DIY Gantry designs

[Chris Jack]

Does anyone know about building a gantry system?

I'm looking at a gantry robot as a good framework to explore some machine learning tasks with.

Some initial specs:
> X-Y gantry (+Z if affordable)
> Dimensions around .5mtr square to 1mtr square.
> Accuracy of at least 0.1mm (so not hugely accurate in comparison with industrial systems).
> Speed on either axis of at least 0.5m/s
> Budget of up to £1k

In a nutshell I plan to attach some underactuated appendages to the gantry, eg. a pendulum ball with accelerometer inside, attach a camera to the underside of the gantry and see how various learning algorithms explore the sensorimotor space. As well I might stick some objects (kids toys for example) in with it to see how it plays around with them. (will it squish them or cherish them?? Hahaha)

SOoo... as industrial gantry systems, eg. Parker, are MEGA expensive I thought I'd canvass the space members to see if anyone has any knowledge of DIYing a gantry system?

Your thoughts are muchly appreciated.
Cheers,
Chris.

[andyf...@gmail.com]

Does anyone know about building a gantry system?

I've heard good things about makerbeam
 

I'm looking at a gantry robot as a good framework to explore some machine learning tasks with.

Some initial specs:
> X-Y gantry (+Z if affordable)
> Dimensions around .5mtr square to 1mtr square.

Some one has built a 3D printer with it which seems to meet the above criteria

http://blog.makerbeam.eu/?p=412

Andy

 

[Nigel Worsley]

> I've heard good things about makerbeam

At 10mm x 10mm it is rather too small for even a 0.5M machine.

Makerslide is 20mm x 40mm and specifically designed for such uses, I have 6M of it that I am intending to use for a very similar
application when get around to it.

Nigle

[IrradiatedHaggis]

I have some MakerBeam, the problem with it is that the hardware is non-standard. Normal common screws do not fit in the t-slot, which is a pain... But aside from that it's great.

Makerslide is good too... But I'm waiting for my shipment of OpenBuilds V-slot from the Kickstarter campaign that I backed a little while back. It's basically the next evolutionary step from Makerslide with the bearing wheel sittinig inside the beam's groove instead of riding on a seperate rail.

Cheers,

Troy.

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[Chris Jack]

Cheers folks.

The OpenBuilds V-slot looks veeeery nice indeed. Gonna contact them now to see if I can get me some... Troy, have you had any indication as to how much longer it'll take?

[Chris Jack]

Also, has anyone got any thoughts/tips/preferences on motors and positional systems for a gantry robot (spec as described at top of post)? I'm pretty lacking in knowledge in this area so even just wants lists would be handy to give me something to look up.

Cheers,

Chris Jack.

[IrradiatedHaggis]

I'm personally a fan of the H-Bot or CoreXY gantry system. I tried to build one recently, but ran into accuracy issues that I attribute to my shoddy construction methods and the Synchromesh cable that I was using... But I'm convinced that the kinematics of the design itself is solid. The biggest advantage of this design is the small moving mass. Both motors are static, so you can have very little mass in the positioning system which allows for very fast accellerations with no loss in accuracy.

As for the V-Slot, their target is delivery in July sometime... And I believe they are on track. The early-birds have already recieved theirs, which came from the initial prototype run and they've praised it Highly so they just have to do another production run of the stuff with no re-tooling or anything. I think the shop is open for pre-orders now as well, but I don't know if that will be delivered in the same timeframe as t he kickstarter rewards or not.

Cheers,

Troy.




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[invent_or]

Does anyone have ordering info for the UK for the V slide OpenRail stuff? It looks great, but the website doesn't mention the UK.

I'm wanting to get some of this stuff for rapid prototyping systems, but I can't decide which of the 10+ systems to go for!
N

[Vic Putz]

I never did find good suppliers for OpenRail myself and had to buy from their store via my wormhole to the US.  And even then they don't cut to length yet (this seems like a minor thing, but when I ordered some 20mm extrusion from http://www.aluminium-profile.co.uk/ and had it cut to the mm so that when my stuff arrived it went together like really cool ikea furniture, I tell ya it's nice having it cut to order).  

But apart from their delays getting things going, the OpenRail folks seem like good characters, and the little manual x-y table I built with their old bolt-on rails went just fine, so I'm pretty excited about this new stuff.

[Chris Jack]

I think I'm going for the whole kit and caboodle from Makerslide europe and intend to make a CORE XY type design. Troy, perhaps I could pick your brains a bit more on your exploits with this design? it'd be really helpful to I'm sure :)

Does anyone have any experience of these NEMA 17 steppers from makerslide? http://makerslide.co.uk/48mm-nema17-stepper-motor-400step-per-rev.html 

As I'm looking at a CORE XY design my moving mass is going to be very little and I don't intend to attach much to the Y/Z carriage (max 500grams).

