Just published a new video that you could call it a sequel to the Vertical Cutting video I put out over a year ago, only this time Iāve got an actual design for a vertical stand
Very happy with how it turned out. If you want to give it a shot, just make sure to be safe and keep in mind that running your LongMill vertically will certainly cause the machine to wear out faster. Still, this doesnāt mean that itās not really cool
The design for the stand and the drawings to make it can all be found in the LongMill Onshape: Onshape
I also go over how to set up a relief cut on CAMLab and how I perform a tool change between toolpaths if thatās something else youāve been wanting to learn more about
Nice video. I didnāt quite grasp how you set your origin to the bottom of the stock with out actually moving the bit there? (I donāt have a touch plate, so maybe thereās something I donāt understand that is intrinsic to how those are used).
Edit: I read up on touch probes, and I think I understand how it works now: ugs sets the zero point to the bottom of the touch plate.
Hey Chris! I am looking to make this design! I got all the supplies but I am not 100% confident on how these pieces from the CAD are supposed to go? Some of these pieces are angled could I get some measurements and close ups to better work this out? Or are instructions a possibility? Thanks for the excellent design! -John
I think with the layout of each individual part it should be straight-forward to work out where all the parts go together to make the overall structure. Let me know if I can provide any additional pointers
Chris, Iāll be building my vertical stand this week, somewhere I saw that counter weights were used. My question is are they needed and if so what should the weight be?
Thanks
Tim
In the video (at 2:30), I can see you viewing the CAD in V3 and are able to view it piece by piece while in the V2 CAD that you shared all the pieces of the main assembly are a single part which makes viewing sub-assemblies difficult. And at 3:15 you mention āgetting the correct anglesā but where in this can I find the angles i need for the diagonal supports? Lastly, (this is just more about of my inexperience in woodworking) how many wood screws for each connection are enough?
Mark used 20lbs of weight - a 10lb weight on each side - in his counter weight system. The whole gantry assembly comes out to being about 26ish lbs so thatās a reasonable amount.
Iāve spoken with Ivan, another one of our LongMill users, and heās had his machine set up vertically without a counter weight system for over 6 months successfully so it shows that itās possible to set the machine up without weight or spring-assist. In my opinion: the pros of assisting the setup is that it avoids the possibility of the machine losing position on power-off and it reduces the additional wear the LM might normally see when mounted vertically. One thing Iām not certain of is if the machine is making fast movements in the Y-directions if the weights may end up bouncing up and down a whole lot
Gotcha John, Iāll try to see if I can split the assembly up so that itās easier to visualize how it goes together. In the video, I was just rolling back the feature tree which is why you see the parts slowly coming together.
When I mentioned āgetting the correct anglesā I was mostly concerned with getting things square. Since the stand has four legs, if any of the connections were out-of-square then itās possible that the final stand wouldnāt sit flat, rather it would rock. The positioning of the diagonal bracing really isnāt crucial, itās there to provide support to the overall structure
When it comes to connecting all these pieces together, I mostly used 2 1/2" deck screws and some 1 1/2" screws when attaching MDF Pieces. If the connections are end-to-end then you should try to use 2 screws, and if theyāre overlapping (side-over-side) connections such as for the diagonal braces, then 3 screws is best. I always recommend pre-drilling the place youād like to attach a screw with an appropriately sized drill bit (I usually use a 7/64" bit for deck screws) so that you donāt run the risk of the wood splitting on you
So I have built the vertical stand and long mill but it seems when i make attempts to jog the machine upwards the motor doesnt having the holding power unlike when running a gcode operation? Im just using UGS. What did you do?
Hey John, so normally the maximum jogging speed of the machine is 4000mm/min in the Y-axis and I reduced this to 3000mm/min in order to move more reliably when the machine is vertical.
You need to use a fix which keeps the motors powered on as long as the machine is powered on: $1=255
If you donāt set $1 to 255 then your machine may be heavy enough to overcome the mechanical advantage of the lead screws and will slowly āfallā downwards, losing whatever position it was originally in - it sounds like this is whatās happening to you John
You mentioned in the Pikachu video that you went back and added a "blockā to the bottom so your rough cut would clean the entire flat surface and you wouldnāt have to saw off the corners. Did you explain how to add that somewhere else and I missed it?
No, I didnāt explain it anywhere else. The brief of it is that I made a rectangle in meshmixer and clicked to āunionā between the pikachu and the rectangle in order to make a singular model with a flat area the size of the block of wood. One of the future features of CAMLab is going to be an option to clear out the whole stock area so that the 3D model work isnāt going to be necessary anymore, but thatās the fix Iāve been using for now
Chris
Hi, Merry Christmas. I have been using the Longmill in vertical mode with no problems ( 15% angle plus counter weights). The problem I have is how to use the touch plate. You had mentioned writing a change to the code to allow the touch plate to be located to the upper corners.
Hi there Tim, Totally new to the CNC. For starters i need to setup my āto-buy Longmill MK2 30x30ā vertical do the lack of space in my shop. So found the youtube clip of building a vertical stand by Chris and ended up in this forum for additional information. I read your question about the counter weight system. I donāt have facebook so i couldnāt see if the answer was in that post. Can you tell me, give me directions were to find how i assembly such a system. In the youtube clip it was the MK1 CNC. Do you know if it is still necessary for the MK2.
Thanks.
