Session 07 – Let’s Build a K40 Xtreeem Rotary Attachment – Pt 1

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The K40 Xtreeem Laser Cutter Upgrade Series with Russ Sadler. Session seven:

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Let’s Build an Xtreeem Rotary Attachment Part One.

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Who said six was the end of the series? It was the end of the Build Series, not the end of the series.

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Today, we’re going to extend the range of this machine.

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Now I know that a lot of people use these machines for generating cash flow.

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One of the tasks that they perform. Is in engraving these things. Although I have no personal experience,

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I understand that the only way that you can get conventional rotary systems to work, is to cut the bottom out of the machine,

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to give it more height because conventional rotary systems are tall

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and quite big. You can compress them down and make them fit through the bottom of the machine.

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But that sounds a bit destructive.

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I’ve looked at this machine and said to myself, is it possible to create a very compact and simple rotary device that you can make yourself?

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And I think the answer’s yes. When we fitted this, turbocharging motor, we finished up with a small motor. Waste not, want not.

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Let’s see if we can use it to make a rotary device. It’s small,

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it doesn’t require a huge amount of power. But then again, we’re not going to be rotating big warships.

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We’re only rotating very light loads. I’ve already started off and I think I’ve got something that will work.

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I could cut the pieces on my other machines. But that defeats the object,

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because the whole point is that you need to make these pieces on this machine if you bring the machine up to this specification.

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It’s only got a 40 watt tube, but I’m going to be using my two and a half inch gallium arsenide lens, which I’ll just check.

Transcript for Let’s Build a K40 Xtreeem Rotary Attachment (Cont…)

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Yes, it’s still in a nice, clean condition.

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So we’re going to try and use that to cut 4mm thick acrylic, which is the basis of what I’m going to use for making this device.

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Apart from the stepper motor and 4mm acrylic.

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We need a very expensive piece of aluminum

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L-section. This is the basis of the rotary system, I’m going to design.

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So as you can see, this is not going to be high tech. Yes.

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OK, so I’m going to use some O-rings. We’re going to use some bearings, but they’re only cheap bearings that I bought off of Amazon for about a pound each.

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So let’s get started with the very first task, which is how quick can we cut this?

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Really, we’re not worried about the speed. What we’re interested in is finding the parameters that allows this to cut

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well. Now it’s a really strange phenomenon that I’ve come across.

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I’ve been working over the other side of my workshop there with the RF machine generating a very,

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very small, around about 3 or 4mm beam, which has got very high intensity.

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What do we have on this machine? We have a pretty small beam with a pretty high intensity, as you saw when we did the mode burn.

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Now that means that probably this two and a half inch lens may not be the ideal cutting tool for this machine.

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This is a fantastic cutting tool for my 70 watt tube, which has got about a nominally a 5mm beam, but probably closer to 10mm.

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Whereas this machine has got about a 3 or 4mm beam maybe going out to about 7 or 8mm.

Transcript for Let’s Build a K40 Xtreeem Rotary Attachment (Cont…)

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It sounds a lot, 7 or 8mm, but most of the cutting power is contained in the central 3 or 4mm of the blade.

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And that’s an area where this long focus lens doesn’t do a very good job of focusing the energy down to a point.

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So we may well find that we will get better results with a one and a half inch lens or even this compound engraving lens.

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We’ll give it a try and we’ll see what we get. This is a sample of 4mm extruded acrylic,

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and we’re going to use extruded acrylic because Its got a lot tighter tolerance to work with when we’re doing construction work.

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You might remember I said to you last time, I haven’t got to remember too much when I use this lens?

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Because it’s always set ideally to 2mm focus.

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There we go. It’s as simple as that. And it looks… hmmm.

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Maybe, not quite. Wow.

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Yes, it has. Let’s go up to 8mm a second, should we?

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I would say that’s going to cut as well. Wow, OK.

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Let’s going to 10mm a second shall we? Just, just, so really 8mm a second is what we’re going to have to work to. If we catch it in the light,

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you can see, that’s got a nice clean edge.

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We’ll use my little magnets as material, support . And I’ve got myself, a piece of material here, which is approximately the right size, slightly oversized A4.

