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| High Speed Turbine Engraving Spindle |
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| awemawson:
Another project that's been LONG in the gestation ! Back in 2005 I made an air driven high speed engraving spindle for my Bridgeport Interact - it worked well and as well as engraving it also made several PCBs for me. Well I lost the poor old Interact when it fell off a removal lorry :bugeye: and the machine I replaced it with wasn't so easy to get air to the spindle, as it's a moving gantry (fixed bed / table) I decided that it was time to knuckle down and run some air pipes through the machine to be able to once more use the engraving spindle. Here are some pictures that have been posted here before, but I'll put them up for the sake of completeness: it's simple in the extreme, just being an air jet impinging on an aluminium gear wheel that I hobbed. Air exits through the bearings cooling and lubricating them |
| awemawson:
Now the problem was purely that of getting 6 mm bore / 8 mm o/d nylon tube from the air input connection to the Beaver Partsmaster through the various guide ways and box sections to a regulator / lubricator and on to a termination point close to the main machine CAT 40 spindle end. First I made up a little termination block to take push fit input and tap output fittings, and gingerly drilled and tapped to hold it to the spindle housing. I don't like drilling expensive castings by hand with a battery drill - very difficult to get precision - however I got away with it :ddb: Still waiting for Allen Cap screw so those M6 hex bolts and washers are only temporary. Then, by dismantling some of the cable trunking I was able to fit a pair of 6 mm 'Nutserts' in it's wall to take the regulator / filter / lubricator unit and try the Air Spindle for fit via it's umbilical tube. Note that from the tap to the turbine I've stepped down to 4 mm bore / 6 mm o/d for greater flexibility. |
| awemawson:
Then it was 'just' a case of threading the 8 mm nylon tube ( 10 mm o/d) through all the flexible and rigid trunks that take wires from the moving head and allow for X, Y, and Z movement. Bless the Beaver designers, who left lots of room in the trunking - it was actually quite a pleasant surprise. Using the rigid nylon 'snake' that I use for pulling 'singles' through conduit it actually went quite well for a change :thumbup: |
| awemawson:
Now if you look closely at the last picture, you will see the nylon tube emerging vertically from the end of the X axis trunking through a pre-existing hole where all the original air pipes emerge - it's the cleaner one! Now I've temporarily tapped it into the main air feed for testing - but I have ordered a suitable solenoid valve that will switch it on and off using the command 'M07' . Originally this was intended for the optional 'through spindle coolant' but as my machine has no such provision it's a 'free' output from the Heidenhain TNC355 controller that I've been able to poach. All I've had to do is mount a suitable relay in the electrical cabinet to power the solenoid, and pick up the already pre-wired drive from the TNC355. It's obviously my lucky day, as there is even a convenient 'blanking grommet' covering a suitable hole from the cabinet to the area just below where I will mount the solenoid (when it arrives) :thumbup: |
| awemawson:
So does it spin - you bet - I've just clocked it at over 29K RPM :lol: I need to decide what to use as lubrication - I've fitted an air oiler but want something that is compatible with the soluble oil and slideway oil that the machine uses, yet is thin enough to work at that sort of speed. The lubrication is of course total loss. While I was running air pipes I at last got round to plumbing up the feed to the air operated brake on the 4th axis, which has it's own regulator. |
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