I really just hope they'll be fairly quick (~1m/s).

And does anyone have any suggestions as to a suitable stepper driver board? Ideally one that can be easily interfaced with Arduino (though I'm capable of tweaking and hacking to get to interface with Arduino if necessary). i8 was going to go for the recommended Buildlog.net boards from makerslide but they're not currently available and I need to order asap.

Once I get up and running I'd like to share my designs/successes/failures if anyone's interested...

Cheers,

Chris Jack.

[Nigel Worsley]

> Does anyone have any experience of these NEMA 17 steppers from makerslide?
> http://makerslide.co.uk/48mm-nema17-stepper-motor-400step-per-rev.html
> As I'm looking at a CORE XY design my moving mass is going to be very little and I don't intend to attach much to the Y/Z carriage
> (max 500grams).
> I really just hope they'll be fairly quick (~1m/s).

Not a chance. Assuming that you use their 18 tooth MXL pulley then a minimum of 0.58 N�m is required, that motor is only rated for
0.41 N�m. This torque will fall off rapidly with speed, probably reaching zero well before the 22,000 steps per second needed to
achieve the required movement. And no mechanical losses whatsoever, which isn't going to happen.

Use a 1.8 degree motor and microstepping driver instead of that 0.9 degree one, the torque will be better. Or switch to a NEMA 23 :)

Nigle

[IrradiatedHaggis]

I'd be happy to help in any way I can... But my experience is really rather limited. I've only built the one gantry that I mentioned, and it's just a ramshackle contraption that doesn't really work well. I intend to build a proper one, but just havn't gotten around to it and my ideas of what I'm actually trying to accomplish are constantly changing...

Cheers,

Troy.




Sent from Samsung tablet

Chris Jack <christophe...@gmail.com> wrote:
I think I'm going for the whole kit and caboodle from Makerslide europe and intend to make a CORE XY type design. Troy, perhaps I could pick your brains a bit more on your exploits with this design? it'd be really helpful to I'm sure :)

Does anyone have any experience of these NEMA 17 steppers from makerslide? http://makerslide.co.uk/48mm-nema17-stepper-motor-400step-per-rev.html 

As I'm looking at a CORE XY design my moving mass is going to be very little and I don't intend to attach much to the Y/Z carriage (max 500grams).

I really just hope they'll be fairly quick (~1m/s).

[Toby Catlin]

I have a eShapeoko from Makerslide and am using a RAMPS board with it. It has space for 5 driver chips and has endstop input and MOSFET for powering an extruder. Its a shield that fits on a Arduino mega which runs a modified copy of Marlin/Printrun. You can get the whole kit for less that £100 http://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/Ramps-1-4-inc-SD-Ramps-A4988-stepper-driver-wiring-Mega2560-board-Reprap-/111083539259?pt=LH_DefaultDomain_3&hash=item19dd184b3b

Or of course you can buy just the board and pick your own driver chips or any combination.

The only issue I have is that I was planning on using 24v but the chips get very hot at 12v but Pololu make a range of drive chips that will fit into this board and there are ones that dissipate heat much better.

or you could go with Sols L6470 chip: https://www.tindie.com/products/ElectricLaboratory/chainable-intelligent-stepper-driver-l6470/

toby

[Chris Jack]

Ah ok righty so thanks Nigle, I'm looking firmly at NEMA 23's now ;D these ones perhaps?

http://www.motioncontrolproducts.co.uk/products/2/6/nema_23_high_torque_stepper_motors/

Thanks, Troy, for offering your help. Are you around the space much in the week? Perhaps I'll pop by and shout you.

Toby that board looks nice. Interfacing with ArdMega very nice :) I found it here

http://creativemachines.co.uk/store/index.php?id_product=39&controller=product assembled

but minus the drivers, so obviously one could then easily just go and buy the drivers they fancied, as you suggest.

Actually I found a sparkfun breakout version of the driver you suggest

http://robosavvy.com/store/product_info.php/cPath/41_1031_1179/products_id/2984

At first glance it seems suitable for NEMA 23's, but maybe someone more knowledgable can correct me on that?

Also there is this driver that a lot of people seem to be raving about for its stability and microstepping ability

http://users.skynet.be/ldt/CNC%20electronics/THB6064AH.html

Pricing and url is european so I've emailed to ask about distro to UK.

(I think the board maker, James Newton, is US-based - here's a riveting video showing it with a RAMPS board).

Cheers,

Chris Jack.