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If I was doing photo engraving, I would make sure my table is set absolutely perfectly. But for cutting, especially with a two and a half inch lens,

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the odd half millimetre variation in focus is not going to be a major issue.

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We just set the cutting parameters to what we think we need, which is 8mm a second, 68 per cent power. Full power,

Transcript for Let’s Build a K40 Xtreeem Rotary Attachment (Cont…)

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if you remember. Air assist on, output, yes. OK.

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Just check we put the origin in the right place and we’ll start. As I’m not blowing the fumes out.

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It really doesn’t matter whether I have the door closed or not. You will find the pieces do not drop out, but they do not drop out for a good reason.

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And that’s because I put little bridges to hold the pieces in and all the holes, if you like, are allowed to drop out.

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It’s interesting why it’s going so slow between cuts.

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I think I set the speed very, very low, but the speed, the manual speed shouldn’t affect what they call the idle speed.

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So the idle speed should be quite fast.

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We can see the acceleration is fast. It jumps between operations very quickly.

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But once it gets up to speed, it’s pretty slow. It’s not a problem for me at the moment doing this job,

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but it is a point that I want to make that we shall need to go and look to see what the problem is.

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Now you can see the way in which the fumes are being drawn away from underneath the work.

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Because I’m allowing air to flow in at the front of the machine and pass underneath the work. It’s all being drawn right out the back.

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There will be a small amount of reflection off of the steel sheet that’s underneath there.

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We haven’t got a huge amount of residual power, most of the power is being consumed in the cut.

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So I must reposition this machine somewhere shortly and put the exhaust tube

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on it. So that I don’t fill the workshop with fumes when I start using it.

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Those at those fumes going out underneath there. The programming for this part is a little bit more interesting because I’ve got pieces there,

Transcript for Let’s Build a K40 Xtreeem Rotary Attachment (Cont…)

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those little round pieces which are cut out of scrap, but I can’t let the scrap fall out because I want the pieces to not fall down.

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Whereas this piece that I’m cutting now is the same shape. But it should probably fall down because it’s not bridged in.

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I’m keeping an eye on the temperature. Now,

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the temperature started off here at about 27 degrees C because it’s quite warm day and the air temperature is quite warm.

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So we’re not going to be very, very efficient at cooling this machine with a fairly high air temperature in here.

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So I reckon we’re probably about 25 or 26 in this workshop.

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The temperature is no longer going up. It’s about thirty point six or thirty point seven degrees. That took 11 minutes

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thirty nine to cut that sheet. So in 11 minutes of full power, it’s gone up about probably three degrees C.

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OK, now looking at the state of these parts. Now there is just a small amount of what I would see as a reflection on the underside here.

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It’s just wrinkled up the film that’s on the underside. So I was wondering whether or not I could run this machine without the film on it.

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I think the top would be OK because this is nice and clean and debris free.

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So let’s just see what I mean about putting bridges in.

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So technically, I should be able to break that one out like that because there is just a little bridge on the end there.

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All right, so literally they just pop out with bridges that you will probably hardly even notice.

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I’m using 0.8 of a mm for a bridge size. And this has got two bridges in it.

Transcript for Let’s Build a K40 Xtreeem Rotary Attachment (Cont…)

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And this one’s got two bridges in it. Just on the ends.

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So as you can see, there’s nothing, there’s nothing difficult about breaking the stuff out if you put bridges on, and

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here’s the piece that I was telling you about,

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I need to break this piece out to start with because the piece that I really want are these two pieces here.

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They’re special washes, which you’ll see me use shortly. So if you’ve got fingernails, you can lift the corner up and peel the film off from both sides.

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So that’s a tedious task, which I will do. And then we’ll come back and look at all the pieces and see how we’re going to assemble them.

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OK, well, before we start assembly, I’m going to take some of these pieces and I’m just going to put some countersink holes in.

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I’ve just wiped it once.

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So I’m going to do it again because this table is still a little bit sticky with some acrylic fumes, which are sitting on the surface. Now, if that stuff dries on.

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It’s much more difficult to get off, so you want to take it off while it’s slightly sticky.

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OK, so we’ve put our countersinks in as per the drawing,

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and we’re going to work on this black surface because it hopefully will show a good enough contrast to show you how the assembly goes together.

