pvccncmillingtable

PVC CNC Milling Table

Using PVC Pipe As Construction Material For A Desktop Sized CNC Milling Table

-- WORK IN PROGRESS --

PLEASE BE PATIENT

PAGES WILL BE UPDATED AS WORK PROGRESSES

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This milling machine will be of the "Gantry Type" with a superstructure that slides along the Y-Axis and holds an X-axis slide for side-to-side movement. This X-axis slide will then hold the vertical or Z-axis arrangement.

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In the process of building this machine I will have devised and built some general-purpose jigs and tools for working with PVC tubing. Descriptions of these is being documented on this web page: Jigs and Tools For Working PVC

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-- LINKS --

This web page documents design, construction, and testing of a PVC material based CNC Milling Table. Intentions are to build a desktop mill which has adequate accuracy for milling PCBs (Printed Circuit Boards) and strength enough for the milling of most plastic materials.

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24 March 2009

Making the Slides:

Cut 1 inch long sections of 3/4 inch PVC sprinkler line pipe. Saw a slot through one side of each slide section.

Heat each of these sections until they can be bent by hand, but not so hot that they deform under their own weight. When sufficiently heated, snap them around a length of 3/4 PVC pipe and hold tightly in place (a towel helps keep the heat from your hand) until the slide has cooled enough to be rigid. You will find that these slide pieces will shrink slightly as they cool, and thus will form a tight slide-fit over the PVC pipe.

This is one way to make bearing slides for various moving parts of the PVC CNC Mill. Slide one back and forth a bit on a length of 3/4 pipe to get the feel of how much force will be required to move your slide supported parts.

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29 March 2009

Redesigning The Slides:

OK. That was a great idea, but it didn't work quite as anticipated. The slides are quite good, but there is no easy way to fasten any superstructure to them without distorting their fit around the rails.

Shown below is a new way of doing things. The 7 X 10 mini-lathe and a boring bar was used to mill the inside out of a T-fitting so it would slide easily on the exterior of a 3/4" PVC pipe. This looks like it has more promise.

First cut was done at 800 RPM, and withdrawl of the boring bar done at 2200 RPM to smooth up the inner surface. Cuts from each end were done in order to keep things aligned, and to avoid boring into the lathe chuck face.

Lathe cutting PVC is quite messy because the swarf is static charged and wants to stick to everything.

OK. Now these are some slides that the superstructure can be fastened to.

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1 April 2009

Work continues...the two pictures below show progress at this date:

This does not look much like a milling machine yet, but the idea is starting to look much more feasible. These two pictures show the lower frame and slid rails. the sliders are in place and some of the vertical superstructure is beginning to be attached.

At this point all connections are just press-fit with nothing being glued. Glue will not be applied until everything is complete and test-run to make sure that I won't have to disassemble any parts for re-design or re-arrangement.

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