I have been using my Onefinity Woodworker for quite a while. I made a pretty minimalistic table setup to start off with but now I’m developing my own table. What I need out of my table is:
Enclosure, not only is the dust a pain to cleanup, but it’s not great for machine maintance but it’s also pretty unhealthy to breathe in. There’s also a lot of noise and so for these reasons I have the machine running in a seperate room.
Flat surface, the way I have it now I can’t get a completely flat surface even after flattening the top board it doesn’t stay level for long. Right now I have about .5mm difference between the back and front of the machine.
Mobile, I might be moving in the future or just want to move the machine around my shop so anything fixed won’t work for me.
Scalable, if things go as I want them to then I will be making more of these tables so they have to be standardized and modular as well so I would have space to put in a vacuum pump for the table, vacuum for the dust boot. Spindle controller.
Sellable, if things don’t go how I like it would be great if the table(s) would be worth something if I sold them so I want a design that appeals to other users. I was also thinking about selling the design if people like it. Not for that much but just enough in order to recoup some of the time I’ve spend in developing this idea and make improvements as they come up. For now I’d be happy to share the design with anyone that can offer some feedback
Right now I am building this for the woodworker but I’ll probably make another version for the foreman if things go well. Along with this after watching and seeing a bunch of other tables everyone seems to already have a fully equipped shop to build the table. The design I have in mind uses some pretty basic tools and the onefinity itself.
With all that said here is the table and parts, it’s mostly in CAD right now but I’m building the tabletop right now I’m pretty confident in this design, it’s not that expensive in materials but does take quite a lot of machining hours, there are always improvements to be made though. There’s also some parts missing namely the vacuum table and the wasteboard that would be put on top.
Here is the enclosure, I think this could definetely be improved as it’s going to cost at least $400 but probably more to build this plus a lot of machining time on the onefinity. I still find that worth investing in but it could probably be simplified quite a bit.
There’s no table yet as I still need to think what kind of vacuum pump I want and make sure these first two parts work. I’d love to hear any improvements that could be made, and if you’re interested in making one of these yourself let me know and I’ll share it.
Build an insulated enclosure to dampen the sound. I started with a 4x4 piece of 3/4" plywood, then glued up 3 - 4x8 sheets of 1" foam with 1/4" plywood on either side, then cut all the rest of the parts out of that and attached them to the plywood base. I added some 1x material for stiffeners and trim. Front 1/3 hinges up with the aid of a counterweight & pulleys in the back. In the 2nd pic, you can see the cable from each corner that leads to the counterweight.
The front also has a wrap over window.
With scrounging, total cost was about $150. Speaking of scrounging, the hinged chrome tube that holds the dust hose up is an old chrome vacuum pipe from a home canister vacuum, and the counterweight is an old boat anchor.
The only changes I would make is to make the back so it could open for easier cleaning and for a passthrough if needed, and make the window a bit lower.
It works so good at quieting that I can take off my hearing protection when it is closed up.
Your design has many notched cuts in the structural elements that would support the surface along with recessed t-tracks that would make the surface into sections. Where possible I’d suggest boring holes without notches combined with a continuous top and bottom skin to provide better rigidity and resistance to deflection over time.
“combined with a continuous top” – Exactly. The secret of a stiff anti-torsion box are triangles. If you leave some open, you don’t get maximum stability:
Notches like you show above on the inner parts of your anti-torsion box above only work against bending of the box if they are
extremely precise (tight) and then
all parts glued together (=so that the triangles are all mechanically closed)
It is much simpler to have the third side of the triangle as a continuous top as Derek suggested. And with screws so you don’t need to get stability by ensuring 1.) and 2.)
Back when I worked as a welder, the company I worked for manufactured castellated beams where they’d flame cut a 18-36" tall I beam down the center and we’d offset them and weld them back together. Since the majority of the strain in an I beam is contained in the flanges, this process resulted in a taller I beam which allowed for significantly more load without increasing the amount of steel required to manufacture it. This also allowed for mechanical systems to be run through the holes when installed in the building.
It was a pretty neat concept, but after manufacturing about 1000 of them I had enough.
The relevance is that in a torsion box construction, the distance between the top and bottom skin also plays a role in the rigidity and load carrying capacity, the taller it is, the stronger it will be.
They are pretty precise. I did a test when I started and I need a hammer to get them in completely.
though I found with the woodworker the motor may have skipped a few steps on some beams so some notches are wider and I’ll redo those.
