I’ve been putting my altmill 4x4 together. I decided to mount the vortex in the front bay, to 2080 t-track mounted to the bottom of the crossbeams
This puts the rotation axis at the same level as the spoil board, and let’s me cover up most of the rotary axis when not in use. (Its crooked because I havent mounted it to the track yet)
That’s what I did. Then I got a Rapidchange ATC and put it as low as I could fit it, so my first bay is filled with those two features. The spoilboard is now 4’ wide, only 3’ across, but most of what I do fits. So far, all of what I do fits. I recommend what you’re doing.
I have a rotary but I am hardly using it since it has been quite a lot of trouble. With the updates to the software it seemed that the support for the vortex got left behind for a while. But I do have some questions about what you two are doing:
What is the advantage of having a sunken rotary? Is the surface space you are giving up worth it? Do you know of any good videos that go into more depth about the Vortex being used with gSender? (I tried to use it a few months ago and it would not set up right. I called Sienci and they said “Ya we changed that and this and that…but it was not reflected on some of our support videos” I decided to wait until the software became more stable before I dived into it).
Thank you and great project.
what connectors and t-nuts did you use to connect extrusions?
Main advantages for me are:
I can cover the rotary when I’m not using it. I didn’t want to have to mount and unmount it. I will have spoilboard covering the left hand 3 feet, so I only lose about a foot of working area. I put it on the right instead of the normal left hand side so that it would be in line with the ATC. That means I can still do pass through on the left for longer objects.
I used the shorter track for mounting the headstock, and cut it so that the head-stock remains in place but about 10 inches can be removed. This should give me a max turning diameter of 10 inches instead of 4. I do a little lathe work, and I’d like to be able to engrave the edge of my bowls.
The crosspieces that mount to the altmill beams are 2080, so they use 20 series t-nuts with m5-10 screws. The altmill has weird sizes. The crossbeam is 50mm, but uses a 30 series track. So I used m5 30 series roll-in t-nuts. I used 40 series brackets. You have to sand/grind one side flat to get them to fit flush on the cross beam, and narrow the tabs on the other side to get them to fit into the 2080 t-track but other than that, it’s a pretty easy set up.
