Having set up and used the 123WaxRing fixture on my Minitech Minimill I was very taken with it, and noticed one important thing about it, it is SMALL!!
So small in fact that I was pretty sure I could get it to fit inside my MDX-15. This is no small feat by the way for those of you unfamiliar with an MDX-15.. its Z space is extremely limited.
Anyhow, in case anyone ever feels the need to hook up a good fixture to a neat little hobby mill I hope the following pictorial will help you :)
What will you need?
1: 123Waxring fixture.. and obviously Deskproto.
2: an MDX15 mill
3: A Fourth Axis after-market rotary unit.
Lets get to it!
1: The first problem I had to overcome was how to fit this onto my rotary unit.. not an easy one to overcome as the rotary unit cannot support much weight as it is so a tight slimline method was required, I tested a few ways but gave up on them and then settled on the next method. I took one of my supplied Spigot Boss's and hooked it into my lather, I cut a ledge the same size as the ledge on my 123waxring fixture, to ensure a nice concentric fit..
2: I eventually found the right size bolt to fit into the back of the 123waxring fixture and bored and glued it into my spigot boss.
Which resulted in a nice clean slim setup!
3: time to see if it would fit .. it did! wooooooooohooooooooooo
4: Dialling it in is slightly more complicated than the process found here because of the poorer controller system available to these units, but the principals are the same. A slightly more manual approach is required, but if you own an MDX15 you are already accustomed to doing everything slightly harder.
Time to load a path and test it!
5: Flips cut good!
6: let that rotary run!
and the finished result was damn good!
All up I would have to say that I am glad I own a Minitech now and I am not reliant on my MDX, but if I was then I have to say that this route of MDX15+FA+123WaxRing would be the only way to use it. The features of the 123WaxRing system, not requiring a 180 flip and using one X all the way through make usage of the complete system far simpler than any other method. If you setup your X, Y and Z datums once and then didnt turn off the mdx or close the controller application you could hypothetically cut as many rings as you liked after each other without any further setups.
If you are doing this or want to do this and are unsure please feel free to email me on the board for more detailed information.
Kind regards
Chris Botha
what software are you using to send the gcode to your mdx15?
ReplyDeleteHi, the mdx-15 cannot use gcode, it uses RML, and it can be fed to the mdx in anyway you use currently, you can even send it via the type command from dos. Think of the mdx as a bubble jet printer connected to a serial port.
ReplyDeletein the case of the article above i was using FARM which is supplied with the FouthAxis rotary I was using.