Sunday, February 21, 2021

Drag chain upgrades

 I managed to get the drag chains installed today.

After failing to get the drag chains to work without support, I realized I needed to add some supports to the machine. The support along the Y-Axis would add some weight, but the alternative was having cables drag along the table. Since I'm adding a water cooled spindle, this would be a bad idea.

For the drag chain along the Y-Axis I attached a 25mm by 50mm extrusion to the Y axis, anchored a the two ends. The chain is anchored at one end with a piece of aluminum I attached to the carriage. Rather than use the CNC to mill the piece I used a hack saw and drill. The other end is attached with a zip tie.




Along the X-Axis I attached a 25mm by 75mm extrusion along the side of the table. One end is attached with another piece of aluminum, and the other end is directly attached to the extrusion through some holes I drilled.



I also upgraded to the Inventables fork of GRBL 1.1, because Fusion 360 is now producing G-code that doesn't work with GRBL 1.0.




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