Well, y’all knew it was coming…
After installing the Floating Z Axis on my CrossFire, I decided to use the Z calibration procedure to map out the ‘level-ness’ of my table (with respect to the Gantry). I discovered, probably after all the hacking around to install the new gantry, that from peak to valley, the Z difference was over 0.100" inch. I guess I wasn’t too surprised given some of the collisions I had along the way.
So, given this, I had a choice, go back through the tedious procedure of realigning the Gantry Arm, live with this since it won’t affect most of the small cutouts I was making (pre-cut Z Calibration would remove any error), OR do I bite the bullet, go all the way, and install THC on the table?
Any takers?
Uh, yeah, you guessed it. I already had the THC parts on hand and ya know new parts can never sit idle for long so…
Here is the finished THC unit added to my table:
As you can see, I added a Robot3T THC03-02 controller to the system but had to enclose it in a splash proof enclosure. The electronics probably would have fit in my main enclosure (which is splash proof), but the controller has manual controls that need to be accessed for each material’s setup so an easily accessible enclosure was called for.
Here is the inside of the enclosure:
The two cables coming from the main enclosure are the Z Step/Dir Outputs from the CF controller and the return of Z Step/Dir from the THC controller. The Z Axis driver was already mounted inside the main enclosure from the last update and, with the motor power supply already there, it was easier to loop the signals through the THC unit. A benefit of this is that the inline cable connectors are mating so if I have to pull the THC unit for any reason, I’m not shut down, I can just connect the Z out to Z in cables and use the non-THC configuration.
Finally, mounting the enclosure naturally required brackets that were ‘bootstrapped’ from the CF system. It gave me a chance to learn and exercise the Sheet Metal Design features of Solid Edge and my newly acquired Bench Vise bending jig 
There you have it. I’m sure I am truly done with improvements on my CrossFire! 