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Steve Watkins's Shop....

Pulse MIG hates me!

Working on finishing up my stand project and tried to use the Pulse MIG function on the new Millermatic 255... HOUSTON WE HAVE A PROBLEM! While the reg MIG functions great the Pulse has me pulling hairs out.. I had to finish up these stands and after about 2 hours of messing with the Pulse I went back to regular MIG.



 
I have a problem and would like some of your thoughts on the subject. For the last 10 years I have been thinking on my stalled CNC router project...

mechmate.gif

For years I have been fighting space trying to make the most of my 40 x 40 shop and for years the MechMate has been sitting in pieces, ready to roll just needing final assembly. I just had no place to put her :( 4 years ago I expanded the shop adding a 20 x 40 space that was earmarked for all the wood working tools and the MechMate had a prime spot! THEN the phrase "We need a planer" was heard and the wood shop had a hole cut in the roof and a 25 foot long metal monster was lowered into MechMate's spot....

After months of cleaning, (Thanks Don for your help!) rearranging, planing, scheming, tossing and turning I had a plan... And it lasted all of 5 days :cryin:

You see the MechMate is built like a tank and is great for a wood table. I had always planned for it to be a wood table for cabinet building but now that I'm semi retired I don't do custom cabinets anymore. But I decided it would be ok and figured I could put it into my small machine room and be happy with it... I've been stuck on making the table one solid weldment or bolting parts of the table together so it could be moved easier.. That detail has me stopped dead in the water :(

It had me so undecided that another plan has snuck in to take it's place :)

As I don't really like the idea of sticking it in the small machine room and dedicating it to wood only, I've decided to move it out to the main "dirty" part of the shop and make it a plasma/router table :D

I've decided to weld the table completely and come up with some method of putting in a water tank table for the plasma and wood cover for use as a wood router.... that's where I'm stumped now... How to make this a machine that can do both without sacrificing too much in usability.

Moving it out of the A/C and heated room was tough enough but if it's plasma I am not wanting to breath the stuff.. Another reason for the water table.

Right now the machine is at the table building stage. All the motors run and the control box is complete, rollers made, Y car finished and painted... Of course I finished the control box about 10 years ago, it served me well on a boss 5 for a couple of years and now is a little bit outdated.. SO part of the project is now retrofitting the control box with a new Acorn System from Centroid. That has arrived and I will soon start on ripping the heart out of the old box :)

incase3.jpg

I would like to hear thoughts on design for a water table....

I think I'm going to lower the cross table supports about 3 inches and weld a 4 x 8 sheet of 3/16 steel to the supports and edge that with a 4x4 3/16 angle to form a 4 inch deep water table. Also was thinking of cutting in a large drain area that would allow rapid draining into some sort of tank beneath the table. The thought is I can treat that water and use air pressure to move the water from the tank to the table when I want to use the plasma. My machines always lose a lot of coolant to evaporation and this would solve that problem...

A dry water table would also be better suited to put a spoil board to cover the table when routing wood...

Any thought on plan #4329 ?
 
My 2 cents on that concept is it's a waste of time trying to do both a plasma and router on the same table. I built a 4x8 plasma last year and have ben running it since. One important thing to note is the slats across the table are constantly changing as they get gouged from cutting parts. So their height changes. A water box below won't change that. They're going to be moving around. So trying to throw a sheet of mdf on top of those and turn it into a router all of a sudden is going to be disappointing I think.

On the water box, it's going to get filled with drops, slag and dust. It'll turn into sludge as it sits in the bottom. There's a lot of dust made in plasma cutting, I recently discovered it's attracted to magnets as I find it on anything magnetic in my shop. Due to the dust and slag, I'd have to wonder how well a drain and refill process would work. II don't have a water box, didn't want all that moisture in my shop. I too have woodworking machines, but not a cnc router table. Never considered my plasma as a candidate for wood work.

Good luck on your project
Bob
 
Bob49 said:
My 2 cents on that concept is it's a waste of time trying to do both a plasma and router on the same table. I built a 4x8 plasma last year and have ben running it since. One important thing to note is the slats across the table are constantly changing as they get gouged from cutting parts. So their height changes. A water box below won't change that. They're going to be moving around. So trying to throw a sheet of mdf on top of those and turn it into a router all of a sudden is going to be disappointing I think.

On the water box, it's going to get filled with drops, slag and dust. It'll turn into sludge as it sits in the bottom. There's a lot of dust made in plasma cutting, I recently discovered it's attracted to magnets as I find it on anything magnetic in my shop. Due to the dust and slag, I'd have to wonder how well a drain and refill process would work. II don't have a water box, didn't want all that moisture in my shop. I too have woodworking machines, but not a cnc router table. Never considered my plasma as a candidate for wood work.

Good luck on your project
Bob
Click to expand...

