Having read a bunch of the comments, all telling you what you should do, using machines you don't have, from materials you can't get, I have a simple solution. Mount it on a polished hardwood base, and keep it as a piece of sculpture. It is a beautiful thing! Thanks for your video.
Edit: The stock X-Beam is ≈ 43 grams. Edit 2: Sorry for the Ads, currently the button to disable them is missing for me :/ I will make sure to swear in the next video, so that RU-vid will not put Ads in front my Videos whiteout my consent ;) Edit 3 (07.June.2022) : Wow, I really don’t know why YT recommends this video to so many people. I thought all the geeks who are interested have seen it after 5k views, now its at 183k ! This allowed me to apply for the RU-vid Partner Program. If i get approved to it, I probably leave the ads activated on this Video & here is why: -The intended audience for this video had to “endure” the ads, so it seems fair that everyone else gets served ads too (on this video at least). -Benefit for the community. 50% of the revenue will go to subsidise the first 50-100 beams (still working on setting that up with a CNC shop nearby). This way every interested (future) Voron0 owner can get one for a good price. -faster progress with the CNC. The other 50% of the revenue will go towards the new CNC machine which I will build and document on this channel. On this CNC I will machine other Voron X-Beams in the future… I hope that is okay and makes a bit sense :)
Nice work! A few thoughts: 1) A triangular profile would make more sense if you are only using a single rail. 2) Magnesium. 3) As someone who's building their own CNC, I wouldn't give up on the Nomad so quickly. A bird in the hand is worth two in the bush...
Thanks! Yeah triangular would be a great choice, but i am a bit lazy… for a triangular beam i would have to redesign the mounts and 4 treads right on the edge of the profile ;) Magnesium sounds awesome, sadly my favourite material shop does not have that. Don’t worry, i won’t discard the Nomad, it is my first machine and my baby ;)
It looks like the beams for rock concerts ....but as a theater tech I can say there's a reason why....it's the strongest and lightest way to make vary strong structures ...good job it looks so clean
@@GusCraft460 There's also this cool oldschool film on the rectangular beam profile, "Strength of Structural Shapes: Angles, Channels and Beams": ru-vid.com/video/%D0%B2%D0%B8%D0%B4%D0%B5%D0%BE-8Ob2tVP5miE.html These structure are real marvels of engineering, yet so humble.
Wow! This is not the type of video I normally see, but I'm glad it was recommended. Super impressed that you accomplished this under the circumstances! The design is incredible and I'm floored you got it down to such a light weight!
the issue is not only stiffness when building a structure for machining... the issue is also its ability to resist and dampen vibrations. This is why older Cast Iron mills and lathes are prized. The trick is to find a balance between the two. Cast Iron is known for its ability to absorb vibration and the very reason some of the most accurate CNC machines still use it as part of the underlying structure with modern linear rails and ball screws. There is even a few custom lathes made with granite at its core (search YT)
I saw someone do stress tests on different materials. They found that aluminum struts, supported by epoxy/granite casting approached cast iron in stability and vibration damping. Good to know. They used charts!
Yeah but what’s real dope When you learn about things like electro-chemical machining which almost anyone with a tub of water and cheap 12 volt dc power supply can use in their bathtub to produce highly accurate metal components with the type of tolerances required which until now have only been capable on the use of industrial equipment which most individuals wouldn’t have had the access to or an understanding of how to use. With ecm you can take a piece of metal and transform its shape into a new one for some benefit that would be possible with nothing more needed to do so than water and electricity and patience. That means precision manufacturing capability is becoming an available tool in the general public which will only foster revolutionary inventions that wouldn’t have come to exist if the industrial sector had the benefit of precision manufacturing all to themselves
The one thing that jumps out at me is that the zig-zags on two sides sharing an edge don't seem to have the same pitch. Commercial square truss is made such that it is made without a point ending in an unsupported beam segment. I assume this is to prevent buckling, but would also translate into a stiffness issue. Commenting also for the engagement metric, so please ignore this probably being a redundant statement.
@@premiumbasics There's a mod for the V0.1 carriage to allow using MGN9 rails, just because its author hates M2 screws with passion and wanted to use M3 hardware.
This looks really cool! No idea why it was recommended to me, but pretty impressive machining for the mill you're using, very nice work. If you need any help with machining small batches in the meantime let me know, I have a small shop with a Haas VF2, and do prototypes and the like for my own designs, but do the occasional small run of stuff for people as well and this would be a fun project. But I understand wanting to DIY so good luck in any case.
