3 Axis Foam Cutting Mill

3 - Axis Foam Cutting Mill - Part 12

Z Axis & Motor Mounting

This is where I left off a week ago, about to mount the Motor to the lead screw for the Y Axis.

There was about 2 hours of donkeying with the alignment between the motor and the end bearing. Part of the problem had to do with having to bolt the lead screw nut under the table and the lack of space to access the fixture.

Here is the only surviving Lead Screw End Bearing, the X & Z axis ended-up being free floating due to the hassles in setting this one up.

The main issue was to keep the screw from binding at one extreme or the other.

This is the X Axis motor mounted with the same 3/4" coupler. The Lead Screw is also turned down on the ends as was the Y Axis.

The simplest solution to get the mechanism to move smoothly along it's full travel was to dump the End Bearing.

If problems arise it can always be re-installed, but for now the I'll continue assembly without it.

As the motors are being mounted the Mill has to be positioned closer to the PC.

As I wanted to see how the motors would perform with more load on them before going much further, I started to run the mill off the PC.

While playing around I decided to try TurboCNC, as it came highly recommended by Dave from "BuildYourIdea.Com". I wasn't disappointed and was able to swap axis, Step and Direction terms through the software without touching a soldering iron..

The steppers are feeble and slow at best with the current configuration. Over the next few weeks pumping-up the voltage to the motors and wiring in some Current Limiting resistors will become a priority.

This is the Z-Axis Lead screw Nut after drilling, tapping and filing to get a snug square fit to the Z mechanism.

The lead screw like the others was filled down to 1/4" to fit the coupler to the stepper.

Finally the Z-Stepper is mounted with a chunk of Aluminum Angle plate to the motor and base plate.

This item seemed to workout the easiest of the 3 axis, either from the experience of the previous 2 or the pre-assembled state of the Visa Embosser.

The 3/4" coupler had to be near perfect due the minimal clearance to the base plate, all seems well.

The Z and Y Steppers move reliably under the control of the PC and Turbo CNC, while the X Axis on the fixed Gantry stalls more often than it moves.

For now I'm well pleased with the progress this weekend, and plan to start enclosing the controller with additional cooling and bump-up the steppers to 12VDC.

There are a few motion parameters within TurboCNC I need to learn more about, but won't bother until the current limiters are installed. And then onto the Home and Limit switches, then finally some form of spindle mount and onto cutting foam.

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