Pertneer's Blog

I have completed quite a bit this last couple of weeks. I made the leveling feet for the lags and came to the conclusion that it was going to be to high once they were on, so I had to cut the legs 4” shorter. This brings the overall height don to a more reasonable level, about 39 inches to the top of the table.

The feet are pretty simple to build and can be done with a chop saw and a drill press.

I used a piece of Dom tube that I had laying around. Cut some 1 5/8” long pieces and welded on a 3/4 – 10 heavy hex nut. I then welded a 3/4 –10 bolt threw a hole in a 1/4” thick piece of steel cut to match tube dimensions. To make sure the plate was welded with bolt sticking out straight I ran the nut onto the bolt with the plate in place. Then I held the bolt on end pushing down on the plate so that it was at the base of the threads. I was pleased with the way this worked.

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This gives me some new ideas:

I got some work done this week on this project. I finished up the support pieces that hold the guide rails for the gantry.

These were a trick to design and produce with the angles and the partial radius, but not real bad. Just took some planning on what needed to be machined first.

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After asking some important question with the supplier of the control system I found that I need to put my gantry on a little diet. At 130 lbs. it was a little over weight to say the least. So I went back to the drawing board to see where I could save weight without compromising structural integrity. This is a small portion of what I came up with.

This is the bracket that the torch mount attaches to.

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