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Now, some of these pieces have got the crud, the liquid acrylic crud on them, so they might need a bit of a wipe.

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Before we assemble them. The slots go to the back and the holes go to the right hand side.

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Because that is going in there. You will note that this has got a slot in this end and not in the other end, well, the slot goes to the back.

Transcript for Let’s Build a K40 Xtreeem Rotary Attachment (Cont…)

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Now that shouldn’t be as loose as that, but it’s not a problem. It’s only wobbly. It’s not loose.

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OK, so we have a small problem developing, but it’s not going to stop the assembly.

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This is supposed to be 4mm material, and it’s about 3.7mm.

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So it’s already under size, which is why it’s wobbling in the slots. But fortunately,

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the way these things assemble it isn’t really a problem, because the tenons and the slots are there to basically hold the whole thing into line.

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They’re like little jigs. So once you put the end piece on, look, it stabilizes it, and then we’ve got the other end piece to go on.

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And that helps to stabilize it as well. But before we put this end on, we’ve got an M8 by I think it’s 16 long hexagon head bolt.

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Which we’re going to captivate and stop it rotating in that slot, that I just showed you.

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So we put that through there and we pop the head of the nut in the slot. When I come back.

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I might come back as an octopus and I’ll certainly ask for 4 hands.

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Because often you need more than one pair of hands.

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So I’ve got some little helpers here. Which serve as my extra pair of hands.

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Okay. And these will hold this whole assembly together.

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While I glue it. I’ve decided to countersink that plate as well. Because these screws are not quite long enough to bite as I want them to on the self locking nut,

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which is a nylock nut.

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Now we want to tighten these up, but not too tight, because what we’re trying to do, we’re trying to loosen these off to get rid of that gap there.

Transcript for Let’s Build a K40 Xtreeem Rotary Attachment (Cont…)

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So we’ve got to loosen off until the plate can just touch,

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at the bottom. And there we go.

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So it’s a captive, wobbly plate. Now we can put our

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clamp nut on there. Here we have a brand new stepper motor.

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I messed the other one up, when I tried to take the pulley, the brass pulley off. Put the wires to

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the top and the cut out on this plate to the top left hand corner.

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This motor requires fairly short screws. So what I’ve got, I’ve got an M3 by 6mm long countersunk screw.

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M3 by 16mm long and two more of those self locking nylock nuts. This little plate on with its two teeth.

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We put the teeth the same end as this one. And then we choose this one, which has got the cut out on the same end.

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These are fully tight and see how we get on when we pop it onto here.

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OK, that sits on the absolutely perfectly and solidly. So you can adjust it along right to the end.

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So it plugs in at 6mm intervals all the way along there.

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And now we need these two bearings. These are flanged bearings, very useful things to have.

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If I had enough of them, I’d be using these M3 by 35 long screws.

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Yep, I’ve only found two, so I’ve got some M3 by 30 long, which will do the job just about as well.

Transcript for Let’s Build a K40 Xtreeem Rotary Attachment (Cont…)

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I think the easiest way to make sure we put it on the right way is to assemble this first.

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So it’s got to go the opposite way to this one. So we lay it down.

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And again, we put the teeth to the same end. Cut out goes there.

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And then we’ve got our countersunk plate that goes on top. Two more M3 by 16 screws, countersunk.

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So we tighten these up fully tight, and that should also clip nicely on there. So we are going to lay this down with the flat side to the top. We’re going to drop

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a bearing in there. So we put our screw through, drop that on, over the screw and we’ll put that other bearing into the washer like that.

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So we need one of these nylock nuts on here and this is a pain to wind them on. Now when it goes tight.

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The inner races of the bearing are pulling against the balls of the outer race and basically they lock up. So you won’t be able to rotate that.

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But what we can do is to very, very slightly, which is why we’ve got the self locking nut on there. We just very slightly loosen this,

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until it rotates freely, and when it rotates freely like that, you should have no wobble on there.

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So we tighten it up, so we just get total freeness without wobble.

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If there’s a very, very, very small amount of wobble on there, that’s not the biggest problem in the world. Because,

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you see look. It’s just starting to go stiff now. Undo it just a fraction. And there we go. Lovely and free and basically almost wobble free.

