Many headed monster

Hi,
I have been making my RepStrap machine for a couple of months now and it is starting to take shape. I decided this weekend to blog my progress at [www.hydraraptor.blogspot.com]. The blog is historical at the moment but I intend to catch up to real time with an article or two per day for the next week or so.

Chris

Great blog, nop! I love that watchmaker's lathe you have. :-)

Thanks Forrest,
The lathe was a lot nicer when my father had it! Foolishly I lent it to my brother-in-law who let it go rusty, broke some bits and lost others . I had to clean it up for this project and I need to make a new tool post. The one in the picture is not the original which was a nce chromed thing.

I always planned to CNC it with some of the steppers I had collected but I have a better use for them now

Very nice. Could you mount a tool post as a head and have the lathe firmly positioned near by to be a multifunction device?.

Hi Bart,
Not a bad idea. I would have to mount the tool post on the XY table as the other heads only move in the vertical direction. Or I could mount the whole lathe and its motor on the XY table and the tool post on the Z. It might be just as easy to couple a pair of stepper motors to the cross slide of the lathe though.

For now the priority is to make a CNC mill to make the extruder body and the Darwin PCBs. My goal is to get to an additive machine as soon as possible so I don't want to get too sidelined with subtractive processes.

Chris

Cool. Just thought I'd add my $0.02 since you already had most of the stuff already.
I was thinking you could mount the tool holder plate at a fixed height, just moving x and y relative to the lathe to provide the basics. No need for the z axis in my estimation as long as you get the height of the cutting head right for the lathe and firmly secured. I'm low on theory and experience here, simply brimming with enthusiasm though.

Yes I would only need XY tool motion, the reason I was proposing attaching the tool to Z is that it is a convenient way to hold it at the right height. If you take a look at the layout of my machine you will see that the way I have mounted the XY table means a tool attached to that would have to reach out over the y motor to get to the lathe. Easier to place the lathe and its motor on a heavy plate on top of the XY table facing backwards. The XY table is rated for 150Kg loads, I think, so the extra weight would be no problem!

I too am no expert when it comes to lathes and milling machines. All I know about the lathe comes from watching my dad use it when I was a child. I am learning a bit about milling from [www.CNCzone.com].

If I find myself needing to turn a lot of things the same I will definitely have a go at this.

Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 04/05/2007 04:05AM by nophead.