I've been going back and forth on the idea of dividing the table into 4 x 4 cutting areas,one for plasma and one for wood. I've decided that I would like the larger 4 x 8 area for both :)

I plan on making curved pieces for the table slats and they will not act as supports for the spoil board.

When I was up working on the SV Seeker project I made note of how he had designed the inside floor support and used a grid system of 2' x 2' squares and in every intersection welded a 3/4" threaded coupler as a method to secure the floor panels.. That gave me the idea of using threaded standoffs in the water table to support the framework of the spoil board. The idea I'm working on now is to make a framework of 1.5 square tubing for the spoil board and have it slide in and out of the table. A few standoffs would stiffen the assembly and keep it from moving.

As for sludge... I was thinking on making a "well" about 3 inches deep and 8" square in the bottom of the water table. The drain would be in the bottom of the well and I could use filter material to semi clean the water as it left the table going to the holding tank. I figure the amount of time the table has water standing in it will be only 8 to 10 hours a month leaving plenty of time for the table pan to dry and allow vacuming out. Not a production shop any more :)

The smoke issue bothered me as well.. Thus the main reason for the water table.. I was planning on putting an exhaust blower in the nearby outside wall and running a 6" flexible line to the Y car to try to minimize the metal dust. When cutting wood I could switch the line to a sawdust collector.
 
My Mazak laser has normal slats, but between the slats are bars with ball rollers. The bars are all linked together on the ends and rotate/ cam down with an air cylinder. Purpose is for loading sheets, but you could do the same thing without the rollers.
 
Garwood said:
My Mazak laser has normal slats, but between the slats are bars with ball rollers. The bars are all linked together on the ends and rotate/ cam down with an air cylinder. Purpose is for loading sheets, but you could do the same thing without the rollers.
Click to expand...

Now that's an idea...How far down do the bars lower and are they ever cut by the plasma ?
 
swatkins said:
Now that's an idea...How far down do the bars lower and are they ever cut by the plasma ?
Click to expand...

The slats are 100mm apart. The 1.5" bars run perpendicular to the slats every 300mm, there is a stantion with a ball roller between every other slat, so 200mm spacing. The bars that rotate are down about 2.5" and they rotate almost, but not quite 180 degrees when they are down to protect the balls. My laser cuts up to 50x100 so there are 4 bars running the long direction.

It's a laser which is probably a bit cleaner than a plasma. It just shoots right onto the conveyor below and slag goes into the bin at the end of the machine.
 
I have been talking to others that have built a MechMate and have decided to build the base table as designed and then put a 56" square 4" deep water pan on top of the spoilboard. I have a great deal of Z height on the machine and that 4" tall pan will not really affect anything. If I overhang the table a bit I can put a sump on the end and life will be good :)

A Great new addition to the Shop today!

 
Going to be some changes around here! :D

Tuesday morning I'm going to Lafayette Louisiana to pick up another 16 x 30 Axelson Lathe. It's in pretty rough shape and might just be a parts machine for my existing 16x30 but I just can't let it go to the scrap yard. We have talked about this machine before on PM and a kind gentleman offered the machine to me last week. More on the story later....

I am also looking at another 16" long bed Axelson in the morning. Pretty soon I'll be up to my armpits with Axelsons around here! More on that story as it develops.....

I've not had much chance to film any projects lately as all the unrest and Covid has made people very worried about security and my phone has been ringing off the wall with people wanting their gates upgraded with photo systems... I did have a chance to put together a project I did a few months ago on the making of a gate jack and a repair to one of my old gates...


It was a little long so I broke it up into two parts....


I will get some film of picking up the Louisiana Axelson.. I'm taking my 2500 HD pickup and my 20 foot trailer to haul it back. The shop where it is located had a forklift that can load me so it should be a fast turnaround and only 10 hours of driving.. Louisiana was closed to travel from Texas for a while because of their high Covid rates. Man we live in a different world now :(
 
Hope lives on!

Yesterday was a very good day ( and today is even better!) as I finally found some lathes that were worth having.. The downturn in the Oil Patch has flushed out a ton of machines as shops are closing and trying to raise capital. This machine is in a very, very large shop and is still being used daily. In fast there are a lot of Axelsons in this shop and most are being used daily and not all worn out and neglected.... I am still going through a tour I took of the shop and will have more soon..

I'm not naming the shop and the video was edited to remove all clues. They are still making parts and business it on the upturn so there is a little bit of good news.... One of the reasons they are getting rid of some of the Axelsons is OSHA... Seems OSHA does not like old iron...:(

 
Big changes going on at the shop! I have to move 5 lathes around to fit everything in... One is leaving and two are coming into the shop.. The other two are in the way and need to be moved so the Big Guy can slide into place...

But first I have to unload the Louisiana Lathe...

 
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