I got a HUGE new CNC Router! (AVID CNC 4x8 PRO 4896) // Woodworking

[Music] if you've been watching my videos for a while you'll know that i love the digital side of making from designing my projects in 3d to then using digital manufacturing tools like cncs and 3d printers to help bring my projects to life so i've had a big cnc on my tool bucket list ever since i started watching youtube videos and seeing people like frank howarth and martin from wintergotten used their cncs in unique and interesting ways and now i'm finally in a shop big enough to handle a big cnc so i always knew that if i ended up getting one of these machines it'd be an avid cnc as i think the way they approach their manufacturing business is really interesting and so after a lot of measuring and re-measuring to make sure i could actually squeeze a big cnc into my shop the pile of boxes from avid arrived and i could get to assembling my new 4x8 cnc actually before i started disassembling i needed to get a very important cnc related item installed and that was some dust collection rockler introduced this ceiling track system a few years back and it seemed like the perfect solution to keep my dust hose suspended and mobile this track is made of pvc and the first step in installing the track was to pre-drill some mounting holes for the included lag screws my shop ceilings are concrete which would have been a real pain to mount these tracks to but luckily we added these two by fours on top of some areas of the ceiling when running the electrical and lighting during the shop build out and these were perfect for mounting the ceiling track i did need to add some spacers between the two by fours and the track just to keep the mc cable from getting in the way but otherwise mounting the track was a simple enough process the only other thing that made it a little tricky was the ceiling height of 13 feet in my shop but i was able to get to the areas i needed using this pretty huge ladder after mounting the tracks i could roll on the accessories i planned on using most importantly these four inch hooks which are designed to work with rockler's four inch dust hose with the hooks up i went ahead and just hung the dust right hose just to let it stretch out a bit while i got to assembling the cnc now i'm not going to lie this is a pretty time consuming assembly process that said the instructions on the avid website are excellent and i only needed to make one support phone call during the entire build process and that was only because i'm using a new spindle option that avid doesn't have documentation available for yet i started the assembly process by assembling the leg kit which is made up of 80 20 aluminum extrusion lots and lots of rolling t-nuts and allen bolts and a few other odds and ends like these leveling feet also i bought this cordless ratchet just for this assembly process and it was well worth the 80 bucks i spent on it as this ratchet along with a set of socket ball and hex bits were by far my most used tools on this build and i'll link to all the tools i used on this build in the video description below in case you're interested after assembling the legs themselves and pre-assembling the anchor fasteners i'd need i could slide the legs onto the cross members and loosely tighten those socket head cap screws to hold them in place temporarily [Music] to help stiffen the legs avid includes these steel leg gussets which attach to the 80 20 pieces with more rolling t-nuts and i once again just loosely tightened the bolts here just to hold the gussets in place temporarily next i could add a piece of extrusion where the electronics enclosures mount which runs between two of the leg assemblies and is connected with more of those anchor fasteners once that was installed i could slide on the first of the frame extrusions and this is really the only area of the build where i felt like having two sets of hands would have been really beneficial none of these parts are particularly heavy on their own but trying to slide on these long pieces of extrusion while trying to keep the legs from racking and the t-nuts from getting bound was a little bit frustrating on my own [Music] i slid on the other half of the frame extrusion and connected them with a pair of splice bars which i somehow didn't get footage of and then i could slide the last of the leg assemblies onto the other end of the frame the next pieces to add were the cross members between the frame pieces and these are what actually support the spoil board and your work pieces these were attached with a different style of t-nut a double t-nut and this allowed the cross members to be slid into place without the anchor fasteners falling off which did happen a good bit when attaching the legs to the lower cross members i repeated the process for all eight cross members leaving the fasteners loose and then i cut a few scraps of plywood so that i could space the cross members correctly and this spacing is kind of arbitrary but avid has a spoil board file available with mounting locations that correspond with this spacing so it's probably best to just follow their guidelines here finally i could go back and attach all the gussets to the cross members and i checked the top frame for square and also roughly leveled the whole base at this point off camera using my line laser and just adjusting the leveling feet as necessary with that the base structure was done and next it was time to start adding pieces to this framework starting with the linear rails and