Thanks for Your offer and good wishes :) I don’t know either why this video gets recommended to so many people. It was originally intended for a small circle of 3D printer modders :D
@@premiumbasics I'm here for the gun channels, but this is fascinating and as a steel fabricator it is great to see "the big stuff" in micro versions! Good luck and maybe consider spray cooling, made mine cheap for my mini mill.
That's a really nice beam. I question the need for the weight savings but as a machine designer I can appreciate it's aesthetic and engineering. Nice job.
Take for example the moving axis on a CNC machine, where a structure needs to support a linear bearing. That needs to be light so that the motors which control the movement don’t have to overcome a lot of inertia.
@@brandonsmoot4056 Is it even possible for a stepper to develop 20Gs or are you just throwing out a number? Seems a little unrealistic to me. 20G is 196m/sec sq. Think abour that for a minute. 5G maybe but 20? I doubt it.
@@jamescrud this is about 145m/s^2 so my ball park number is actually pretty accurate especially for a even higher speed print. ru-vid.com/video/%D0%B2%D0%B8%D0%B4%D0%B5%D0%BE-JdVZZ4i2dS8.html
Thanks! There is no complete build out yet, @Fail Fast! will probably finish the first build with it in the next livestream he makes. Make sure to check him out :)
Really cool. It would be interesting if you load the beam with e.g. 5 kg and measure the deflection, and compare the deflection with carbon fiber and 80/20. Low weight is great, but rigidity is important, too.
congrats on getting into hackaday! I hope you do more youtube content because I think you have the skills and creativity. I like this video style. Good fortune in the future
Ich finde deine Präsentation ist dir gut gelungen, da es sehr viele Bilder hatte und somit anschaulich war. Du hast flüssig gesprochen und ich fande alles gut.
Danke für dein tolles Feedback, gutes Feedback mit vielen guten Aspekten. Dein Feedback war top! Weiter so, gerne auch nächstes Mal mit guten Feedback, merci fürs Feedback. LG M
I'd love to partner with you to manufacture these parts for the community. I'm a small shop with a vertical machining center and can pound these out for you really quickly.
@@premiumbasics no forth axis but a pretty big machine so it wouldn't be hard to batch them with some custom fixtures. I'm in Vancouver WA, but shipping for these would be pretty easy. Send me a dm and I'll give you my phone number and email so we can talk more.
RU-vid has no DM function anymore... I don´t know if this would profitable and worth the hassle for a professional shop. There are "only" around 1734 Voron 0's out there and only a fraction of V0 owners would even consider such a X-Beam...I will keep You in mind if there are more requests then expected in the near future...
@@ConnorWeller Hey, just to be honest with you, a CNC shop here in Switzerland offered to mill a small batch for me on their 4 axis machine. I hope you can understand why this is a more convenient solution for me (yet). If you like, I send you the file before making it public, so you could produce them in the US with a head start and sell them on your own without any royalty. (If you do so, i will link to it as “US Store” in the video description) Hope this is okay :)
@@premiumbasics hey that's fantastic to hear! Local manufacturing is by far the best way to go. If you think it would be helpful to the community I'd love to make them but no worries if it'll be too much trouble.
Your calculation comparing it to a carbon fiber beam is incorrect. That heavier carbon beam is MUCH stronger than an equivalent weight aluminum beam. If you are comparing to a CF beam of equal strength, the CF beam would be much thinner in wall thickness, and lighter. Perhaps consider a round CF beam with mounting points added, if it is suitable for your application. But if CF is not an available material, this design is quite interesting and uses readily available aluminum stock.
I did not choose the carbon fiber tube based on a calculation, but because it would fit in without any big adjustments. How did You calculate it? How does the CF Tube hold up in regard to stiffness? If i recall it correctly, carbon flexes a bit even if it is stronger..
My god theese look amazing, I only got into 3d printing less than a year ago when I bought my ender 5. Then discovered the voron project and have been ruminating the idea of building one at some point. Theese beams you made would make such an incredible kit.
Change your milling strategy, full penetration spiral entry .8 dia of tool, .01 radial engagement per pass, and climb mill. Predrill the corners possibly increase speed as well.
Also spiral entry can be helped by drilling the center point of the spiral will prevent material jacking. Use self centering tip type drill and cobalt works best for aluminum. Don't go with feeds and speeds from machinery's handbook though. Co drills work good on 6k+ rpm range.