[Peter "Sci" Turpin]

Thanks for that link!
The 3D printer I'm looking at building would be slightly too oversized
for the lasercutter to have made the frame. That alu profile on that
site may well do the trick!

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[IrradiatedHaggis]

Hi Chris,

I don't make it to the space very often... In fact, I havn't even been to the new space at all yet. Perhaps I should make a trip this week sometime to have a look... When were you thinking of being there?




Sent from Samsung tablet

Chris Jack <christophe...@gmail.com> wrote:
Ah ok righty so thanks Nigle, I'm looking firmly at NEMA 23's now ;D these ones perhaps?

http://www.motioncontrolproducts.co.uk/products/2/6/nema_23_high_torque_stepper_motors/

Thanks, Troy, for offering your help. Are you around the space much in the week? Perhaps I'll pop by and shout you.

Toby that board looks nice. Interfacing with ArdMega very nice :) I found it here

http://creativemachines.co.uk/store/index.php?id_product=39&controller=product assembled

but minus the drivers, so obviously one could then easily just go and buy the drivers they fancied, as you suggest.

Actually I found a sparkfun breakout version of the driver you suggest

http://robosavvy.com/store/product_info.php/cPath/41_1031_1179/products_id/2984

At first glance it seems suitable for NEMA 23's, but maybe someone more knowledgable can correct me on that?

Also there is this driver that a lot of people seem to be raving about for its stability and microstepping ability

http://users.skynet.be/ldt/CNC%20electronics/THB6064AH.html

Pricing and url is european so I've emailed to ask about distro to UK.

(I think the board maker, James Newton, is US-based - here's a riveting video showing it with a RAMPS board).

Cheers,

Chris Jack.

On Monday, 10 June 2013 17:13:52 UTC+1, Toby Catlin wrote:

I have a eShapeoko from Makerslide and am using a RAMPS board with it. It has space for 5 driver chips and has endstop input and MOSFET for powering an extruder. Its a shield that fits on a Arduino mega which runs a modified copy of Marlin/Printrun. You can get the whole kit for less that £100 http://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/Ramps-1-4-inc-SD-Ramps-A4988-stepper-driver-wiring-Mega2560-board-Reprap-/111083539259?pt=LH_DefaultDomain_3&hash=item19dd184b3b

Or of course you can buy just the board and pick your own driver chips or any combination.

The only issue I have is that I was planning on using 24v but the chips get very hot at 12v but Pololu make a range of drive chips that will fit into this board and there are ones that dissipate heat much better.

or you could go with Sols L6470 chip: https://www.tindie.com/products/ElectricLaboratory/chainable-intelligent-stepper-driver-l6470/

toby

On 10 June 2013 16:43, IrradiatedHaggis <hs_...@codemaven.me> wrote:

I'd be happy to help in any way I can... But my experience is really rather limited. I've only built the one gantry that I mentioned, and it's just a ramshackle contraption that doesn't really work well. I intend to build a proper one, but just havn't gotten around to it and my ideas of what I'm actually trying to accomplish are constantly changing...

Cheers,

Troy.




Sent from Samsung tablet

Chris Jack <christophe...@gmail.com> wrote:
I think I'm going for the whole kit and caboodle from Makerslide europe and intend to make a CORE XY type design. Troy, perhaps I could pick your brains a bit more on your exploits with this design? it'd be really helpful to I'm sure :)

Does anyone have any experience of these NEMA 17 steppers from makerslide? http://makerslide.co.uk/48mm-nema17-stepper-motor-400step-per-rev.html 

As I'm looking at a CORE XY design my moving mass is going to be very little and I don't intend to attach much to the Y/Z carriage (max 500grams).

I really just hope they'll be fairly quick (~1m/s).

And does anyone have any suggestions as to a suitable stepper driver board? Ideally one that can be easily interfaced with Arduino (though I'm capable of tweaking and hacking to get to interface with Arduino if necessary). i8 was going to go for the recommended Buildlog.net boards from makerslide but they're not currently available and I need to order asap.

Once I get up and running I'd like to share my designs/successes/failures if anyone's interested...

Cheers,

Chris Jack.

Cheers folks.

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[chrisbob12]

Very relevant thread for me; I'm considering building a gantry style cnc at about 1.5m by 1m for relatively lightly loaded work, i.e.not milling or routing (though that would be cool). I'm considering using twin motors and lead screws for the x and y axes, and would appreciate hearing about people's experience and thoughts on this. I'll probably use NEMA 17s on this; no need for great acceleration, though it would be good to do long movements at a reasonable pace. I'd expect to use an Arduino and RAMPS board, with some code frigs.