3018 Motor/Spindle Rigidity Upgrade and More

thingiverse

Head Rigidity Mount: I originally wanted this to be bolted on, but I soon realized the stock mount is too thin. I will be 3d printing a whole new mount soon. I just used some Gorilla glue to mount it the main part. Seems to be holding up very well. The four holes (2 top, 2 bottom) are for basic roller wheels. I got mine off of Amazon. The bottom wheels are normal sized while the top wheels are small. I did this so the mount wasn't too long. I use the extrusion that are used to hold the frame together and the control board as the rails. This mount takes space from two locations. The whole z-axis and the control board unit. To combat the z-axis, I had to widen the holes for the extrusions so they could be pushed back a bit. the control board was still able to fit in its original spot, but I could only use two screws to mount it. This little mod pretty much completely gets rid of any play in the head. I've been able to machine aluminum a lot faster, cleaner and make deeper cuts. This mod helps to effectively turn your engraver into an actual CNC router. Hope this helps you out. 300W Motor Mount: I have also put a bigger 300w motor on mine. It's a Fox Alien motor. The motor is quite a bit bigger than the stock one, so I need a bigger bracket. This print works great. mine was printed with 40% gyroid infill but I would assume solid would be better. I took all the parts (including the thread insert) and used it for the print. I see no problems with the extra weight so far. Fan: The fan is slightly smaller than the original. I needed to do this because the original fan interfered with the z stepper motor. Side note: For the Motor, the control board isn't built for a motor of this size. I believe the motor goes from 0 to 48v whereas the control board is only 24v. I was able to run the motor directly off of the board, but half speed was the fastest it would go. A plus though is that this motor is not supposed to be controlled by the board anyway. The power supply that came with it has the speed adjustment directly on it so the board on the machine is effectively just giving commands to the stepper motors and receiving gcode. you'll have to manually change the spindle speed using the power supply. This brings me to the actual gcode telling the spindle to turn on during a job.