Show me your S3 custom cable and spindle coolant hose routing please?

I suppose 3D printed would be better to lower the weight.

That is an interesting idea. Could the hose brackets be printed to connect to the drag chain? I have mine zip-tied.

I am sure I can easily design and print something like that but I worry about other aspects.
Not sure about a secure method of attachment, I want to minimize the force needed for the steppers to power the folding of hoses. I am sure it all adds up to greater resistance for precise positioning.
I found a thin flexable 3/8" air hose, but it gets stiff when pressurized.
Upgrading to water cooled spindles takes away the air blast that substantially helps clear chips when milling so I need something! How much air pressure is needed for chip evacuation? I never dealt with it before.
At what point do you need to upgrade steppers with a heavy HDZ, a upgraded spindle, hoses, a Suckit with aluminum brackets etc…
Don’t want to upgrade my equipment into being unusable!

Separate chains like the Shapeoko Pro are good for keeping router / spindle power cable noise away from the signalling cabling on the Shapeoko, here’s my current XXL untidy installation with £10 drag chain from eBay.

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Yes thank you very much that is beyond what I have been pondering with an additional chain. Can you share specs on the chain length and size please? Did you drill into the rail? Very nice job! Can easily print my own chains!

Here is the thread that shows what I did to control my wiring.

I thought the drag chain I bought was overkill, but I now have my VFD wiring, water lines, stepper motor wires, a grounding wire and an additional air blast line inside it.

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MadHatter wow, going into possible overload here, that is amazing. Very detailed work. Would you care to sell a set of these brackets? I assume the chain is store bought, I recognize the yellow inserts.

They’re 1 meter R38 18x37mm, I chose this size as big enough to have lots of space for coolant pipes and extra stuff. The spiral wrap going partway into the drag chains and cable tied to the mounts provides some extra strain relief and mitigates cable wear at the entry / exit to the drag chain.

I’d use MadHatter’s mounts though, mine were just cut and bent to fit without any real design.

I did drill and tap the X and Y beams to mount the extra support brackets, double sided tape is not a valid way to anchor drag chains…

I used the stepper mount bolts on the Y plate for one of the chain anchors.

Thank you Liam, I will be incorporating the 4th chain into my builds. Excellent design.

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Do you have a spindle or a router?

Currently I have 3 S3’s with 3 carbide 3d routers, one is getting a 1.5 kw, one is getting a 2.2 and I am not there yet for a spindle on the 3rd. They are all being upgraded to 80/20 rail frames with 3/4" Aluminum caps. They all are getting linear rails and Dan Story’s rail kits which I have all 3 sets already. All 3 are getting plumbed into a Lightobject 1600 watt chiller.

This is what they will look like:

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OK,

You may want to do a Z drag chain as well then, I’m doing that on my rails upgrade. I’ve got a prototype of the spindle end of it on the machine and all the bracketry for the other end as soon as I get the rails on. The spindle coolant hoses and wiring are quite heavy and don’t like repeated flexing at stress points very much. The spiral wrap is OK as a start but I can do better.

I’m presently figuring out whether to try to route the extraction hose through brackets on the Z carriage and if so where.

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Let me see what it would cost. I usually charge $2/hr for printing parts, which usually put most parts outside the realm of anyone wanting them from me. I will work on getting the most current solid models and quantities put in my Google Drive folder so you can shop them around to other 3D printers.

Check out https://www.reddit.com/r/3Dprintmything/ for the shotgun approach to getting a quote.

I have a 3D print farm I am building. I would prefer the models if you would be willing. The original Fusion models would be even better if it is ok for personal use only, I could edit to fit my system.
More then happy to Paypal you some money for your hard work.

Thanks for the offer of payment, but I get a lot of help from the various online communities, and I don’t mind giving back when I can. You are more than welcome to print and sell these as well if you want. Everything I throw up on Thingiverse is pretty much the same as well, just attribute the design to me.

EDIT: I designed the parts in SolidWorks, so I will upload the SLDPRT, STL, STEP and whatever other file format you want - provided SolidWorks will save it.

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Thank you very much I really appreciate it.

I did some wire management a while ago, with some custom 3d printed parts I designed. It was a lot of cutting /stripping and soldering with heat shrink tubing. I did this when upgrading to eBay proximity sensors. I also added a molex connector and routed power wires for a laser to be added later. Im running stock z drive and a Suckit dust boot and made everything to work with stock hardware. One day I hope to upgrade to the HDZ and a spindle.

!
IMG_20200206_233333|666x500

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Here is the drag chain that my brackets are sized for. I bought three 1 meter lengths, and had only a few segments left over.

Here is a screen shot of just the 3D printed parts I have on my SO3 XXL. There are 10 unique 3D printed parts, and 13 total parts.

The only part I am not happy with is the brick red part under the red part. It clamps onto one of the stepper motor spacers, and it works just fine, but it “wiggles” back and forth if you bump into it. It bugs me and I am finally going to redesign it so it is more sturdy. It has lasted just fine without issues for the last 18+ months, but now that I am going to release it into the wild, I need to change it first.

I am uploading pics to imgur, and when they are done, I will post the link here so you can see the parts installed on my machine. Imgur is being difficult.

Here are the files in my Google Drive folder. I updated the wobbly bracket by making the clamping portion 1" wide - the same as the spacers, and shortened the gap between them by 0.050", so they should clamp tight to the two stepper motor spacers.

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That is a lot of parts! Looks like you spent a lot of time on this. Really a great design! Ordering drag chains tonight.

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