When I’d stopped fiddling with the spindle, I could let it loose on making a front panel so I could finish the electrics:
The engraving took forever – if I went much faster than 50mm/min, the cheap ebay engraving bits would snap. Because I was using the hobby version of Fusion 360 to generate the code, the ‘rapids’ are limited to the same speed.
Cutting holes was faster (caution – loud)
The end result was this:
After a bit of de-burring (I should have run a pass around it with a chamfer tool) I was very pleased with the outcome:
It was a pleasure to be able to build the panel up with everything fitting nicely where it should. (I’d been hoarding that Neutrik USB connector for years, just waiting for something to come up that needed it.)
Finally, wiring that I’m not ashamed of! (It’s not as bad as it looks to work on – the heatsink, with the drivers attached, can be unscrewed and swung out of the way to give access.)
It even looked a bit Christmassy without the lid on
I used it to make an actual thing – a mount to hold the SD card reader behind the slot in the panel. (Machined out of a slab of laminate. Thanks to some bug in my CAM, it managed to make a rapid move through the bottom left hand corner and take a chunk out of it. All part of the learning curve… )
I decided that the controller looked better with handles on it (I could pretend that I wanted them to protect the switches, etc. but I was just being a tart.)
As it was a sunny day, I carried it outside to take a photo before I got it too dirty. It weighs about 45kg!
X axis travel is 330mm, Y 235mm and Z 114mm.
Travel speeds have been restricted to ~4000 mm/minute for X and Y, and about 3600mm/minute for Z. All axes will run 25% faster than that before they start missing steps.
Spindle 500W (?) 12,000 RPM max.