I am a machinist, try using a spray bottle filled with kerosene, sprayed onto the surface you are machining, it does not need a constant flow, it will lubricate and stop the cutter form building up aluminium on the tool.
Thanks! It will be a interesting journey and updates to it will follow on this Channel. Might take 2 Years, it will be built out of a granite surface plate for maximum stiffness. :D (Some great videos about granite CNC’s are already on YT)
@@premiumbasics or find a Light Machines ProLight 2500. That version of the PLM benchtop bed mill with epoxy granite frame has a spindle that runs over 40K RPM. The PLM (later Intelitek) 1000, 2000, and 2500 have a 100 pound working load, higher than any other benchtop mill of comparable size. The PLM 1000 used stepper motors and cane with a quite bulky controller box that connected to a proprietary ISA or PCI card in a PC. Software was made for DOS and Windows. The PLM 2000 and 2500 used a 3 or 4 axis Animatics servo controller in a "backpack" box mounted to the rear of the column. It communicated with a PC via RS232-C. Unfortunately only DOS software was made for those, and it's so old it has to have LIM EMS memory to load larger g-code files. It knows nothing of XMS. What is really good about the 2000 and 2500 is they use servo motors on all three axes and they can move the table and spindle around quite fast. The 1000 and 2000 came with two options for the R-8 spindle speed, up to 5000 RPM or up to 10000 RPM. Just different toothed pulley rations, with less torque available with the 10K RPM option. The mills were also sold without a spindle, so that the buyer could make their own. The spindle and motor block mounts to the vertical carriage with 4 bolts. Since Intellitek discontinued the blue mills (if they ever actually manufactured any, could be they just sold off the stock they'd bought with the acquisition of Light Machines) there has literally been zero comparable CNC mills manufactured. Anything available currently of similar size cannot handle anywhere close to a 100 pound load. Anything that can handle that weight is far too large to be called "benchtop".
They seem to be great machines, but one of the reasons I want to build one myself is the learning and "grinding" experience :) Maybe I have some change to spare for Servos and the other fancy stuff...
Hey It looks really great But in my opinion the stress concentration generated by these very small corner radiuses is not worth the pain of milling them out, I would look into thinning the grid but havi larger radiuses Very very cool otherwise
Thanks, the grid is already very thin, a bigger radius would be pleasant to machine… If it won’t work out with producing the design in the Video, the corner radiuses will be the first change…
@@premiumbasics Yeah you are right that is already really thin but it is definitely worth it in my opinion do do a FEA analysis even using free software like Fusion 360 and understand what is the difference in strength between smaller fillets and wider beams and the opposite
@@premiumbasics It's amazing how quickly these moments can come about sometimes. Man, I could have some real fun with a 5 axis CNC (after many hours of learning to not break it lol).
Hey there. Cool stuff. One minor point: the links in the description are a bit confusing. I guess the "See it in Action" video shows a printer made using the beam? And then the "Livestream" link is the one showing the testing... I was expecting the latter for the former, so, maybe there's a different way to word things to make that more clear?
I wonder about a rather more brutal approach. Triangles of intersecting holes, and a simple jig to hold the part as you power through it with a drill press.
@Premiumbasics Experiment with air cooling your CNC! I have a low noise compressor with a 4 liter air tank and a flex nozzle blowing at the end mill. Occasionally the compressor turns on to build pressure again during milling jobs. Very efficient ! Note; Earlier I tried fluid cooling in different ways, but it always is very messy and limits the view on you cutter. I don't like it..
Seems like cooling with denatured ethanol seems like the best way to go for aluminum and high speed machining. Leaves no or very little residues, no mess, and is very beneficial for cutting aluminum. Look at for example how Datron does it, their machines and endmills can reach crazy speeds and get fantastic surface finish. The run a lot of small single flute endmills at ~40K RPM on the small machines :)
I wonder what the result would be of putting the CF tube through the same treatment as the metal tube. Since the fibers are not oriented with this sort of operation in mind, might have to make your own using a mandrel, fourth-axis turntable, and hook a pre-preg CF spool up to a CNC to get the fibers running in an appropriate crosshatch pattern... but I bet you could get it down to 10 grams, which is an incredibly time consuming way to shave a few extra grams.
Hi I like your video but is it possible to make a triangle truss interested in buying it from you please reply with price and sizes from 2mm to 1/2 inch or 1inch and length or long I'm looking about 10 inches length or long to 15 or 18 inches long..thank you. .great video..
