So, today it got late so this’ll just be a quick update – as promised.

Started off after dinner with making the lower and upper brackets for the Z cradle. These go together like this:

To make the rail for the Z carriage with the torch and all.

To drive the Z axis a stepper motor and an idler pully are needed and those need somewhere to go..

.. so I milled all the parts that are 4mm thick in one go. Z stepper motor mount, idler pulley mount, and the mounting brackets for the X axis support beams.

After that I needed a 90x70mm large piece of 10mm aluminium, which I hadn’t.. so I had to go with a 12mm aluminium piece and remove all 2mm of material over the entire part, which was kind of tedious and I probably broke an expensive 8mm single flute endmill.. but..

And that’s all for today. Tomorrow I’ll probably make the rest of the X gantry and start on the Y axis, and hopefully get time to start putting pieces together..

Tbc