Transcript for Let’s Build a K40 Xtreeem Rotary Attachment (Cont…)

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We’re going to set that with the flat to the top and then we’re just going to put a small amount of our glue.

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Just around there to lock it up. Now it won’t,

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it won’t lock the bearings up, because there is a space between the bearings.

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Now we need some wheels go on here. Here’s the wheels. These are the wheels for both ends of the unit and there are those with a big hole in.

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And those with a small hole in. One two three four five six small ones. Two, four and six large ones,

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and also six of these very, very small ones as well.

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Now what we’re going to do with these is something rather strange.

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I’m going to put an M3 tapped hole through all of these. That goes up into a standard chuck, a drill chuck and turns this into a tapping machine.

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Put that over a hole in my plate there. I think I should be able to tap these with my bare hands, so to speak.

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As you can see, these are slightly tricky. I have to clamp them really tight.

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And while we’re at the drill, I’ve got a fairly well equipped workshop here,

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so I just happen to have a 5mm reamer, which is what we need to do the job properly.

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You could get away with a 5mm drill. So now we’re going to take a look at the wheels with the big holes in.

Transcript for Let’s Build a K40 Xtreeem Rotary Attachment (Cont…)

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I’m only taking the merest amount out. As you can see, there’s virtually nothing coming out of these holes.

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OK, so we’re going to be using these standard screws for the moment, they’re quite long screws, but we need this as an assembly jig.

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So we’re going to take a big wheel.

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I’m going to wind a wheel and then we’re going to take a slightly smaller wheel and then another small wheel. If you wind them on too much.

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You will lock the thread up, they will act like lock nuts. So you need to make them just loose enough so that the screw still rotates.

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And then we’ll have a big one. And then finally we’ll have two of these very small ones, so we’ll still make sure that we can wind the screw.

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Which we can, because the screw is an assembly aide, it’s not the final shaft.

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So we’ve got to make sure we don’t glue these to that thread. We’ll just tighten these up until…

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So the whole assembly, the whole stack has basically got zero gaps in it, but it’s not fully locking

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that screw up. That’s good.

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So there’s three. Now the fourth one is going to be slightly difficult because we haven’t got anything to compress it together.

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The closest I can get a 5mm, an M5 screw which has got a straight shank on part of it . Then the two very very small ones.

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So with this one, I’m going to have to apply a little bit of pressure with my fingers to keep the stack together.

Transcript for Let’s Build a K40 Xtreeem Rotary Attachment (Cont…)

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And all we’re really going to do with this, is we’re going to go round the top of these, and

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I’m going to drop around the top, give it a shake.

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Get rid of the excess, and I can guarantee that that has now leaked between every one of those.

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And has glued it all together. Just by capillary action. Now, I’ll probably find that it’s also gone to the centre.

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And if I try and take this off, look it’s already gone,

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sticky. It’s already

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sticking. So the last thing I want to do is have that stuck to that shaft.

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So what I shall do is very carefully withdraw it, because all the faces are now stuck together.

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We just leave that to dry. These won’t be quite so bad.

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But again, what we’re going to do, we’re going to put the glue on the top and just let it run round underneath each one of these joints.

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And then shake it off. Don’t be tempted to wind the wheel off the screw.

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Hold the wheel and wind the screw out of the wheel.

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As I said, there was at one stage I thought I may have to turn these, but that method of making them has been quite successful.

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I’ve got some silicon O-rings here, which are, BS117 in size. I should be able to fit three of these

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onto this wheel. And here we are, we’re winding our wheel on. Now, remember, we’ve got a nut here. Just wind it until it just stops, like that.

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And there we go. Super! With this one,

Transcript for Let’s Build a K40 Xtreeem Rotary Attachment (Cont…)

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I’ve got to drill a hole through here and put an M3 grub screw in here to attach it to the shaft.

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So we just pop an M3 grub

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screw in there. We will rotate that shaft so that it’s got flat at the top. Three O-rings to make sure they’re sitting nice and level, which they are.

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We will just pop that on there where the flat is and make sure the wheels line up that way.

