V-Chain

[curtiss]

Have only had this up and working for about a week, but I decided that a 7 foot overall height was a bit much for my 6" Z.

I placed some split shop-vac hose on a 1 x 1 aluminum c-channel from an old 6' wide vertical blind. Had to drill a few small bracket holes in the bot but such it goes.

The wires fit inside easily and the 110 from the router is taped to the outside of the hose and rides down into the channel. It takes a little E-Tape, but works very well so far. Some extra wire inside the curve makes the arch a bit stiffer.

Not quite e-chain, but seems to be OK for a town this size. Cost seems to be somewhere around $12.

It also improves the bicycle storage above...


569

[geneb]

Now THAT is very cool Curtis! Thanks for posting about it!

One thing I've always wondered about this type of wire routing method - will the power feed for the spindle live in the same place as the stepper controller wiring without causing crosstalk in the cables?

g.

[jon]

excellent design, I might just copy you.
Good work. How did you split the hose, and why? For ease of cable removal? Or was it too stiff before splitting?

[curtiss]

You would not have to split the hose, but I did, as I did not want to disconnect everything to thread it all the way through. There are some small plastic ties under the black tape.

I saw some slighlty bigger vacuum hose for a swimming pool vacuum at the hardware store that might work a bit better. You only need about 6 feet.

If I was doing it again, I might look for some slighly bigger c-channel for the hose to rest in.

The dust collector hose hangs from a roller track on the ceiling on some short adjustable chains, it is nice to have that out of the way sometimes.

[jon]

I have my machine tucked under a section in my shop that leaves me about one inch gap between the z axis gantry top and a sprinkler head. I had to turn my flexible gantry bracket 90 degrees to get it all to work. There are photos of my machine in the tramming head thread in this section. It just looks dumb. I have been thinking of a cost effective way of dealing with this, thanks for your post. How do you route your dust collector hose? That's not going to flex the same way.