these rails are precision ground and are what the entire gantry is guided by so it's pretty critical that they're in the right location and that they don't shift around because of this i decided to go ahead and add loctite to all of the bolts from this point on in the build and i used this little loctite stick to apply this red locker to the bolts which was so much easier than dealing with liquid loctite dripping all over the place after threading the t-nuts onto the bolts i can slide the linear rail assembly onto the side of the frame and get the rails properly located before tightening down the bolts to assist with this avid includes these little alignment jigs which align the linear rails with the frame ensuring that everything is coplanar so i clamped one half of the linear rail to one of the jigs at each end tightened down the cap screws and then repeated the process for the second half of the linear rail ensuring that they were perfectly aligned [Music] next i could install the gear racks below the linear rail and this is what the rack and pinion drive system meshes with to move the entire gantry once again these racks come in two sections and need to be properly aligned for the drive system to work properly to do this i attached the first half of the gear rack and then clamped one of the other gear rack pieces to the two sections i was attaching which ensured the gear spacing was correct finally i could tighten down the second section and then i repeated the whole process on the other side of the frame off-camera next i could slide the linear bearing blocks onto the linear rails and these blocks are what the gantry actually rides on and they allow the gantry to slide smoothly on the linear rails i also went ahead and greased the bearing blocks with the included grease gun while i was at it so cncs produce a lot of dust and to keep too much of this dust from building up on the linear rails avid includes these linear rail dust covers which i installed next next on the list were these bumper plates which mount on each corner of the frame and these plates have a rubber bumper installed to keep things from crashing too catastrophically if you accidentally run the machine past its limits which i've done a couple times now the sensor flags also mount to these bumper plates and these are what the proximity sensors reference when homing the machine and these flags are adjustable and adjusting their positioning is how you square the gantry later on in the process speaking of the gantry next it was time to start assembling the gantry starting by attaching the riser plates onto the linear bearing blocks i then attached the riser extrusion and gantry interface plates to the mounting plates again adding loctite to all of those cap screws next i added the riser joining plates on each side of the gantry and then finally i could add the gantry extrusion attaching it from below and behind and that was as far as i made it on day one of assembly and i was super excited to see the whole machine coming together i got right back at it on day two of assembly starting by installing the gear rack and linear rails on the gantry which was the same process as installing these pieces on the frame again using those alignment jigs to align the top linear rail to be parallel with the gantry next i slid on the linear bearing blocks got them greased up and then installed more bumper plates at each end of the gantry and the sensor flag for the x-axis sensor is a little bit different here though and comes in the form of a little block that mounts on the back side of the gantry extrusion the next assembly was the gantry carriage which just like the gantry itself rides on those linear bearing blocks and this is where the z-axis and spindle mounts and this carriage also uses the same rack and pinion system to move itself across the gantry speaking of which next i needed to add the nema 34 motors that actually drive the gantry and carriage around the rack and pinion system and there were three of these motor assemblies to put together one for each side of the gantry as well as one more for the gantry carriage these assemblies were then mounted to their mounting locations with an adjustable spring-loaded tensioning bolt which allows the mesh between the gears of the gear rack and the motor assembly to be adjusted the next item on the assembly list was the z-axis which attaches to the gantry carriage and the z-axis is what raises and lowers the spindle and after attaching the z-axis itself and reinstalling the dust covers i reinstalled the moving plate which is the attachment point for the spindle finally i added another one of those nema 34 motors which is what powers the z-axis and the z-axis assembly was finished for the time being next on the list was one of the parts that i had kind of been dreading and that was adding all of the various cables to the system so i started by installing the cable trays and cable track on the side of the frame as well as on the back side of the gantry and then i started running all of the cables and honestly this wasn't as bad as i was expecting but there was still about 240 feet of motor and sensor cables to route to various locations on the machine finally routing them through the cable track on the frame and ending up where the electronics boxes would be mounted speaking of which next i mounted the electronics boxes and then attached the cables but i'd recommend attaching the cables prior to mounting as it's a little bit awkward to get under the boxes after