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And there we are at its closest position.

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And it’s furthest position. We’re going to use one of these very long screws, and I don’t know whether that’s too long, but we’ll try it for the time being.

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And oh, I’ve got to countersink the bottom there. We’ll put one of our long countersunk

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screws in the bottom. I got some special M3 lock nuts.

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They’re half nuts, they’re very very thin because I don’t want to consume too much height with the nut itself.

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So we’ll just wind that nut right down to the bottom, and then we’ll tighten up the screw so that the screw is nice and rigid.

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Here’s my secret end stop, this is 4mm outside diameter, 3.2

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ID Bore Tube. So it fits neatly over the top of that screw.

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And that. Is a friction free end stop. Move this to its fullest extent, because remember what the goal is. We’re trying to rotate these things.

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This is probably only about three millimeters off of this flat surface at the bottom here.

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That’s as big as we can go. But that was my goal, to try and be able to rotate one of these Yeti cups.

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OK. And the idea is, if we take a look, this is rolling.

Transcript for Let’s Build a K40 Xtreeem Rotary Attachment (Cont…)

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On that end stop, and we’ll have one of these at the other end as well.

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So the whole thing will actually be captivated, left and right.

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So we won’t be relying on the rubber drive only to stop movement in this direction.

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Now before we cut the second part of this project,

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I did question whether or not the two and a half inch gallium arsenide lens was the best lens for cutting with this machine.

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So we’ll just do a couple of quick experiments to see whether or not we can get some

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benefit from using a one a half inch lens or even this compound lens system that I’ve got in here.

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Many of you guys with K40’s will never have seen anything like this, which is universal lens tube. Its universal because it takes a two inch lens

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if you use it this way. It takes a four inch lens,

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if you use it that way or when you use it this way, it’s got a big, deep thread in the end here which takes a two and a half inch lens.

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In addition to that, if you use it in conjunction with one of these, NO3 or number

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three cutting nozzles that you can get from CloudRay.

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There is a recess in the end of the nozzle here, and that recess happens to take 18mm lens.

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Now it’s designed specifically to take an 18mm, one and a half inch focal

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length lens. Because a one and a half inch focal length lens will not fit in this tube.

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And the focus point come outside the nozzle.

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We have to drop the lens right the way down so that we get one and a half inch focusing outside the end of the nozzle.

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There is no clamp ring, so what we have to do in this instance,

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most of the clamp rings that are supplied with CloudRay now have got these white compression rings on them.

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They’re they’re like a PTFE ring, which is a little bit soft, but it does allow you to put it in the wrong way round. Instead of clamping the lens,

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normally you clamp the lens in the bottom there and it would be a 20mm lens.

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Well, in this instance, we’re working with an 18mm diameter lens,

Transcript for Let’s Build a K40 Xtreeem Rotary Attachment (Cont…)

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and we’re going to need to put the lens ring in the wrong way round and literally just screw it in with your finger.

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But you need to screw it in so that there’s around about four or five millimetres of thread showing beyond the white ring. Something like that.

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We can pop our 18mm lens and I’m going to use this lens the right way round, which is flat side down.

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We’re going to pop the lens tube on top of the nozzle this time because we don’t want the lens to fall out.

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So if we screw that on the top there, we should find that the white ring contacts the lens and clamps it before

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It clamps solid against this face just here, and we can prove that you can feel it.

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And if you shake it, nothing happens. If it does,

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if it sounds like this, then hey, you’ve got to take this apart, unwind the ring a few threads or a couple of threads and screw it back up again.

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I happen to know that this one and a half inch lens is approximately thirty three millimetres into this nozzle.

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Well, it’s a thirty eight point one. So that means the gap between the focal point and the end of the nozzle is going to be about five mm.

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I say about, um, because it depends on the material, it depends on the speed, it depends on the power where the focal points actually going to be.

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It could vary by one or two millimeters.

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We might have to do a couple of quick experiments to find out what the optimum focal distance is for setting this up.

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So we start off with our previous best result, which was 8mm a second.

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That didn’t work too well. I’ll try it at 3mm. And 3mm just about pushes out. We’ll even go as far as 2mm, which is a long way off focus. Well that

Transcript for Let’s Build a K40 Xtreeem Rotary Attachment (Cont…)

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more or less dropped out. This is silly because I can do this easily at 8mm a second with the two and a half inch.