I was thinking of using glue once I dry test everything
I was thinking of adding an additional skin on the bottom as well. Just didn’t add it in as I was debating on leaving it open for easy access to the vacuum pipes but more stability is probably better than easy access. I was thinking even despite the notches the table should be more than strong enough. I was thinking by interlocking everything forces put on one beam would be better distributed ei. better mechanically closed than just using screws.
I guess I’ll see how this goes as I’m more than halfway through machining the beams. If I do end up making more tables then I might make one with screws instead of notches to see how it performs.
Do they also have an air gap in between? Did you caulk all the joints and put in any foam around the door to completely seal it? I would like to minimize noise as much as possible.
Aiph5u
(Aiph5u (not affiliated with Onefinity))
13
Hey Wout,
if you really ensure this (both), it should be very stable also. But combined with a continuous top would still add to stability – and screws are simple and very strong. When using screws, it is not the screws alone that take the load, you also press the two wooden surfaces together and the countless small fibers interlock so that it is a good connection.
Yes to the air gap between the panes. Here you can see what it looks like.
2 pieces of 1/8" plexi, with 1 1/4" wood & caulk between making them like an insulated window. The 1 1/2" total matched the thickness of the walls. I painted the wood black and used black caulk.
And yes, I have 1/4" foam for the seal between door and box. But no seal at the bottom front of the door, instead a 1/4" gap. On the side of the box, I have a 120V computer fan blowing in. This not only provides air flow over the router and out the bottom front of the door but also provides positive airflow for the dust collection system that’s sucking air out of the cabinet.
BTW, here’s how I bent the plexi. After cutting to width, I placed each piece (vertically) between 2 pieces of 2x4, one having a roundover with the bend line of the plexi at the roundover. I then slowly heated the plexi at the bend line with a heat gun and when it softened, it bent on the roundover (with a little help at first). Once bent at 90°, I just held it till it cooled.
I know how to make an allowance for a bend (it’s all based on material & thickness), but if you do it, practice first on a scrap piece. Say you want a bend to be 2" from the edge, measure and draw a line on the plexi at that distance, then bend the plexi. Once bent, you’ll see how much smaller the distance is from the 2" line. Add that amount the next time you bend a piece and it’ll come out perfect.
First: A few questions about the ventilation setup. Do you have a net negative pressure in the enclosure compared to the outside? I want to avoid breathing in as much air from the cnc as I can.
Second: I like your plexiglass design and I think it looks a lot more modern than my design but in an effort to make the design accessible I want to minimize the amount of tools I use. So far all I need to use is a skill saw, table saw, caulking gun and the onefinity itself. My current design for the enclosure panels has 3 thin sheets of plywood screwed together. That’s way to complex and costly so I had the idea to instead make a 4 piece plywood frame with two slots for the plexiglass panels. Here is the current design for reference. I was also thinking that it would be reasonably simply to then open up the frame and you could then put in whatever art or branding you wanted.
Hint, if you have a plastic mfg. (or glass installer) around you, check with them for scrap plastic. Sometimes you can get it in the thickness you want and cheap! Enjoy!
Pony
BTW, I’m not sure about negative pressure, but I’d say it’s about equal. as I don’t have much dust coming out of the cabinet unless the dust collector is turned off.
Pony
Good to know. I have had health problems with dust before though in a much dustier shop then mine but this video reminded me just how bad dust can be over the long term.
1 Like
Aiph5u
(Aiph5u (not affiliated with Onefinity))
19
Hey Wout,
I would always see an enclosure for a cnc machine that works on wood as a necessity, mainly because the debris of broken bits flying around is a serious danger, but because of dust and noise also. But since the ball screws of the Onefinity CNC machine are, as all oiled mechanics, totally incompatibe with wood dust, which is why on professional machines in the industry, they are enclosed in bellow covers, and the ball screws on the Onefinity are not, and the many enclosures shown in this forum cannot protect the oiled mechanics like balls screws from the wood dust, there is a problem for which the enclosure cannot help. Ball screws get literally destroyed by the wood dust. So the first question is, do you have a strong and powerful dust extraction that avoids dust where it is created, i.e. as close to the milling bit as possible? I would not save on that. And it eleminates a few subsequent problems. I would always think of the enclosure as the second thing, after best possible dust extraction.
Good video.
Try working in a corrugated plant (cardboard to most people) on a rotary die cutter for 22 years. It was fairly normal to generate almost a 1/2" of paper dust per shift and we had no masks back then. I’m amazed none of us came down with brown lung.
Any other corrugated people out there?
F to CMA flutes (you know what I mean!)
Pony
