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It's way tooooo clean in there
I wouldn't dare stick my 24" imac in the same room as my bot, it stays at home where I only spill a soda on the keyboard every other week.
Looks good!! One question though. Do you have another e-stop button on the bot, it comes in handy when you're bent over looking to see if something is about to go catastrophically wrong, and it does...
Gabe
www.socalteardrops.com
A work of art!
I really like the Fein Boxes too :-)
gonna use that thing or just look at it (G)
I think she should rope off that area and offer tours.
Can't wait to see the projects, Alison!!
Alison,
I don't think my shop was that clean before i moved into or anytime since. If i came for a tour i would remove my shoes so i wouldn't track in dirt.
Great job, with that much care and attention to setting up I'm sure you will do very well in your projects.
Sean
Carving Artists: We designed the plenum based on looking at other posts on the forum and thinking about how we wanted to use the machine. It was super easy to design and implement in Partworks. I just drew out the grid -- and then set up the tool path to run a 1/4 inch bit on the lines of the grid before it cut out the holes for the vacuum piping.
Gabe: You might not be able to see it on the pictures, but the E-stop button is located on the wall near the computer. Between that and the spacebar on our wireless keyboard, so far we've been able to handle a several "panic" stops.
Although it looks clean, believe it or not, we actually are cutting files and generating saw dust. We've got a 3HP cyclone connected to the machine and it really sucks up most of the dust. Early on we also decided to epoxy paint our workshop's concrete floor. That makes it pretty easy to keep the area clean -- especially with the control and VFD boxes mounted to the wall and not much clutter under the machine. We're obviously just getting started -- we're not generating a huge volume of dust yet. But hopefully, the set up will continue to be easy to maintain.
Alison,
I have a ShopBot now with a bag dust collector and I am thinking about changing the dust collector over to a cyclone type. What brand and horse power did you install and is it working for you. I can only see one photo with your dust collector in it, looks like it my services other equipment, does it? The next question how did you connect the dust collector piping to the ShopBot? Does the over head arm swing or is it fixed and the flex pipe long enough to reach all corners of the table.
Thanks.
Your installation looks great.
Ron:
There are a lot of other posts on the forum about dust collection from people who have longer term experience with their set-up. You should check them out. Our installation is still pretty new -- it works great now, but we don't have any longer term perspective and few comparisons to other installations.
Having said that, here's some pictures of our dust collection set up.
Attachment 3347
Attachment 3348
Attachment 3349
As you can see, we're using a 3HP Grizzly cyclone dust collector for the Shopbot and our other equipment. The ductwork is Norfab -- the hard duct pieces all fit together with clamps.
To make the connection to the machine, we ran hard ductwork on the ceiling to a point over the center of the machine, and then used a swivel connection. From there, it's 4" flex duct. Using some aluminum bar stock that we got from Home Depot, we fashioned a bracket that bolts to the front of the YZ car and loops over the back of the gantry. The flex duct was connected to the bracket with clamps and wire ties. We weren't sure if the simple aluminum bracket would be stiff enough, but so far it's worked fine -- and it's little extra flex seems to avoid any issue with the ductwork binding up the machine. The swivel and flex duct combination reaches all of the corners of the machine -- and the flex duct is held nicely up off of the table surface without any issue.
When we picked the cyclone, we made our final decision between the Grizzly and Oneida. We made our decision on price even though there are a lot of comments on the web about the Oneida being quieter. We probably could have gotten by with a little less horsepower, but based on the ductwork static pressure calculations, we opted for the 3HP to get a lot of margin for error. The quality and ease of assembly of the Grizzly cyclone seemed pretty good. (The Grizzly people, however, were extremely hard to deal when there was an issue with machine delivery).
The Norfab ductwork is a little expensive, but it is outstanding stuff. It was super easy to assemble and align -- plus it gave the luxury of being able to try some configurations and then change them around if they didn't look right. And we got super service from our Atlanta distributor -- Underwood Air Systems -- including turn-around of some factory custom made parts within a couple days.
So far, the dust collection system works great. It has plenty of suction power. We're getting very little sawdust left on the Shopbot table after cuts -- using the Shopbot's standard dust collection head. And it's a debate which is louder -- the dust collection system or the (supposedly quiet) Fein vacuums at full suction.
You should also check an earlier post by Gary Campbell about his dust collection hose set up -- he used a sliding mechanism over the machine. We had the opportunity to see it at the Camp Shopbot in his workshop and it was a very cool approach.
How long did it take from picture #1 to final product?
I am not yet the owner of a ShopBot, but I can tell you this, your post answered dozens of questions. Some of which I did not know to ask.
Your setup is really nice. . . first class . . .
Qne question that I do have pertains to the vacuum hold down system. I understand the how the plenum distributes the vacuum, but then everyone appears to attach a "spoil board" right on top of the plenum. How will the vacuum hold down the material, it is now isolated from the plenum.
I assume the plenum is MDF as well as the spoil board.
Thanks in advance,
Steve