It seems to never fail...

Monday evening, My wife caught me headed to the garage and told me we had plans for dinner with some friends... Apparently they called her out of the blue and wanted to get together, so the only progress I got done was Dykem and scratches...

Major Gantry Support Plates laid out:
20210104_192511 by ARNEWB, on Flickr

Starting small and working up. It makes it a lot easier to get the holes where you want them.
20210105_190700 by ARNEWB, on Flickr

5.5mm Holes drilled for the bearing block bolts.
20210105_192142 by ARNEWB, on Flickr

Counter bored to accept the socket head m5 "bolts"... These are set deeper than necessary to provide plenty of thread engagement in the bearing blocks.
20210105_192924 by ARNEWB, on Flickr

8.5mm holes drilled for the plate to Gantry Riser bolts.
20210105_193904 by ARNEWB, on Flickr

Counterbored. Some are actually kind of rough, some are just dirty still. The big counterbore bit is an interesting study in chip load and cutter performance. The holes where I pushed "hard" on the drill press were the cleanest and smoothest, and the cutter seemed happier. The ones where I didn't push as hard made more noise, chattered, and left a worse finish. More thoughts on this in a minute...
20210105_194803 by ARNEWB, on Flickr

Apparently I missed a picture of the countersinking bits... You can see the shank of the larger one that I have been using for the m8 hole and counterbore and the m5 counterbore. Cheapy set of 4 for $9 dollars on amazon, and they work great.

Finished plates "front".
20210105_204015 by ARNEWB, on Flickr

Back.
20210105_204028 by ARNEWB, on Flickr

All four plates on the one side of the router for now. Just verifying bearing alignment, fitment, and motion.
20210105_205416 by ARNEWB, on Flickr

Next up is grinding more t-slot nuts and getting the rails on the other side of the router. The I can move on to cutting my gantry risers. I am going to use the same 80x160 extrusion for the risers and gantry. Then I have to make the interface plates that allow the gantry to bolt to the risers. Hopefully Australia will pipe the EF down tomorrow and I can have a little more time in the garage.

More thoughts on chip load, router performance, etc...:
I stumbled across this video the other day (okay, like 8 months ago...), and the chip load vs finish vs speed surprised me. This video is filmed on a CNCRouterParts/AvidCNC machine that is VERY similar in construction to what I am building, with the biggest notable exception being that they use Rack/Pinion instead of ball screws on X/Y. In reference to the chip load thoughts on the counterbore bit, it seemed a lot happier when I was forcing it to take a bigger bite than if it was taking small bits. Obviously rigidity and mass weigh in as well, but the spindle on a bench top router is doing a pretty damn fine job in steel in this video, once he starts getting a little further into his testing.


Also of interest... After the discussion of epoxy granite earlier in this thread, I was browsing through YT early this morning before I went to bed, specifically CNC router video's, and found this video. Based on the earlier discussion, when this machine comes back apart and gets rebuilt, I think I might follow suit and stuff the frame, at least, with epoxy granite. I want to figure out how much my gantry and Z axis weigh before I really contemplate filling that as well, however I'm not sure about the necessity given the results of the above video cutting steel on a similar machine.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OCKU0K-E0-c&t (Since the board doesn't like more than one video per post)...

Not quite as much progress as I hoped for, but still moving in the right direction, and I suppose dinner with friends isn't a horrible excuse.