LR2-LR3 The Longest Conversion (AUS)

Good oh! That justifies me adding these little snippets! I feel like a bit of a goose really, but if I realise I’m doing something that I do all the time that might be of use to someone I just add it anyway. Great!

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All done! Will update next week when I’ve got some “glue” pics.

NUT ENCAPSULATOR! (Makes my eyes water reading that! :smiley: )

23-09- 16 at 17-45-33-Edit

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Wait, what is that third tube inside the struts for? Did I miss something ?

:shushing_face:

It’s been there on and off for a very long time. It’s a bit of chrome conduit that is completely unnecessary, but will carry the cables that run across the beam and is what the power pack mounts to.

If I end up with polished trusses (which was my original plan) it’ll just add a bit more bling really! :smiley:

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MMmmmh… I had some trouble on my LR2 with the stepper motor cables running through the metal conduits: caused some interferences
Be sure to use shielded cable then :wink:

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Weird, since part of the reason for using comduit is to shield the wires in it. If you ground the conduit, that should be shielding. Probably a good idea regardless.

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I had no problem with the LR2, and there were no exposed cables on that build either. How would I go about grounding the conduit though? I am going to go as far as suggesting that two 200mm lengths probably aren’t going to make a jot of a difference, but it’s easy to undo.

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Thank-you very much :slight_smile:

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Should be easy enough. I use a solid copper wire between the tubes and a printed plastic plug on the control box side of the beam on the LR3, with a ground wire that goes to the IEC socket where I get power.

Bonus, by grounding the bottom rail, which is in contact with the bottom rail bearings, which are in turn in contact with the 5/16" bolts, a ring terminal on one of the bottom bolts serves as a ground point good enough for a ground wire down the dust collection hose. (I wouldn’t want to count on that ground wire for a safety ground, but it’s good enough for the purposes of static electricity control. (I soldered a bit of 16AWG wire with a bullet plug onto a 5/16" washer instead of a ring terminal.)

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Prototyped the final version of the emergency stop this morning - I was mucking around with thoughts of boxes and printed recesses, and although I’ve described it above the solution couldn’t have been simpler.

The estop fitting has a panel mount thread, so “make a panel”. Just drill a hole in a bit of MDF to suit the panel diameter, and a bigger one to recess it to taste.

Here of course I have a ply facing so the “bigger” hole is actually right through that, or around 15mm than it appears to be in the MDF. (I’m not sure if trying to make things clearer didn’t just do the opposite!)

The end result after a bit of chamfering with the router is a stop which is “almost” flush with the face of the table when stopped, and protrudes far enough to be useful but not so far that it will get caught on things (I hope) when it’s in “go” mode.

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Well it’s this evening now, and I chose not to dismantle my brad nailers and simply clamp the perimeter ply pieces on. This did take a bit longer than it might have, but I did think to check for square before gluing the mitred corners on, and I was about 4mm out (before pulling it back into shape) which isn’t bad given the amount of moving and thumping it’s suffered.

Tomorrow it looks as though I’ll get the wiring in easily enough, and with just a teensy bit of luck, it’ll be skinned by the evening.

Some of you may recall that I forgot to add the hole for the E-Stop switch in the first round of gluing. So I chopped out a section and added one with a hole - no I couldn’t do it with a battery drill from behind - it’s that recessed thing that needs a drill press and some forstner bits!

Anyway that left a bit of a potential for misalignment of the holes between inner and outer faces, so I made a big circlip out of PLA to register the two pieces perfectly while I mucked around with assembly, and now when I glue them up I’ll be sure that the stop button will be in the centre of the outer part too.

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@bitingmidge I have to say you’re attention to details most don’t even think about truly amazes me. This is going to be one amazing LR3 when its done! Keep up the amazing work sir!!!

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Thank-you, it’s going to be embarrassing if I can’t get it going! :rofl: :rofl:

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I have no doubts you will get it going! But if not you’ll have the best looking workbench ornament on the forum! LOL

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I was putting my table together yesterday and started thinking about skinning. I will glue and nail the bottom on, but what about the top? Permanent- Glue and screw, when the glue dries remove the screws, or swappable- deep counter sink a bunch of screws in the surface?

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On both of my LR3 I took and countersunk the screws as far as my countersink bit would go. That keeps the screws down plenty. No glue. That way when I surface enough off that its time to replace it can easily come up and replace with a new sheet.

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Does not matter, it’s going to look good. :smiley: Who needs to actually cut stuff anyway? :stuck_out_tongue:

I just put another spoilboard on top. :smiley:

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Well, yup I do think that is the best idea. Glue and countersink the first thick one. If it even gets too thin just surface and drop another on top.

Thanks!

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The trouble with no permanent top skin is that it doesn’t stay rigid while you are “re-skinning” it so you lose the benefit of the torsion effect… I am just gluing and clamping 3mm MDF skins top and bottom, then I’ll use a screwed 16mm spoil board (with a couple of plot twists) into the subframe…

I’m using the LR2 table frame, and still have the possibility of tilting the top it as originally planned if I need to minimise the footprint a little (unlikely now that I’ve reshuffled everything in the shop).

On the LR2 the spoilboard was a “press fit” between the glued “tracks” which were also 16mm MDF. Arguably it was a complete failure as I didn’t want to risk damaging it so I used to clamp another board on top to protect the spoil board! :thinking:

This one will have similar permanent “tracks” and the spoil board will be in three identical pieces, each roughly 500 x800 (screwed).

That will allow easy replacement, flipping or swapping of any panel without having to replace the whole board when just a part of it gets chopped up, and more importantly I can buy 600 x 900 or 1200 boards that are much more easily handled than a full sheet.

At what point does your table get too high to see over? :smiley:

Here’s my LR2 table (build diary for the table starts here)

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