New design, new book

[Michael Simpson Virgina]

I am about ready to start construction on my latest design. Shown here is may latest AutoCAD rendering.
Render Red small.jpg

I have already gone through a couple prototypes, and even with the temporary rails shown below she is pretty ridged.



Im going to write a second book on this design. Its all about choices. I started with a design that would work with a 5' gantry and with a table as long as 9'. I then scaled it down to the small version shown here. I need a portable version for the DC Science and Engineering fair in April. The book will let you pick the X and Y cutting sizes. I even have a set of tables that show the weight of the base and gantry for the various sized machines. In the machine shown above the base (part without the gantry) is 209lbs. The gantry with the router (bosch 1617EVS) is about 150lbs.

The cross beams can be super struts or 80/20 3030 stock. The table is removable and weighs in at over 70lbs

My steel should all arrive tomorrow so I can finally stop playing with prototypes and get down to actual construction.

[Khalid Khattak]

Thats amazing.. MDF rails .. Really love the design and concept.

[Mike Heidrick]

Cool. Looks a lot like the cncrouterparts design.

[Michael Simpson Virgina]

Im using a lot of CNCRouterParts parts. But is a beefier design. I am also using most of their Z axis parts. Its very ridgid. Im just going to tweak it a-bit. I will probably support the K2CNC z axis as well. I learned a lot from my MDF rail prototype and changed up the gantry design quite abit.

One area that bothers me is that the carriages dont have any adjustments for reposinoning the carriage. This means you dont have any real machine adjustments. I suspect I will have to work in some sort of adjustment system as the design evolves.

In my last book, you had to cut out many of the steel parts for the carriage. In his design no cutting, Just drilling.

I have been working on the bolt patterns and parts for a few other sizes.

The one shown in the OP has a cutting area of 31 x 27"




This one has a cutting area of 55 x 27"
render 55 x 27.jpg

This one is 55" x 62"

render 55 x 62.jpg