Very neat! For your roughing pass I would recommend trying to cut the full depth in a single pass. You will likely need to cut a small entry pocket with the same pass depths you are using here, but after that you can probably just do the full thickness. And using such small radii on the corners is likely unnecessary, I don't think you gain much from it.
For a profiling operation like this, the cutting force is directly proportional to the depth of the step. If you have a machine with limited stiffness, then reducing the step depth is necessary to prevent chatter. If your machine can handle it, I think the best solution is as mentioned. I would pre-drill an entry hole for the end mill to start in. A lot of times a helix entry can generate unpleasant vibrations that really punish the tool. Make sure you take advantage of the chip thinning or peel milling toolpaths that modern CAM software can generate, they can help push the feedrates very fast.
@@fastindy Quite true, that's a pretty fiddly job and I have never worked with something that has so little material supporting it. I do find that ramp cutting in aluminium is highly dependent on the rake of the end cut of the endmill, if your tool is fairly flat-cut (for durability in steel) then it exerts much more force on the workpiece and gums up more easily in a ramp cut. I kinda like single flute cutters for this reason, they have the most rake you can get, on both the end and side, but do require fairly long ramps or wide helixes. But for optimal cutting speed you should use more flutes while still trying to maximise rake. I think the ideal for soft-ish aluminium is 3 flutes with high rake and no face cut on the end (very pointy), except for tiny tools (
Hey Sam, you are rather wrong about the small radii. Having a radius on the part reduces stress risers and adds huge amounts of mechanical strength to the beam which would be lost in sharp corners (think arch vs box)
One question I have, when you do FEA analysis to see if it is rigid enough, what performance metrics are you looking for? deflections less than 0.1mm at the max accelerations and speeds that are desired? A modal analysis that has certain characteristics?
If money and time are no object, then diminishing returns are irrelevant. Still a very cool project. Get a spray mister to improve tool life and surface finish, very inexpensive and well worth it for aluminum. And it wont make a big mess.
That type of structure could be used in satellites, robots and drones.That`s what i thought it was for at first. Never occurred that it would be for printers.
I am no material scientist, but if you let the Printer heat up to temp before printing it should not be an issue. I thought about making a thin Titanium one in the future, but first i have to build a beefy CNC ;)
When I designed my mini printer, I looked at this very closely. The difference in expansion in this short length is trivial. Not that it matters much, the Voron tool head is the real weight issue, not the x-beam. If you want low moving mass, better to look into printers that are not overly complicated and are designed from the ground up to have low moving mass.
Get rid of those sharp corners in your model. Those ase stress points where your beam will crack, allways use smooth transisitions.Also your machining time gets reduced.
Issit mirror and magnifying glass to keep bouncing off each other then shoots at the end? The movement is to create level of heat? Maybe a cheap laser pointer? Increasing a laser's strength?
Very very nice, but: How about 3D printing the beam ( with a 3D metal printer) instead of the CNC hassle???? Isn't that exactly a use case for this technology?
Buckminster Fuller invented these. They were called space frames. Now envision one whose struts are in turn made of the same configuration, and go down. Fractal!
Except that vorons are principally designed around common off the shelf easy to source parts not bespoke customs ones, unfortunately for this masterpiece . Makes for a very nice modification though.
I wouldn't be so pessimistic. If the files for the CNC router become open source, manufacturers can produce beams like this and we could see LDO Motors or Formbot sell them as an upgrade.
Right on ! ! ! ! That looks cool. I wonder, if you send one of the finished machined X-BEAM out to get re-anodized, and then, send one out to get heat treated, and then one out to get heat treated then re-anodized, and did a strength comparison to see if the rigidity per cost would be worth it in a structural stress test all compared to the square tube (pre-machined)... That would be exciting to see the battle of the X-BEAMS. Then to run the testing a bit further into a nutty measure of craziness, run them through a whole spectrum of harmonic and resonate frequency battles.. Perhaps, maybe some graphs might show if vibrations and harmonics might start to magnify the longer the machined X-BEAMS are... Based on the idea, of being less weight, for faster more accurate control of the steppers start and stopping action.. But then, there could be a feed back from the harmonics? I don't know, but it would be interesting to see a battle of these examples on graph or some real world testing.. And, for all I know, may not show anything at all, and completely wasted your time as the variables are all but unmeasurable as compared to the base starting point. Good luck,
It took some googling to find out what this part was for... Now that I know this is from my 3d printing rabbit hole, I can calmly banish it from my mind... I can't even get my Vyper to print anything good, I'm certainly not going to waste even more time on this :D.
