Nomad 883 threaded table and clamps

Okay, today’s project is making up some clamps since they are not included with the nifty Nomad Threaded table (and I’d like some metal ones to use w/ the T-track on my XL).

Since the drawing for this doesn’t seem to have been made available, and I’m not inclined to wait for Monday to pester someone competent at support, I drew one up based on some rough measurements and the published table and wasteboard file:

While it would be simple enough for anyone to superimpose a 1" grid of 5mm circles on one of the above files, it seems redundant and a lot of needlessly duplicated effort to have people do this over and over again. I measured, but wasn’t fast enough to do this before my morning cuppa, so any inconsistencies or errors I’m attributing to caffeine micro-tremors — I also haven’t had breakfast yet, and I’m at home, so only drinking tea (coffee is a luxury reserved for when travelling or going out), so any errors in logic I’m attributing to low blood sugar and inadequate caffeine.

Anyway, here’s an unofficial take on this, which is provided purely for user convenience — please verify before use, and please, do not use this to send out to have your own made by a machine shop — draw up your own if going that route. YMMV, not valid where rules and laws say otherwise, usage implies acceptance of a total disclaimer of all responsibility, but conversely acceptance of afore-mentioned limit on usage.

Nomad_wasteboard_threadedtable.pdf (4.2 KB)

Nomad_wasteboard_threadedtable.svg

— note that converted files in Inkscape will under certain circumstances use a scaling factor which will not be considered when importing into Carbide Create — that may be fixed by doing the math to scale them correctly, or by opening the file in Inkscape, selecting all and copying, then creating a new blank document and pasting into that. (I’d probably have a much better life if my head wasn’t filled w/ trivia such as that which would not be necessary if only everyone would agree on sensible standards and not needlessly change how things work — over a beer I’ll tell you the story of the longest 4 hrs. of my life, getting a PDF which the “Thomson Techno Task Force” would certify out of a beta copy of pdfTeX — it’s been that long, and I can still remember the specific combination of how it was made to work)

Nomad_wasteboard_threadedtable.c2d (21.1 KB)

Anyway, now that that’s out of the way, next step is bootstrapping clamps w/o work-holding.

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Okay, draw up a suitable file, and determine what sort of hardware will be used — M6 is needed for the threaded table, but if you’re in the U.S., 1/4-20 may be more convenient, so making use of both — adjust for your locale / inclinations / OCD.

The clamp will be cut from a bar of aluminum, 1" wide by 1/4" thick is readily sourced in the U.S., and will have two holes, one threaded (for either M6 or 1/4-20 — you pick — the latter needs a #7 drill bit so we draw a hole 0.201" in diameter, while the M6 needs a 5mm hole (0.19865")) — this will accept a suitable bolt — a carriage bolt is an interesting idea, the round head would be less likely to mar the table, or perhaps one could use nylon (check the plumbing supplies — 1/4-20 is the standard size for mounting toilet seats), or one could use an upside down SHCS w/ a plastic thumb nut attached.

The other hole will need to accommodate either an M6 or 1/4-20 bolt and its threads — measuring a pair suggest 5.9mm or 6.2mm, so we round up to 6.35mm (1/4").

Shape the other end suitably and one arrives at:

file: M6-10-24_clamp.svg

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Which reminds me that I never posted my Nomad side clamps, mostly because I kept tinkering with the designs. So, here’s a set of SVGs exported from Vcarve Desktop; countersink holes are .25inch deep, just right for a socket-head M6x20 screw when cut from 1/2-inch stock. Hopefully they’ll be useful to someone else.

wedge-clamps.zip (7.1 KB)

-j

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Finally got around to finishing these up. Cut them by hand from a length of bar stock (what can I say, I’m cheap), drilled and tapped by hand (life has been too busy to run any machines, have to be able to just go and get my son from various activities, or someone is sleeping/resting/reading/doing school work).

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I made myself some aluminium clamps - I decided to mill them but cutting from stock might have been easier… didn’t think of that.

I didn’t take any pictures as it’s pretty boring, but they work really really well.

http://a360.co/2ouBHz8

the difference with these is that you can move them about 7cm either way which makes them very adjustable on my Ali bed. So far I haven’t had any issues - I even ran into them with the mill and boy can they take a beating!

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Cutting that slot by hand would’ve been tedious to say the least.

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For folks who want a DXF:

Nomad_wasteboard_threadedtable.dxf (517.2 KB)

(made by opening the PDF in Inkscape, saving it out as a DXF, opening the DXF in LibreCAD, selecting everything and scaling it, then saving as the attached DXF)

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Here is the fusion file of the Svg, I had to import the SVG into fusion and then scale it to match the 8"x8" build plate. What I do is just come to this file and change the thickness of the material I am cutting and also select the holes id like to use for mounting. I’m lucky enough to have both the shapeoko and the nomad so I use the shapeoko to locate the holes for me down about .05" and then I just use a drill bit to finish them off along with countersinking if I want to face both sides.

Here is my fusion file.
Nomad 883 Pro Mounting Jig Hole Placement v4.zip (563.9 KB)

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