24" x 48" expansion possibility

Thank you for the quick response, that is great news. Count me in!

If you run the table to its extremes on the Y axis you can see it stops short of the front on the minimum side due to the brackets on the front end of the Y gantry. On the far side you lose even more travel due to the bracket & motor on that end. Moving the brackets & motor outboard of the water table will gain the 10" this upgrade is going to give us.

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Thanks, that makes sense. I’m not in front of my machine at the moment so I couldn’t check, but going from memory it makes sense. Thanks for the response!

It was the first thing I did when @langmuir-daniel announced this :grin: I wanted to see how hard it would be to do so I could decide if the delivery estimate was reasonable.

Send it to me!!! I would love to have a little more capacity.

Anyone heard of any updates on the time frame of the table expansion deal ?

Should be next week based in their schedule. @langmuir-daniel said things were proceeding on schedule but no news this week.

Awsome thank you James.

Really excited about this mod. This system is already one of the most versatile machines and it has a great price point … To be able to do the sizes with the mod on such a small machine is really a good feat. My biggest fear, to low barrier of entry… will apply competition to the market. Thankfully , there is a good bit of learning curve to the whole process …

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Hey everyone! Time for an update.

As of 2pm today I received the 3 punch and die sets for the hydraulic hole punching machine. This machine will punch the holes in the lower rail tube that secure it to the legs and the ‘CrossFire’ tubes. 3 different hole sizes are needed which is why the dies are interchangeable. Punching square tubing is pretty difficult because the dies have to be held in a mandrel that the tube slides over. The farther a particular hole is from the end, the more challenging it becomes to maintain good concentricity between the punch and die because the mandrel must be long and slender and supported at one end only.

In any case I was able to load up the .8" punch and die set and successfully punch a bunch of holes in a test piece. Ran into the following issues:

  • Insufficient die spring force to strip the .8" punch reliably. I’ve got a plan to get this resolved, should work fine.

  • Some wandering occured in the setup causing eccentricity between the punch and the die. The radial punch to die clearance is only .004" so it doesn’t take much wandering before an issue occurs. I tracked this down to an issue where there the fitted bolts that hold the various structural components together were not match drilled and reamed to an interference fit as required by the drawings. Instead they were a clearance fit, so when the structure loaded up a few times (12000 pounds), the bolts were able to work through those clearance and cause an eccentricity to occur between the punch and die.

So on Monday I’ll be turning an aligment pin to hold the punch guide bore and the die bore in close concentrity prior to match drilling/reaming and pressing in oversize dowel pins to replace the problem fasteners. I am confident that doing that will make this machine run like a dream.

Once I’ve got these little gremlins worked out I should be able to sick the crew onto getting these lower rail tubes cranked out quickly. In more positive news, we are making good progress producing XL Y axis rails and XL Y axis lead screws.

Unfortunately I don’t believe that we will have these ready by end of next week. After the tubes are completed they get sent out for plating which can sometimes take up to a week. I think it’s possible but not super likely that we can get these tubes sent out for plating by end of next week. I’m guessing another 2 weeks from today before we can start taking orders.

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Meh, it’ll be worth the wait! Assuming this will reuse the stantion plates? Basically the kit is just two new tubes and lead screw?

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I was thinking new plate for the far Y plate , new Y tube and a lead screw. No matter what it is I will be happy to give it a go. Thank you Daniel for the update.

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I’m def. on board for an expansion and going to keep an eye on this thread!

What will be the length of the longest cut you kcal make with this new expansion?

33.3" in Y axis, X remains at 25.3

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Take the extra time to get things right! Just remember we have cash waving in the breeze for you :slight_smile:

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Great :+1:t2: Thanks for the reply

Thanks for the update, can’t wait!

Well I got the punch working good now. Succesfully punches all three hole sizes with the interchangeable punches and die sets. It makes some really nice holes.Here’s some pics! For reference the other punching head that is in the picture punches the holes in the Y axis rail; 8 holes in one hit. It’s a beast.

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Wow, cool stuff, looks like it is coming along.
Thanks for the update!