@@premiumbasics will do! I’m going try this out on the 1in aluminum hex tube I use for the driveshafts on the aluminum Tesla turbine electric generators that I build for the discs to key to the hex shaft pattern. This should work wonders to offer an exhaust path through the drive shaft nearest the center of rotation.
you could reduce the weight of the linear rail, with pocket milling etc. I would be willing to machine these, send me the Gcode or the cad model. I would happy to produce them for you, I have 3 hurco bed mills hungry for work
Thanks so much for Your offer :) At the moment it does not seem to be a big demand for them. There are “only” ~1700 machines out there and only a fraction of the owners would even consider doing such a upgrade :D
I ended up here by accident & really don't quite understand the significance of this..although I did think it was a neat finished product. I went to watch your other videos, so that maybe I could "educate myself"... & it turns out, your other videos are ALL over the place.. "pancakes" anyone? Those pancakes really did look good though..lol.
Thanks! It is for a Voron0 printer, to get even more speed out of it ;) (Example video of a Voron0): ru-vid.com/video/%D0%B2%D0%B8%D0%B4%D0%B5%D0%BE-a6XRs-g6ngw.html
Not sure if it's important on v0.1, termo expansion ratio of CF is very close to steel and as a result combination cf+rail doesn't bend as much in closed chamber. I wander if similar litening technique would work for CF beam on 300mm v2.4
What's the point? Spending two days for machining and save only 2,7 grams, with material 10x lower stiffness than carbon fiber beam?? But sometimes is nice to see that you can do it.
Could you provide a source for the statement: ”…10x lower stiffness than carbon fiber….”? I did it because I was curious to see how far i could push it with my machine + I learned so many things while doing it about my machine and workholding :)
Hey brother. Im am a machinist. You don't need flood cooling for this job. For next to no cost compressed air will provide all the cooling you need for this job. And for about $20 you can add a mister to your machine. 😉
I want to see this done in ALum 7075, its as strong as Mild steel and weighs slightly more than 6060 alum while being 2x stronger. It is just as machinable as well, cost is more but the amount needed for this is negligable.
Super cool idea. I love the idea of custom machined truss for our moving structural parts. Looking forward to your future CNC upgrade and the production of these.
Don't bother with the small endmill. The weight is probably negligible and you'll get a stiffer bar. idk if you ran it through FEA but shouldn't matter too much.
If you started with triangular tubing instead of square you could save a few grams. would also let you make the 3d printed ends that connect to the Y axis a bit lighter
what if you do same but with carbon? :thinking: don't think it is possible to do this in a traditional layer-by-layer way but what if you make small carbon fibre ropes and use them with epoxy?
The short answer is they don't. The ends of a square tube need to be closed for it to have good torsional stiffness. They don't behave like a round tube or pipe (hollow automotive drive shafts for example). Even when you do cap the ends they are still not as good as a hollow shaft. This particular trussed tube won't have much torsional resistance because it was machine from a square tube where opposing walls are not joined/braced against each other with any material. If you look at stage lighting trusses they are different. They have tubes joining opposing walls in a triangulated fashion along their entire length. This is what gives them torsional resistance.
@@jamescrud _"The ends of a square tube need to be closed for it to have good torsional stiffness"_ Same goes for ANY hollow shape, round, square, triangular etc.
This video popped up randomly and I am not sure what this beam is for. Please explain and show a link for what it is for. Also as a mechanical engineer I am pretty sure that is not the most ideal strength to weight ratio for your application. Please message me back. I would love to know more about this application and would love to share my suggestions.
It is for a Voron0 printer, to get even more speed out of it ;) (Example video of a Voron0): ru-vid.com/video/%D0%B2%D0%B8%D0%B4%D0%B5%D0%BE-a6XRs-g6ngw.html Look into the description for a video where this x-Beam is installed in a working printer.
Part could probably be made quite cheaply on a tube laser cutter. Then only some edge cleaning and tapping needs to be done afterwards. Nice design BTW 👍
Your result is great and it took you a lot of work. For anyone who wants to improve on their machine by reducing weight. Just drill a bunch of holes in a aluminum beam or use carbon fiber, it will be 1000x less hassle.
