That’s actually not a bad idea. If I were to do that I’d probably wait for wood prices to go down a bit. I’d have to figure out a ramp or something, from the doorway it’s probably 3" lower than the wall and when I need to rip big pieces of wood on the table saw I have to wheel it out into the larger area of my shop.
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Finally got her running! Time to cut out my struts. Using a cheapie 1fl 1/8" upcut bit at 10mm/s. 1.65mm doc in 4 passes. Surprised I never broke a bit! On my first test cut I realized I didn’t tighten the collet enough and dropped the bit but managed to kill it in time before any harm was done.
The dust boot does a pretty good job getting the dust out of the narrow 1/8" grooves.
Cutout, detabbed, and sanded. My lower strut is different because of the redesign for the 3rd tube, the bottom brace is narrower than the front and back (which are standard width).
And painted.
I had a hell of a time getting it going, while I was doing the squaring I noticed the controller (TFT32 on a SKR Pro 1.2) would just… stop taking commands. The TFT would remain responsive, but homing would stop working, the console wouldn’t consume gcode sent (as I was jogging it around the machine). Had to restart A LOT. Finally got the Y squared and decided to attempt a test cut on a small version of the strut I mocked up. Was getting gcode errors, seemed to be the same whatever problem that was causing me headaches when squaring. I also have an esp01 on there for wifi, much handier for jogging and entering gcode line by line but it too would no longer could send anything to the controller requiring a power cycle. So I have to sort out whether it’s because of the esp01, the tft firmware, or the controller firmware.
Anyway, switching to marlin mode, no problems! Runs gcode just fine. I’ll pull the gantry off hopefully tonight to install the braces.
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That sounds like the screen isn’t receiving the ack messages, so it stops forwarding the next gcode. It might be due to electrical noise, but I’m not sure how to solve it. It is a fundamental design issue, IMO that the protocol can’t resend the ‘ok’. So it is dependent on a perfect serial connection.
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Well fun, I wonder if I could wrap the serial cable (and maybe the router power cable as it passes under the controller box) with some foil tape or something. When I pull things apart to install the struts I’ll make sure there’s not like a loose connection on those ribbon cables.
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It is only the black cables. The gray cables are only for marlin mode.
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@claytonisbob, noticed your belts are horizontal, are you currently, or planning to use an extra fixed belt on each y-axis (like @tgm022861’s build) to help reduce slack like this LR3 Mod?
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Ayy, I’m not the only one. I know Ryan said a vertical belt is better for keeping things clean, but for just my usage and not wanting to accidently bump the belt and break things I wanted to go horizontal. I think if I end up inevitably going with rollers instead of rails on the front (I may toy with this to see if there’s any difference) I’d get a pretty flush front of the workbench. So far the dual Y rails are working pretty well though and don’t get in the way for my radial arm saw next to it.
As far as a fixed belt, I hadn’t thought of that but it’s a good idea! I was thinking of gluing a strip of wood below to keep the belt from guitar stringing, but an inverted belt would likely help keep it from moving around and add a little clearance for the lips of the idler rollers.
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Oh, and the final form of my Y stepper assemblies. The belt runs under the Z steppers which saves I think like 22mm per side. One of the next things to make is some new side plates that close up a lot of the gap from the OG vertical Y steppers. I kept the mounting points the same (why it’s a weird triangle shape). Just got some 1/2" mdf a couple days ago to make them with.
Had to come up with my own clamp and tensioners which was fun. Highly specific to my workbench shape.
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I think I’ve more or less completed my build. May make a couple parts for it, but I deem it complete enough for use going forward. Wanted to share the last couple shots of it in it’s completed state.
I made a power switch box, felt like putting this on the controller enclosure would have been a bit packed and would complicate taking the lid off. Hooks onto the struts similarly to how the controller box does. I have an assortment of cable glands so used those for the in an out.
Also added a emergency power switch that kills power to the power strip under the table.
Completed with the struts! I’m now supporting the vac hose from the shelf above and over around to my duststopper and vacuum.
And a totally superfluous feature (since I was adding the power switch, it was easy to add a second and I have plenty of led strips laying around). Now my Lowrider has more low rider vibes 
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That is a beauty.
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Love it.
Quick Q-
What are the two power buttons for?
Love the lighting- I did similar with a puck I stole off my drone. since I went headless with an ESP01, I dont have a tft to tell me I left the thing on. So now i swamp my table with 24watts of LED sunshine
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Thanks Jeff! Also I think I found that my controller woes were due to a loose serial connection. At least now it seems to be ok, I taped the serial connector to the rest to keep it from popping loose by itself./
Neil,
The power buttons\switches are for the controller and the LED’s. I have a ESP01 on the TFT but I’m thinking of moving it to the control board and just using the web interface (ie also going headless). I have a $15 kindle I’ve dedicated to just using for this so I may make a mount on the red shelf to mount that somewhere. I fixed the IP of the esp01 on my router so it’s always the same IP so really I don’t need to even look at the TFT to determine the IP that got assigned. Still on v2 though, I was just looking through the recent ESP thread here, I may play around with trying some of the stuff the gang has been figuring out. Being able to air drop gcode onto the sd card and have full names would be awesome.
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Thanks. Makes sense with the switches. I just have my LED Wired direct to 12v in So it’s constant on
Airdropping code over wifi is silly slow. I tried it with the crown gcode and it was not fun hanging out for the 8 minutes it took before I switched it off and out the card in. yMMV
I’m using a kindle HD8, and I bought a Rii BT keyboard. Tiny little thing. Makes typing Terminal commands easier, and I can jog it with the arrow keys, which is great. Some funkiness in the V3 but it’ll get ironed out. The ‘jogging’ function with the arrows has X on the up/down keys for example.
Coolest part of the interface is the Macros, tbh. They’ve been great for getting set up for a job really quickly.
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That came out great. I think I want some lights now 
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Looking awesome
I just saw your neat collet holder. Would you mind sharing the stl?
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Sorry I’m late Philipp, but just uploaded the collet holder.
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Cool. I think I will remix this to also hold my router wrenches for tool changes.
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LowRider 3 CNC - Makita Router Wrenches and Collet Holder
Download printable files at:
https://www.printables.com/model/375699-lowrider-3-cnc-printed-makita-router-wrenches-and-
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Very cool! Thanks Doug. I gotta find my wrenches, are those the ones that come with the makita router?
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