Drop table? That’s a lot of Z. Are you cutting that high on a LR2??
… There is. I had end stops on my LR2, but… I upgraded to the LR3. Seriously it is better in almost every metric.
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Do you have images or anything showing how you had them?
I want it, but 1, need to watch my budget, and 2, I really need 10" Z height.
I’m cutting 4+ inches, but you need room for a 4+ inch endmill above the stock plush travel clearance. 10" just gives me a little wiggle room
I’m about to cut my first 4" carve on the LR2. I have already done it with the MPCNC prior to the LR2.
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Wow, a 4" cut! Be sure and post a picture.
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I have a thread going on my next project here
Jump down a bit to my last post on that thread.
Hoping to cut later this week or next week.
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Roger that. I know some have pushed the LR3 from using 150mm linear rail to 200mm. I would think you would have to go to around 350mm linear rail to maintain 10" of travel. that’s a lot! I would think you would have to go wider to go that much taller with the YZ plates. Would be interesting to see that’s for sure.
So you only need 4+ inches of travel. You table base just needs to also be the endmill length away, Drop table. A 10" (meaning 10" endmill) travel on either machine is horrible and I am sure barely works. If you just make your work surface one endmill length away you will find you can probably move 3x as fast.
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Unless you are actually cutting 10" worth of vertical surface?
Edit: I used 1" .065 wall tubes, so if you use conduit, you will need to edit the tube plugs a little to adjust the diameter to match your rails. The Y and Z switch holders should fit for any version.
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Technically yes. my stock is only 4-4.5inches.
for the 4" cut I use a 6" endmill which is about 5" after set in the router.
Currently my rollers ride on my table and I have to lift the router up to put the endmill in.
so my gantry is about 8 inches up.
No I am not actually cutting 10"
I have 128mm of Z travel on my LR3 with the taller YZ plates and 200mm rails. With raised rails, it would easily manage your use case… Just saying…
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but I just built a nice torsion box table 
.
I think for now I will keep what I have and think about it for the future.
Lol! For the record, when I built my LR3, I used the table I made for the LR2 and put “wings” on it for the LR3 rail and roller sides, just enough to extend the sides.
Had I wanted to at the time, I could have raised those wings to give me a drop table effect, and I considered raising the rails by 3 1/2" (the height of a 2×4) so I would have had a bit over 5" of travel (128mm) and about 8 1/2" height.
My rails also extend out from the table enough that the router hangs over free space at Y home position, which I use to change mills.
So if your stock is (let’s say) 4.5" (114mm) and your endmill stucks down 5" (127mm) the 2×4 height wouldn’t quite manage, but a 4" lift would be perfect, and your 5" stick-out should reach the spoilboard. Re-using the LR2 table would work out nicely.
Oh, and also, I was able to just re-use the steel X rails from the LR2 directly onto a slightly wider LR3. I actually had to cut a bit off of them, so no need to buy new steel.
All that said, if you tell me what size steel you are using, I can edit the CAD for my endstop mounts to accomodate. I actually have a better idea for the Z endstops that I got most of the way through, but didn’t finish when the LR3 beta project got started.
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Just add some riser blocks to the two rails. Whoops Dan said that just above this post.
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has anyone made a CAD file of the limit switch?
I have an idea for them but need the CAD to lay it out and make the print files.
Would that do?
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Thanks @SupraGuy. I’ll give it a try. it will at least get me started until my endstops come and can measure them.
is there an order that it is auto-homed? X then Y then Z? or something else?
Typically you home Z max first. That makes sure you do not drag a endmill across your surface. After that…doesn’t really matter.
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