The FrankenRouter is finally up and running after five years! I'll post photos on Saturday. So what is a FrankenRouter? Well 25 years ago I built some robot water machines for a greenhouse customer and five years ago he took a couple out of service. So my Grandson and I went and hauled home the carcass. So the frame of the FrankenRouter was made from that aluminum 8020 style extrusion. The electronics and a PLC were also reused, with a modern CPU donated by Automation Direct. The electrical enclosure came from a junk yard, as well as the stepper power transformer, a metal pan, a shop vac, carpeting, mastic sheet, for sound reduction. So it is a fully enclosed 24x48x6 bridge router that is on wheels and fits through a 35" school door opening to go in a large closet. It has a coolant pump and full coolant pan around and under the extrusion table so we can cut metal. It also has a permanently mounted 4th axis/lathe driven by a large stepper motor. CNC controller is a Centroid Acorn. Runs pretty smooth at 100 ipm but the long X screw gets to vibrating too much at higher speeds.
