It is made largely with parts from Avid CNC, the name similarity seems to be a coincidence. They were unbelievably helpful to me.Homemade CNC router donated by Vivid Aerial R/C. The best thing though, is to print and study the drawings, and then read these forums until you suspect you've read everything.
Good luck, and if you start the project, let me know, I'm happy to help. In fact, if it hadn't been so incredibly easy to get those laser cut parts, I might not have started my build. Looking around the forum, you'll find the other suppliers, like Superior Bearing, Oriental Motors, GeckoDrive, and the laser cut parts, which I got from Alabama. I estimate I could have saved around $200 by getting parts like rack elsewhere, but it was very convenient and stress reducing. is a convenient source of anything you can't get elsewhere, although you pay a premium. I have a great local hardware store here, Tags, so I was able to grab the majority of the hardware from there, including everything metric, and the usual big box home improvement stores supplied boxes of basics, like 5/16"-18 1-1/2" hex head and carriage bolts. I tried two other local vendors, and neither one could even furnish the beams and angle. I used as my steel supplier they turned around my orders in a day, and delivered at convenient times. If the weather holds and the paint dries, I might be surfacing a spoil board on Sunday! I'll take pictures of the whole thing during this process. Now it's time for the big disassemble, then paint, and final assembly. Since my motor cables only have four wires, I placed a duplicate current setting resistor in the male DB9 at the G540. For the mechmate, I've made DB9 extension cords, a female at the motor end that the motor plugs into, and a male at the G540 end. I decided to extend this idea, and so I've placed a DB9 at the end of each motor lead, with the current setting resistor for the G540 so the motors can be tested on the bench. There's a current setting resistor for the drive across pins 1 and 5 pins 2-4 are grounded for the cable shield, and pins 6-9 are the four leads for the two motor phases. It ran at 660 IPM just fine, which was an impressive sight, and unbelievably satisfying.Īs you may note, the G540 uses standard DB9 connectors for its motors.
That little mistake cost me some hours to figure out.Īs the X racks aren't taped down yet, I only ran the gantry slowly from oneĮnd to the other, and then a brief at speed test for a foot near one end. The charge pump feature of EMC2 is perfectly compatible with the Gecko 540, once you remember to set your parallel port to EPP mode in the BIOS. If anybody needs help with it let me know, I've been driving my little tabletop mill with it for years. I took the gantry out for a stroll on its motors last night. I've also made at least a dozen mistakes, which I'll pull out of my logbook and write up after I'm sure I'll have the beast painted and inside before it snows. Unfortunately, it's supposed to rain hard the next two days,so the next progress report will be a while out. I tried all kinds of bolts: stainless, galvanized, zinc the combo of the paraffin and galvanized seemed to glide the best. When grinding my rails using a skate, I discovered that a little paraffin lamp oil (kerosene) was the wonder cure to keep the height bolts gliding smoothly. I haven't seen any prior reports on using a G540, so I thought I'd mention it's looking good. My G540! and motors ( PK296A2A-SG7.2 ) arrived today, and I have one motor running reliably on a table at speed. I've relearned welding after a 20 year hiatus, and some of the welds don't stink, especially after getting cut and ground out and redone. The table disassembles into 2 beams, 2 X axis leg and brace units, 2 Y axis brace and table support units, and the spoil board and table supports except for the two end supports. Welding is all done, rails are done, all three axis assembled and gliding when pushed. I've built a bolt-together, 50" x 98" capacity table.
With two jobs, and two kids, and winter coming, I've been more focused on getting the work done in the little two hour windows I get.
I have been taking a few pictures, one of these moments I'll sort out how to post them, honest.