CNC Router Cart Design

[Cyberphil]

Way back in February, soon after the build season ended, I ordered a Omio X8-2200L USB router after the glowing recommendations from people in the community. I have many ideas for projects and products to make and sell, and I figured it would be great to use during FRC season as well (my current team has 0 access to machine tools at the moment) and to familiarize myself so I can help other owners with any problems they may encounter with the machine.

Soon after I placed my order COVID-19 really began to hit and delayed shipping throughout the world, including the router I just ordered. My original plan was to use it throughout competition season for spare parts and start working on my own projects afterwards. Well, that didn’t quite work out as planned.

This week the first of the two boxes finally arrived! After assembling what I could with the top half I decided to design and fabricate a dedicated cart with power, guarding, and tool and stock storage until the other half arrived.

This is what I came up with:

Because so many people have this machine, and it can very easily be modified to suit various sizes of CNC routers I figured I’d share my design with the community as it would at least be a good starting place for those interested in making a nice, relatively mobile and robust cart. Below is the CAD with a mostly filled out BOM.

https://cad.onshape.com/documents/1140f24fc9ad85c556fcba58/w/68a0e246e4850341ee732617/e/cf3076ab44fcbda6c4b132e5

Manufacturing requirements for this specific design include:

• Cutting and Drilling steel
• Welding
• Linear and Dado cutting of plywood

Optional: 3D printing (guard magnet mounts)

I made the frame and top shelf a composite part mostly because my dad currently has a lot of extra tubing I’m planning to use for this and loads of scrap plywood from various jobs. In hindsight I should’ve itemized them out individually so the BOM was more complete, but it’s easy enough to figure out the lengths.

A huge shout-out to my dad who gave invaluable feedback into the design to make it significantly more simple, cheaper, and easier to manufacture, as well as my sister who came up with some really creative solutions to a few of the problems I ran into.

As I begin to build this I will post some pictures and a few sentences about the progress and issues I ran into. Please feel free to copy the design to make your own and to give any feedback on the design.

[Derpchicken0]

This looks like a really neat design, good luck with it.

[mspradley]

Looks great! One issue I see (we have an X8), is the walls aren’t high enough. When we cut aluminum, the chips go much higher than where you have the tops of your walls. We actually use shower curtains hanging from the ceiling to prevent chips from getting everywhere.

[Cyberphil]

Thanks for the tip! This is something I’m still considering, the enclosure, and I’m not convinced this will be the final iteration. I’ve toyed with the idea of a full enclosure but that would make the cart significantly larger than I would like.

One of my problems with the Omio design is that the X and Y drive steppers stick straight out from the machine, taking up significantly more space than the base of the machine takes up. I have limited space to run and work with, so I did my best to minimize the footprint without interfering with the drives. Other machines solve this problem with flipped motors and typically a belt run, but that’s obviously a more expensive route. That may be a mod I design and implement in the future, but for now I’m going to work with what I have.

To solve the problem of chips going everywhere I’m designing a dust shoe that I will make on the machine and attach a brush around the outer perimeter. The intention is it will be magnetically attached to the spindle and have a vacuum attached to it to clear dust and chips. I’ll release the design for that once I get to that point, but it’s fairly far off at the moment. I’ll try to make it 3D printable as well for people who would be more inclined to make it that way.

Edit: Btw, shower curtains are an absolutely brilliant idea to solve that problem!

[snichols]

My first thought was also about the walls/enclosure. When we first got our CNC routers, we were surprised that they cast off sharp chips much faster than our mills or lathes, and vaporized the coolant (filling up the machine room with a thick haze in no time). We’ve since built full enclosures for them and are much happier & safer. YMMV of course, I’ve also seen teams with CNC routers that didn’t give off either high-speed chips or toxic mist.

[marcusbernstein]

Strip brushes in your motor cutouts might help to increase the “enclosure” of flying chips while letting motor slide through if you go to put a top.

Great design!

[cadandcookies]

To Sarah’s point, we keep our Omio fully enclosed, with a FogBuster running Koolmist 76 (a non-toxic coolant). We’ve never had issues with fog in the shop, and keeping the CNC very enclosed makes cleanup a lot easier, while protecting observers from the many chips flying. We do have different space constraints than you do though. Nice design!

[Cyberphil]

@snichols

We’ve since built full enclosures for them and are much happier & safer.

@cadandcookies

To Sarah’s point, we keep our Omio fully enclosed…

Points all well taken. Thanks everyone for the feedback! Seems like a full enclosure is the way to go. I’ll be figuring that out in the next few days. This might make mounting the monitor and a keyboard easier as well.

@marcusbernstein

Strip brushes in your motor cutouts might help to increase the “enclosure” of flying chips while letting motor slide through if you go to put a top.

I REALLY like this idea. I think I’m going to move forward with this. That will significantly decrease the footprint of this cart.

A question for the community while I’m here: I read in the Mach 3 installation instructions that a 32 bit version of windows is needed. Is this the case? I only have 64 bit machines, so I’ll either have to pick up a cheap one or just run a VM with win 32.

[page2067]

We’ve had no issue with a 64 bit machine.

Keep the laptop away from the chips! (we lost one…)

also +1 for full or near full enclosure. We have found using compressor air without mist has been fine - and less messy. Ours is an x6 but very similar, just a bit smaller.

[troy_dietz]

@Cyberphil

I read in the Mach 3 installation instructions that a 32 bit version of windows is needed. Is this the case? I only have 64 bit machines

Pretty much no reason for a 32 bit program to not work on a 64 bit system, other than unrelated incompatibilities (or intentionally checking for a 64 bit OS and crashing itself if present). I’ve run Mach3 without issues on a few different laptops and desktops, 32 and 64 bit.

[asid61]

I used a Chinese CNC Router software once that refused to operate on a 64 bit system. It would pop up an error message to that point. I had to reinstall 32 bit Windows to get it to even open.

Mach3 works fine on 64-bit, however.

[Cyberphil]

Thanks everyone for helping me set my mind at ease.

I started cutting metal today. Finished about 80% of the cutting and just need the verticals now. Another hour or so and onto grinding to prep for welding.

I have a few different ideas for the design of the enclosure, but I’m leaning towards a novel one I haven’t seen before on CNC enclosures (which I assume is for good reason).

Tabour Doors:

The movement would be virtually the same, but instead of opaque segmented panels, I think one single thin sheet of polycarbonate might just do the trick with a large enough radius and some extra gussetting. This idea prevents the door from swinging out while also allowing full access to the machine.

I have access to a lot of free UHMW from work that would work well for the guide surface, and with a few crossmembers I should be able to mount it pretty rigidly. Working on the details now, but would love to hear others thoughts.

Really quick mock-up:

Just imagine a handle bolted through the plexi inito the L-angle behind.