attaching them to the frame the last thing to add was the spindle and this tramming plate mounts to the z-axis between the spindle and the z-axis to allow for easy spindle training later which i'll cover in a bit finally i could add the spindle and you might notice that my spindle looks a little different than the standard 2.2 kilowatt spindle that is typically used on these avid pro machines and the spindle i'm using is a new option that avid is working on and it clocks in at a whopping 6.6 kilowatts which is triple the power of the standard one and this spindle combined with those nema 34 motors is going to make for a seriously powerful machine finally i wired up the spindle connecting its power to the vfd which controls the spindle rpm through mach 4 which is the cnc control software i'm using with this machine and then i could plug the whole system in turn it on and get mach 4 up and running after some fiddling with software and picking up a usb to ethernet adapter since this laptop doesn't have an ethernet port i could finally jog the machine for the first time so before actually getting to cutting i went ahead and installed the dust shoe i'm using which is made by kin cnc and then i got the dust collection run to the rockler dust ride dust collector i'm using with that i could finally make my first cut on the machine running a cutting program which assists in squaring up the gantry i used a quarter inch spiral down cut bit from bitsmiths to make these cuts and zeroed out the bit using avid's auto z and corner finding touch plate which makes zering things out so easy dude so easy next i loaded the g-code which i created with vectric aspire into mach4 and got to cutting which went well you'll see [Music] evidently i had forgotten to raise the z clearance height in aspire and as you saw the bit plowed right through the clamps which were luckily plastic my feed rate was also a little bit too high for these clamps to hold so i also dropped the feed rate a bit and then re-ran the program which worked a lot better i then ran the program again shifting the locations over to cut some thresholds and then i could add some dowel pins and check them for square by measuring their diagonals they were ever so slightly out of square so i adjusted the sensor flag on one of the bumper plates at one corner of the frame since this is what the proximity sensors referenced when homing the machine then re-home the machine before running another program to cut another series of holes and everything looked good this time around nice and square so i could move on to trimming the spindle in case you're not familiar tramming a spindle adjusts how perpendicular or square the spindle is to the bed of the cnc and if the spindle is out of trim the bottoms of pockets will have small ridges left and the edges of profile cuts will be at a square when tramming the larger the bit diameter the easier it is to see if things are out of alignment so i installed my widest bit which is this two inch cnc spoil board flattening bit again from bits bits and cut a small pocket into this piece of plywood shaving off four of those clamps while i was at it as you can see the resulting cut was higher on the left side of each pass so i needed to tilt the entire spindle to the left to trim it and this is where that trimming plate which was installed between the spindle and z-axis comes into play the bottom right corner of the trimming plate features an eccentric nut which allows for simple fine adjustment of the x-axis spindle tram and after repeating this whole process a few more times i had the x-axis tram dialed in i then changed the orientation of the cut rotating at 90 degrees to check the y-axis tram which was luckily dead on since that's more determined by the actual 80 20 extrusions with that the machine was officially assembled and calibrated and the next part of the process was setting up the spoil board but i'm gonna save that for my next video so as i mentioned i decided to go with a vacuum work holding system on my cnc so that i can easily cut sheet goods without needing any tabs and the process for setting up that system was a project in and of itself i'll also be adding a t-track work holding system that will mount on top of the vacuum system and i'll be covering building both of those in next week's video so go ahead and get subscribed and ring that little notification bell if you want to see that video so hopefully you guys enjoyed this one i know i had a ton of fun building this cnc and i am super excited to have it in my shop so as always i'll have links to all of the tools and materials i used in the video description below i also want to say a huge shout out to all of my patrons over on patreon as well as my youtube members and last while you're here why not check out another video of mine that youtube thinks you'll enjoy alright thanks for watching everybody and until next time happy building

Channel: Crafted Workshop

Views: 446,621

Keywords: avid cnc, avid cnc router, avid cnc pro, avid cnc build, cnc router woodworking, cnc router, crafted workshop, cnc router build, cnc router parts 4x8 pro kit, cnc router diy, avid cnc review, cnc router table, cnc woodworking, cnc router kit, cnc router bits, avid cnc spoilboard, cnc router machine, cnc router parts pro, Cnc router parts review, woodworking tools, cnc wood router, cnc router parts, woodworking, digital fabrication, cnc machine, Cnc router projects

Id: a7zDOAhaORs

Length: 14min 46sec (886 seconds)

Published: Sun Oct 11 2020