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So this is not going quite the way that I expected and it says the two and a half inch is still the best lens for the job.

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So let’s go for the next alternative, which is the compound lens, which I know has got to be set to about 11 millimeters.

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That’s very unsuccessful. We could try raising this by another millimeter.

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Yeah, rather than lowering it. I’m going to raise it. And as you can see, no.

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And just for the sake of completeness,

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we’ll take that lens ring out of there. We’ll put a two inch flat side down back into the two inch end of this universal

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holder on. And I can tell you, I can see the smoke on top not coming underneath, so that’s definitely not made it through.

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So of all the lenses that we chose, my all singing, all dancing two and a half inch gallium arsenide still appears to be the best do

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it all lens even for this machine. So let’s get on to making part two of this rotary system.

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We’ve got 3.8 acrylic, supposedly four mm. And before we start part two, I’m going to do the lazy way.

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So I don’t have to fight with individual components afterwards. Well I have to say that the more I use this machine, the more I begin to like it.

Transcript for Let’s Build a K40 Xtreeem Rotary Attachment (Cont…)

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I can chuck stuff on it and do exactly what I can on my big machines. Now again, you can see,

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the sticky film. So we’ll just take that off with some acetone before it dries.

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First of all, I’m going to put down a couple of scrap blocks. This is only 3.8 millimetres thick.

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And I’ve made my tongues four millimetres long.

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So there’s going to be a very small amount sticking out the bottom, which is going to hold the joints apart.

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We’ll put our L-shaped piece in next and then we’ve got this piece here, which sits upright against this back piece.

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Now the whole thing is fairly stable, as I will hold this and I put a bead of glue along the inside edge of there as our starting point.

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Okay, now we’ll hold that for a few seconds, and that should lock that in place.

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OK, well, that’s enough to hold in place. It’s only, what, 30 seconds.

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And then very carefully we’ll put a little bead of glue down that joint there, and that should lock that end piece up completely.

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But what we can do, is use one of these pieces to make sure that we set it completely square. So it will run along the bottom edge of that one as well

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now. We’ll hold this piece against it to keep it upright.

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That piece there has got quite a lot of wobble on it because of the clearance between the 4mm slot and the 3.8 material.

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I’m going to, first of all. Run a bead of glue down this edge here.

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By doing that, I’ve actually locked the bottom up.

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But in fact, that’s not true because this, as I said to you before, this glue remains soft for several minutes.

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I can still reposition this. So I’m going to set that

Transcript for Let’s Build a K40 Xtreeem Rotary Attachment (Cont…)

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square, and so I want to use that as a square to hold the back face upright.

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So yeah, I feel fairly happy that that now is upright and square.

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So we’ll leave that to dry. Right now. We’ve got these four pieces here.

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I put a countersink on the bottom there and that goes on the bottom face.

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This sits on here. And again, remember.

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The tongues are a little bit on the long side, so I really ought to be assembling this so that the tongues stick down and I can make sure that

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that sits flat against this face here. What I’m going to do is run a bead of glue along the bottom edge there.

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Then I’m ‘re not going to use that piece, there to try and

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glue it so that it’s vertical, and then these pieces here should fit neatly.

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In here and drop into that slot at the side, so we should be able to put that down the middle into those slots.

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The next tricky thing is getting these square, because remember, we’ve got a little bit of clearance in these slots.

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And these could be anywhere.

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We’ll go down the back edge first because that gives us the best chance of running a bead of glue down there and down there and then allowing us to

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put one of these between here like this. We’ve got to captivate a piece of material between there.

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And then I should be able to push that, against there and then what we’ve got to do is to check how square

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these are. And in fact, it’s pretty good, yeah, I’m pretty, I’m pretty happy with that.

Transcript for Let’s Build a K40 Xtreeem Rotary Attachment (Cont…)

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So we just very carefully take that out of there now.

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And we should be able to run a bead of glue. Along the bottom edge there to lock that up completely.

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Now I can already see that it isn’t square look, can you see that?

