Today was spent cutting, drilling, tapping, de-burring, re-drilling, filing, filing some more, re-cutting, bleeding etc…
At the end of the day a few things are starting to take shape.
The X Axis with the Z Axis Front View
Look closely at the shinny Z axis plate, see that red swish? That is a little blood sacrifice I made to the project gods. My wife (the hand model because she wouldn’t let me get her in the picture) is holding the X Axis up I don’t have it secured to the table yet. Everything is aluminum except the fasteners and rails, they are stainless. The table is a whopping 1/2″ thick plate. the smaller plate for the Z and Y axis is 1/4″ plate. Yes, the Y axis table is too narrow I will address that later.
Rear view
Here is the view from behind. If this stepper works out it will be a slick install, notice you can’t even see it in this picture. The next one will show it tucked away.
I can bearly get a peek at it.
One of the biggest pains today was making the screws for mounting this. In case anyone wants to mount some of these steppers from SparkFun, the mounting holes on the front are M 3.5. I couldn’t find any screws long enough for what I needed so I used some threaded rod. Cutting them and grinding the ends so they would accept the nuts was a real joy!
Not too bad in the end though.
I made all of my own fasteners and I will show some close ups later on how they worked. Overall I am happy with them but they are a lot of work compared to just buying some from 80/20. The drilling must be precise and there are some tricking things to do. Such as counter bore the rail face so the socket head screws can set in flush.
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