Coupler Upgrade!
Remember the coupler issues I was having? Fixed ‘em!
While I was in Oakland I did a fair bit of research on what my options were, and finally decided on these “light duty” couplers from McMaster-Carr (Part no. 6115K18). As you can see, not only are they aluminum (instead of plastic (nylon?) like the last ones), they are HUGE. You can see the size difference here. I actually had to dremel out the x-axis motor mount to get it to fit, but thankfully it didn’t need much.
After slapping those puppies in and tightening up some things (I really need to remember to put loctite on those set screws), I milled out a couple new test pieces.
Beautiful. Not only did they have wonderfully smooth edges, free of steps and ripples, but they also fit together snugly! This means that they are likely within 0.01″ of their intended dimensions. I’ll have a better sense of it’s accuracy once I mill a harder material like masonite.
Of course, now that my machine is finally working well I’ve got to go to Chicago for my nephew’s bris, but once I get back on Monday, I’LL FINALLY GET TO MAKE STUFF!!!
I’m very excited.
Those are great news. Take your time to do a great job. Each of those issues you fix and document is one less I’ll have to worry about when building the Kikori kit
.
Keep up the good work!
Erick
Fascinating! So glad things are coming together. EAger to get my drum and handicap access sign.
Looks great! those couplers are massively impressive, I built myself a small machine a couple of years ago and have been abusing it on a regular basis, when I came across a post that had a link to your site I was immediately impressed by your build and got the urge to build one myself as the size of my machine limits me on what I can cut. did you ever consider lovejoy couplers? the way they are designed you can order mismatching sizes to make shafts of different diameters meet, they are connected in the middles by a “spider” made from materials of different hardness’ depending on your requirements, the beauty of these are that if you are slightly misaligned they allow for a little flex and should the machine ever jam up they provide an inexpensive shear point rather than have the gantry self destruct (been through that when a work piece popped up from the table and got jammed between a hold down clamp and the router head). just my 2 cents and a half!
Thanks for the input! I actually started with lovejoy couplers, but they had significant backlash, so I switched to solid ones.
I’m also getting pretty close to releasing the design files for the Kikori under an open hardware license, so if you already have a CNC machine you could make the parts yourself. The only thing left before release is to do is build one to make sure there aren’t any issues I’m not aware of. Want me to email you once the design is ready?
I would indeed love an email from you! I have been looking for quite some time for a 4X8 machine that I could use in my cabinet shop to speed up my prototyping that wouldn’t kill my meager budget. Thanks!
You’re on the list!