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So I’m going to have a go at just trying to bend that very slightly. While this stuff is still damp.

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And now you can see I have managed to get it square along that bottom edge there. We’re going to put this 8mm, 16 long or 18 long bolt through there.

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This part here and just put a little teeny weeny,

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but it will just, we’ll put a little blob of glue on there and you’ll see it run right the way round underneath the washer.

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So we’ll just leave that for a few seconds, for it to begin to bite.

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OK. And that should be long enough.

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But then before anything else happens, we’ll take the nut out.

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We don’t want to glue that in. I would suggest, that you keep this knob,

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towards the front of the machine, this on that side.

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And then we’ve got these two items here which will go on,

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you can’t get these on the wrong way because they’re non symmetrical. T M3 by 16’s and two of these nylock M3 nuts.

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It’s a, it’s a wobbly, retained plate that closes up the gap to almost nothing at the bottom here.

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And there is our clamp screw on there now. Put a clamp nut on.

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And that’s beautiful. That’s a superb, smooth up and down motion, which we should be able to lock,

Transcript for Let’s Build a K40 Xtreeem Rotary Attachment (Cont…)

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into place at any point. Everything’s working out absolutely perfectly.

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So we need to put our end stop on here as well. One of my long, thin screws.

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And one of my very thin lock nuts. And all we need on there now is a piece of tube, and there we’ve got an end stop on there.

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Well, here’s the final part of our assembly, which are the two free running wheels for the tail end.

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Now, to make sure we don’t assemble this incorrectly, what we’ll do, we’ll lay these out like this.

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Then we put our tooth pieces on top. And then we’ll put our countersunk pieces on top. The countersunk plates, 16mm, M3 screws.

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All we’ve got to do is lock these on with the nuts. These,

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into the washers. I’m going to put the washers on there with the flat towards the inside.

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Drop the screw through, drop the screw through and then catch on the other side,

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with the other bearing. Pop that in the slot, and then of course, you’ve got to put this M3

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nylock nut and wind it all the way down. That tedious thing you’ve got to do.

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OK, so we’ll just put our flats, we’ll just locate the flats so that they line up with the edge. And I’m just standing those up on their wheels.

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Just so that they’re fairly level ish, for when I pop this glue on here, you can see it just running around.

Transcript for Let’s Build a K40 Xtreeem Rotary Attachment (Cont…)

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Just push them down to make sure that they are all sitting nice and level.

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What, did I say? We mustn’t assemble this wrongly.

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Well, we didn’t assemble the basic unit wrongly, but what we did do? Sorry.

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I did, because you’re nothing to do with this. I put that screw in the wrong way round. So that screw head has got to go on the other side.

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OK, now I’ve assembled it the right way, so we just wind the wheels down onto the nut.

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And we just pop that down to the bottom. So we don’t put any major stress on the acrylic, and we’ll pop this in. Now,

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it is possible, because of the tolerances on the thickness of these materials that this little spacer that

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we’ve got in here is slightly thinner than the thickness of the material that we’ve got on this rack here.

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And if that is the case, as I can feel, this one is, it’s very snug.

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All we’ve got to do is just loosen these screws off, these nuts just a little bit.

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There should just be enough give in there to allow that to slip on and off nice and easily like that.

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OK, let’s see how this all fits together now, shall we? We will take the,

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We’ll take the base plate out and just temporarily,

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I’ll stick it down with a couple of magnets. In fact, that’s a good idea, maybe to maybe put some magnets in that bar.

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So we need to pop that down to the bottom. And probably open that up to… I don’t know?

Transcript for Let’s Build a K40 Xtreeem Rotary Attachment (Cont…)

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So we can take a look on there and we can see one tooth. And you do the same the other end, one tooth.

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Loosen that off.

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Well, I have to say, that fits in there very nicely, and that feels completely superb with one minor problem,

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which I’ve got to deal with. These nuts here, look, they’re on the wrong side.

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I really want the countersinks on that side to give myself clearance, here,

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against this end stop. But that’s the only problem that I can see, apart from the obvious one. Which is,

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that one! I’ve got to change the head to a short head, and then we’ve got to fit the stepper motor.

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We’ve got to get everything running. But that’s for the next session.