Ski Builders Forum

Now, I just have to find a semi-final resting place for it because there's no more room at the shop. My wife is a patient and understanding woman, but everyone has their limits.

The pics aren't the greatest, but I'll post a video of it cutting when I get it moved to it's new home. I'm now going to have to get more familiar with the software end of things.







The machine is made mostly of MDF, with a little engineering grade ABS thrown in here and there. It's very, very solid.

G-man

Wow, that's impressive! I like the colors, and how it appears to be in the living room.

Now that Kelvin also has one in our Seattle shop, it looks like I'm behind. I think I'll try to catch up, but it will take a few months....

Oh, how much does it weigh?

The carriage weighs about 80 lbs. and the main table weighs in at about 100 lbs. It's amazing how those little stepper motors move around that much weight.

G-man

G-man, that's amazingly light, but then again the lateral transverse axis is short. My brother made his own CNC mill and lathe this past year and he's got three nice high-torque steppers laying around that I plan to take off his hands. When I start settling down in Reno this summer I'll begin hunting for parts to build my machine.

wow! super clean look!
what`s it made of? is that wood or mdf or metal?

98% MDF.

G-man

G-man, you're 98% sick.

Incredible work, I like the different colours for different axes. May be you could get a post-processor to mark the text in the cad-files with coulored text for the different directions. It would make it really easy to avoid messing up when re-editing geometry. (I just broke a 200$ routerbit )

Holy smokes! great looking machine!
please tell me your wife let you test it right there in the living room.
my wife is patient but that would never fly.

sam

very nice job ! congratulations !
Do you plan or did you already made a kind of journal about the construction of your CNC ?
Would be very interested in how you did it, I was actually looking around to find some info about building a "ski-size" CNC machine.

Ben

Thanks guys. It's nice to get some feedback from other folks who know about CNC. Most of my friends say, "What's a cnc machine?"

Ben,
Yes, I've kept a pretty detailed build log (with pictures) that I plan to post on cnczone.com in the near future. If it wasn't for that site, I'd definitely never have gotten this machine off the ground. I borrowed a lot of ideas from other machines detailed on the 'zone', so I want to share what I've built in case someone finds something helpful in my design. I'll post the link on skibuilders when I get started with my build log on cnczone.

sammer,
I've not actually cut anything yet, but I've done a lot of 'air cutting' to test out overall function of the machine. All of the axes are very smooth and watching them move in harmony when I push the 'start' key in the software is a truly marvelous thing to behold. The motors all 'sing' quite nicely. Your wife may, indeed, be as patient as mine, but the real 'trick' to my success is that my wife works in San Francisco (4.5 hours away) and only comes to the mountain home a few days a month. I go down to the Bay every other week... gotta be flexible in today's economy. In all honesty, I think that, once the machine is out of the house, her visits to the mountain home will be a much more enjoyable for her. Still, she truly does have a look of amazement on her face when she watches the machine do it's thing. A year ago, I knew virtually nothing about electronics or computers, and, for this machine, I built all of the electronics and the computer (and every other part on the machine except the motors, nuts and bolts, and the drive screws). The driver board was from a kit, but I made sure that I knew it's function well enough that I could build a board from scratch, if I needed to. When I first built the power supply, I excitedly asked my wife to watch as I powered it up, only to have the thing blow itself to kingdom-come right in front of us. She begged me to stop the whole crazy endeavor then and there. I think that, now, she's just real amazed that I'm still alive and that the machine even works at all.

endre,
Ouch... bummer about the expensive router bit. I'm just at the point where I'll have to start shopping for bits for the machine. Sounds like I may have to dig deeper into the piggy-bank than I thought. I did install electro-mechanical limit switches on the machine because I knew I'd constantly be running the bit where it wasn't intended to go. It suppose it will still be possible to make some sort of mistake that will ruin a bit. Maybe I'll start out with 'cheap' $50 dollar bits .

G-man

WOW!
That is amazing that you made that yourself. It looks very professional work.
Congratulations on all your hard work.

what is the sotware yu useto run he macin and what is the software you use to make your code? I have a cnc mill and plan to make a cnc router soon.

Mach3 and LazyCam

G-man wrote: Ben,
Yes, I've kept a pretty detailed build log (with pictures) that I plan to post on cnczone.com in the near future. If it wasn't for that site, I'd definitely never have gotten this machine off the ground. I borrowed a lot of ideas from other machines detailed on the 'zone', so I want to share what I've built in case someone finds something helpful in my design. I'll post the link on skibuilders when I get started with my build log on cnczone.

Can't wait to see that ! I spend a lot of time on CNC zone but it's usually "small" CNC machines

Hey Ben,

It'll be about 3 weeks, or so, before I get the thread started at cnczone because I have a few things on the machine to tweek a bit before I can take some final pictures. The big focus at the moment is to get one of my storage sheds cleaned out enough to make room for the machine (wife's patience won't last forever). Also, I need to finish up some building plans and get them submitted to the building department so I can get started on building the nice big new shop that will house the cnc and other machines. I'll be sure to post a link here when I start the log at cnczone.

G-man