Back together again (and better than ever)

Post date: Mar 24, 2014 2:04:35 AM

For my definition of "better", at any rate.

Firstly, the mill is assembled again! Assembled is generally better than disassembled.

Also, the new X axis leadscrew is finally installed, and the stepper mounted. Better still, they're exceedingly close to perfectly aligned. This is thanks in part to the little piece of angle aluminum with the green screws through it. It was much easier to get things aligned when referencing to the plane that the screw is already in. It's not the thickest of materials, but the screws don't tend to see much load in my applications, so it should be fine. In any case, it should be easy to reinforce should the need arise.

Also, having a tool perpendicular to the workpiece is generally considered "better" (unless you have more axes, I suppose). I've done some more work on getting everything as perpendicular as possible (I've already noted my work on getting the Z axis slide perpendicular; this time I adjusted the spindle mount on the slide), with some pleasing results:

Despite the swirls you can see in the images above, the result is incredibly smooth. There's a little swarf on there yet, but no ridges I can feel due to misalignment. Better still, the tooling marks seem consistent around the whole circle, meaning the tool probably isn't off-kilter, and thus digging in on one side or the other (as can be seen in previous operations).

There are two other things to see in the pictures above. Firstly, that the circles aren't concentric like you might expect. This was due mostly to my laziness. You can see in the image on the right that the workpiece is only clamped down on one side... not conducive to staying in place, especially when tearing into aluminum at 20 inches/minute. Cutting around the circles was fine, but each cut inward to start the next pass moved the workpiece a bit. The other thing to notice is the snazzy new 1/4" end mill. I finally got a 1/4" collet, and obviously had to have an end mill to go with it. It certainly makes the chips fly... I really need a skirt around the toolhead or something. In any case, it works quite well.

That's all I've got. you would think I would have gotten more done over an entire week (spring break) than that, but getting things aligned is a painstaking process. And, of course, it just wouldn't be spring break without homework to do. I did have a video of the cuts shown above, but lost it. That'll teach me for being overly-zealous in keeping the camera memory card clean and saving things to /tmp... I'm sure there will be more opportunities in the future.