Hi, this is Wayne again with a topic “Add a T-Slot Bed to your X-Carve for Better Workholding”.
Hey i’m tyler with make today we’re going to start a new short video series on how to get a little bit more out of your x-carve. In this first episode, we’re going to take a look at how to replace your stock spoil board with the t-slot bed. For easier and stronger work, holding the original x-carve bed is a piece of mdf with threaded inserts every 75 millimeters. With the work pieces i was cutting. I always found that the spacing of these inserts was just too far apart, most of the time to clamp my work plus the mdf can warp over time.
Taking your machine out of tram t-slots are a really common style of work holding in cnc mills and they can afford you a number of options on how to hold down your work. You’Ll need a few parts to make this mod. The t-slot extrusions, i’m installing, are made by misumi. They are 500 millimeters long and 250 millimeters wide, while you’re placing your order make sure to also purchase some t-nuts to hold your work. You’Ll also need a pack of t-nuts for the 20-20 extrusions that make up the frame of the x-carve you can buy these from inventables. Finally, you’ll need some m5 by 12 millimeter flathead screws. I’M making this modification to the baby x-carve with 500 millimeter rails. Two, the t-slot extrusion side-by-side, will drop right in start by prepping.
Your extrusions you’ll need to drill two five millimeter holes on each side of the extrusion and then countersink the holes so that your screws will be as flush as possible to the bottom of the slot. I also needed to carve away a little of the slot here. So that the heads of the screws would clear, i did a pretty nasty job of it too, which was a bummer. I really wanted my install to look clean now, we’ll remove the entire gantry from the bed.
It’S attached by eight of these m5 screws, remove them and set them aside. For now, the gantry is fairly rigid, but be careful moving it. You don’t want to tweak it set it aside. On a known flat surface, the spoil board is held in place with six m5 screws.
Remove all of them. Add one of the 2020 t-nuts to each of the extrusions then use the flathead screws to secure the extrusions to the 2020 rails. Now replace the gantry, the extrusions are a bit thicker than the spoil board, and you need to make sure that your y-axis v wheels have proper clearance after the screw has caught the threads in the t-nut, lift up on the gantry as you torque the screws in There’S a little bit of slop in the 2020 extrusions and this makes sure there’s enough of a gap for the bottom wheels. The t-slots are spaced 30 millimeters apart on the x-axis, and you can slide the t-nuts anywhere.
You need them on the y-axis. You can use them with a number of different clamps and work holding options plus the aluminum bed will add additional rigidity to the overall machine. If you’re worried about marring the aluminum surface, you can use a thin piece of wood underneath your work piece to protect it. We’Re going to be looking at a few other mods for the x-carve in the coming weeks.
So let us know if there’s anything you would like to see in the comments below thanks for watching, we’ll see you in the next article you .