Lightning Bug Cars

12 Dec 2013

JCut 90150B CNC Router

I became fascinated with the possibilities of cnc machining when the price of entry came down to a level where mere mortals could afford it whether that be through building your own or buying from China. After 7 years of procrastination and research I went with the Chinese option. I purchased a JCUT 90150b router   JCUTCNC
I bought the machine to cut custom foam car bodies, molds, and bucks but my neighbor found out about my purchase and has talked me into doing contract machining for an up and coming electric car company...maybe the machine will pay for it self sooner than I thought? It should arrive from China before the end of the year.

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19 Dec 2013

Received the Harbor Freight 2hp dust collector today. It has the typical Harbor Freight build quality. The holes for the casters didn't match up, had to redrill them. They must have sent the wrong hardware pack with the unit, I was 18 bolt shy of what I needed to assemble the unit but ended up with a whole bag of nuts and bolts that didn't appear to belong to anything. I had to go down to my local hardware store and spend $14.98 to get all the nuts and bolts to complete the assembly.

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08 Jan 2014

It's finally here! It's HUGE!! The shipping manifest listed it at 1700# plus. I managed to maneuver it around by my self once the truck driver, a friend, and myself got it into the garage with his pallet jack.

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10 Jan 2014

I have the machine situated and have started tuning the stepper motors. It's very gratfying to see the machine move for the 1st time. The machine came from China wired for 220v but had a Chinese plug and no ground. I added a ground and changed the plug to a 50 amp dryer plug, overkill for the machine but that's what I needed to fit the only 220 outlet I have in the garage.

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12 Jan 2014

I'm adding casters to the router to make it more portable. After the plates for the casters are welded on I'll add leveling stumps to the frame of the router to level and add more stability.

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20 Jan 2014

I've added a Z axis zero touch plate with Mach3 2010 screenset to automate zeroing the z axis between tool changes. I had to replace the spindle water cooling pump because the one that came with the router was 220v 50hz and I had no way to power it. I bought submersible pond pump to replace it. With all that taken care of and lots of time trying to wrap my head around how machine coordinates and cam software work with each other I finally made my fist cuts today!!

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07 Mar 2014

I haven't posted in a while but I have been busy. I set up some curtains to contain the dust as much as possible.



Ran piping for the dust collection system.



Added stumps to the router legs so the base is solid and I can level the table.

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26 Oct 2015

I haven't posted in QUITE a while. I decided to swap out the Chinese usb motion controller that came with the router with a Warp9 Ethernet SmoothStepper controller for 2 reasons, 1) just because it's a better controller, faster and smoother 2) because I needed a new controller for my cnc plasma project and the usb one from the router was good enough for the job.

The old controller before removal.



Installing the new controller



With the break out board and new 5v power supply installed

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15 Dec 2015

I've been trying to decide if I want to put the T-slot table down or a vacuum table. I already squared and leveled the table and had a 3/8" aluminum plate for a job that never happened so I decided to go with a vacuum table because of the work that was done to the table already and the primary use of the router is to cut foam so a vacuum table made the most sense...to me.

drilling and tapping the aluminum plate for hose barbs.



building mounts for the Thomas vacuum pumps I picked up used from Ebay



running vacuum lines, setting up a vacuum resevoir and distribution manifold