Introductory Note and Download

Reading the Tables

The following chapters reports notes and details for every design table, corresponding to a single parts of the entire building structure of the XYZ Stepper Milling Machine.

Table Key:

• Part Number. - The last three digits of the code (001, 002, ...)
• Pcs - The number of the same piece (replicas) needed.
• Rev. Number. - The revision number.
• Date - The date of the revision.
• Units - The measure units adopted for the quotes (usually mm)
• Refer to - The referral email address for comments, notes and questions.

To the bottom left side of every table you should find a short text describing what the parts means.

Adopted Conventions

All the parts are quoted. The dimensions are sufficient to reproduce the complete piece and refers to alluminium, the adopted material. The used aluminum is anti-corodal. To have an idea of the quantity of material needed, all the pieces corresponds to about 6.5 Kg.

All the diameters of the threaded holes are indicated as Mn where n is the size of the thread. Actually the used threads are M3, M4 and M6.

The diameters reporting decimal values of 0.1 (i.e. 11.1) corresponds to holes for insertion of other pieces, i.e. the 11.1 diameter of the two holes in table .001 are for the guide tubes. Before to drill these holes, be sure that the pieces to be inserted are exactly of this value. If the holes are too large, you may loose movement precision due excessive clearance.

Tables With Suffix 'A' and 'B'

The tables with the suffix A or B after the serial number i.e. table 007 are twin tables for couple of mirroring parts. This is a useful reminder if you plan to refine the surface or similar, i.e. to fix cable holders.

Tables With Suffix 'F'

To lighten surfaces like X axis sliding base and Y axis fixed base maintaining the needed tensile strength I adopted a framed structure.

'F' tables explain the frame design of the corresponding tables without the F suffix. The table without suffix shows the structure if it was of full aluminum while the F-table is the real disposal of the frame parts on a thick surface. In our case the frame surface is 1 mm thick while the frames parts are 4 mm so the resulting structure has the same tensile strength and thickness, on in the areas where it is needed.

Missing Information on the Design Tables

There are two information missed on the tables.

Holes and threads to fix the frame parts on the 1 mm thick surface of every framed plane (tables with F suffix). If you build it by yourself, consider that the best adopted solution I found is M3 Allen screws at a medium reciprocal distance of 50 mm distributed along  the perimeters of the frame pieces excluding those surfaces where the planes are already fixed to blocks with M6 Allen screws.

The other missing information is the width of every diagonal frame piece on the framed planes of X and Y axis.  Use at least 10 mm width strings, 4 mm thick.

Buy the DXF Designs

The currently updated Mill-Machine construction desgins can be bought in DXF format following this link.

The DXF designs are released under a CC BY-NC-SA license and are totally open. Can be modified with any open source or proprietary 2D cad (i.e. Autocad ™) to be adapted to your personal project.