts where both motors are stationary, driving each side, but instead of attaching to the gantry, cross over and hook to the head, making it so the sum of motion controls X and the difference controls Y, thus reducing the moving mass and the need to have wires moving.
CoreXY
4:39 pre-assemble the full length 4 axis gantry, no need to cut it and lose the dimensional area, prior to installation?
Maybe i am not understanding the problem? Looks like you had the solution at 3:51.
"If something doesn't fit just start drilling". I like that. It reminds me of a saying I've used for years:
If at first you don't succeed get a bigger hammer.
Hey Mate, loving this build. Will you be putting the plans up on your store soon? Cheers
make those missing 4" a removable section with alignment pins...if you really want that last 3 1/2 inches
I guess you will end up with 2 problems.
1. Low speeds (especially for engraving) due frame rigidity
2. Fumes extraction. Cutting with high power makes a lot of smoke, think about that in advance.
I was pretty much through the same adventure, ended up buying whole whole machine. Good Luck!
I don't think speed is going to be a huge issue. The mass being slung around is pretty low.
I'm curious why you didn't use closed loop steppers?? Your accuracy and speed could have been increased by a tremendous amount.
Where did you get your laser components, mirrors, head and tube?
Build the gantry in a coreXY config, it will allow for a faster machine
you are usig a lazer it would be cool to do this to operate a plasma cutter. how much did this cost you for every thing but the lazer.
Oh damn that stepper motor noise.. is it possible to upgrade to TMC stepper drivers? On my 3d printer going from a4988 to tmc2209 was such a good upgrade.
So what made you decide to stop at this size? Is there a feature limiting this from accepting a full 4x8 sheet?
It was easy to order aluminum extrusion already cut to these dimensions
At 4 min. Put the laser head on the other side og the boom, so it uses the hole you cut out.
Hey that tool you used to clamp wires in there for the terminal bock. What is that tool called and what are the little pieces you put the wire in? Something like that would save me so much time in my builds!
Is this what you're asking about?
amzn.to/3EElfBC
Nice job. Did you end up releasing the project files?
Not yet, I'm still working on this project
@@bytesizedengineering Ok :) Do you have a time frame for it? I'm dying to start making one myself
What stepper motor you used here?
Good morning I have a question about the controller that you used and how you set it up initially. I am working on a DIY laser also.
What is your question?
Great work! I hope to use your eventual plans to build a smaller version of this. Where'd you get that shirt? I like it.
I need to fix my teespring site and get you a shirt!
What was that liquid you used to clean the bearings? And what did put on the bearings after that?
I use some diluted degreaser than I put white lithium lubrication
@@bytesizedengineering But you put the grease on the outside of the bearing surface, that part is supposed to be tight on the housing and not lubricated, nor rotate, the ball bearings under the rubber cap are the things that need lubrication.
any chance you have a link for that controller/display? i built a cnc router with an arduino board last year and that looks like an amazing and easy upgrade to it
Yes, sorry I just added it to the description. It's the Ruida RDC6445S laser controller. I think it's more designed for a CNC laser, but I guess you could give it a shot.
those ferrows you are using on all your wires just wanted to let you know that you dont have to use the crimping tool on them. you can just simpley slide them on the striped wire and insert wire into connection point and tighten connection point allowing it to crimp ferrow instead. car audio installers use this method when installing amplifiers because it causes ferrow to take the natural shape of the clamping force wich is usally diffrent than the square shape the tool clamps them at. if you pull one of your wires out after it was installed and inspect the ferrow chances are you will notice that ferrow re crimped itself to new shap or your connection point wasnt snugged down enough to take new shape wich means ferrow isnt making 100% contact
Nice work so far. I'm still building mine CO2 laser, How to do tension the belts without belt tensioners?
And what controller are you using?
you can see in one part of the video where he puts the belts into near-tension on the block they are held by, then he loosens the idler pulley's mounting block and pulls it snug to tension the belt, then locks it down tight to the frame.
Can you put a link for the controller? Or can you tell what is the make and model #?
Yes, sorry I just added it to the description. Ruida RDC6445S laser controller.
@@bytesizedengineering thank you
I wish i had the Ability at your age to accomplish what i am trying to do at 55 :). Some men take the long path to become men, but are wiser none the less.
Yeah...I think you should have disassembled it again instead of losing that 4".
Great. You can mount the cut out of the ways again and only have to remove those small parts if you need to disassemble the y gantry
the belts are waaaay to long......there flexing like hell
Again with the ferrules on screw terminals... not on power lines, please.
I cringed, watching you tap those holes in the 80x80 aluminum extrusion. I've snapped off a tap, doing the exact same thing, in the exact same way. These days I don't use power tools for tapping, and always use oil lubrication!
You know, I used to feel the same way about using a drill to tap holes. But after working in a machine shop, I learned quite a bit about tapping. I think the biggest things that contribute to taps breaking are low quality taps, the hole size being too small, and not breaking the chips as you tap. We tapped holes all day long using our CNC machines as well as a special tapping tool on a drill press. I was amazed that we hardly ever ran into taps breaking because we addressed these topics. There's also the fact that aluminum is really soft. I make sure to back the tap out and break the chips often. You'd be surprised at how well taps work when you use them correctly. I will admit that I should have used some cutting oil to reduce friction and heat.
😂 you think it's nerve racking wiring up a few stepper motors by hand and not knowing for sure everything is wired right? ... I'm in the process of swapping out the ECU of my car with a diy unit and I'm having to wire everything up by individually mapping out every ECU harness wire to figure out where it's going (there are no accurate ECU wiring diagrams online for this car), and then wire each pin of the factory harness to my diy ECU. Talk about nerve racking lol
for 460 per month i can have someone design the pcb for me. Altium is way overpriced for a hobbyist.
Too much plastic 3d parts