Sounds suppression, XXL bed flatness, and other musings

You’re musing, it’s totally related to the original topic;-)

Dan

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This is what I had except I swapped out the 20’ rear wheels for 28" really narrow racing tires, could feel the burn at 35 -40 mph. I was sitting same height as in a car, never a problem. Just musing along.

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Big sign to replace garage door, great idea…live in an HOA, bad idea, I don’t think they’d be aMUSED, probably take away my pool card and clubhouse privileges,…but who cares, it’s not like I’m going to be spending much time there once my SHOP is finished, right?

Dan

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I have monsters ranging from 6 to 21, with a set of 3 multiples in there for a total of 7 kids + girlfriends that show up for free dinner, I don’t think they ever go away, they just have grand kids and replicate! Dangit, I just said grand kids, I don’t have any, hope I didn’t just jinx myself,…doh!

Dan

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I keep telling mine, "My job is to teach you how to identify a good decision, and how to make them in most-if not all-situations… Life until 18(hopefully) is safe practice, after that there is a period of out and about practice, followed by lone experience."
Giving them the goal to meet now and hold for their time at bat… Pretty much like getting a Shapeoko, and the bell curve of challenges and learning curves it creates…

As with most things, a Quiet, flat, and stable, base to work from makes the important things much easier to do as intended. Until the children come along and make you forget how nice that is for a little while-before you remember to teach them that… Grand kids…I hadn’t even considered them yet…

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Prepare for the rest of your life… I have 14 grand children, and they all love me. I make the most amazing animated, articulated wooden toys on earth, just for them that NO ONE else in the world can get. Can you spell “special” . They’ve bought me t-shirts “SUPER GRANDPA” and “THIS IS WHAT A COOL GRANDPA LOOKS LIKE” . They are my reason of life, but they all know don’t ask Grampa for advice because you won’t like the answer, I never give them the easy answer, “work harder” “I didn’t teach you the lazy way” “oh well” “so what you gonna do now”. Only one grandson will carry my last name into the next generation so he is the “Heir to the Throne”, He’s no.1, they all know it, and “oh well”. It never seems like they learn the lessons you try to teach them until all heck breaks loose and they remember, “yeah Grampa taught me that”. This is the only time I’ve ever used “planning” and “grand kids” in the same sentence. Tell you anything? Ha HA HA

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“replace SHOP / MOTORCYCLE DISPLAY AREA door”, see, I pay attention especially to A musings.

So I’ve gotten more into the new house, as in it’s just called “The House” now, and where I was living is “The Old House”. I’ve been doing a bunch of house work lately, but have finally been putting some effort into “The Shop”, which has brought me back here. I’ve gotten my dust collection worked out well, gotten the SuperPID working well, and I can now say without the leveling feet, laying on rubber mats, the XXL noise is tolerable, meaning I can have decent conversation in my shop without screaming. Part of that is adding the little Fein vacuum, super quiet. Another part is being able to tweak router speed on the fly. I know there’s a bunch of great formulas, and Gwizard, which I own, but I’m pretty old school and if a cut “sounds” wrong, it usually is. Case in point, the other night I was cutting some MDF brackets to hold my dust hose. I did the GWizard, dialed in the speed on the SuperPID, started cutting and it all was going well until I started cutting some full engagement deep slots. I could hear the squeal of the 1/4" bit, I gave the speed pot a slight twist, upped the RPMs by less than 1000, and the squeal went away. I suspect if I was running CM4 I could have slowed the feed a hair and gotten a similar result.

So to give some results, albeit non-scientific and opinionated:

A big part of the noise was the shop-vac I was using, and I also cleaned up the ducting, shorter and smoother (hoses make a racket, just usually hard to hear over the shop-vac).

A second big part of my shop noise was probably my rookie use of speeds and feeds. I’ve ran manual machines for a life time, machines that run themselves are somewhat baffling to me. In the past if I was running a drill press, or the Bridgeport, or even the big manual lathe at work, if it “sounded” wrong, I adapted, but very rarely actually took a look at what I had the RPMs set at. This is something I’ll definitely have to learn more of to be effective at CNC.

Does the rubber mat under the machine make it quieter? I’m not sure, but I never had the stock leveling feet on my machine to begin with, I had them up on rubber isolators from the beginning, but I like to think the mat helps.

I know the XXL in general is, using my calibrated ears (Yes it was a recent cal, I have the sticker on my forehead), it is easily 40% quieter with everything in place, I’m quite pleased. I can run the machine at night in my attached “Shop” and I don’t worry about waking the kids (bedrooms adjacent to the “Shop”). I wont be making an enclosure, which is what I’ve been trying to avoid all along.

Bed flatness…I picked up a fresh plank on 3/4" MDF yesterday and got it cut to size. I removed the stock waste board today and realized something. With the machine flat on the rubber mat, and no support on the ends, the straps actually sit higher than the ends. It makes sense because the straps have the strengthening bends lengthwise, and the original design with the leveling feet would have supported the ends and kept the straps up off the table. So now I’m wondering if I should shim up the end plates to match the level of the straps before adding the new waste board? Thoughts? Musings? See attached photo of what I’m describing, screw is in place just to hold position and not relevant in photo. Seems like a lot of weight supported on the end plates if I leave them just floating in space, but the end plates are pretty robust. To shim or not to shim, this is the final question?

Thanks,

Dan

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DanoInTxDan Nelson

Does the rubber mat under the machine make it quieter? I’m not sure, but I never had the stock leveling feet on my machine to begin with, I had them up on rubber isolators from the beginning, but I like to think the mat helps.

IMHO Dan but without any scientific justification for saying so the rubber mat has little of no effect over the noise with the factory supplied levelling feet. It could be that my mat is to thin at 1/2" or maybe it is to firm.

Again, all opinion and calibrated ears, plus I changed several other variables and it’s too late to go back now. The bigger question is how much sag has been reduced and even without any scientific measurements I can say it has been most definitely. I had trammed a 18x24" cutting board flat prior to all of this. Same cutting board is easily 1/16" higher towards the middle now without doing anything other than removing feet and setting on the flat mat. If I had zeroed the bit in the corner of the stock waste board it would be hovering nearly an 1/8" by the time it was over center. Once I add the new 1 piece wasteboard I’ll throw my dial indicator on it and see where I’m at. Going to add a secondary wasteboard to that which I’ll tram flat. I don’t think this is as much of an issue on an SO3 or probably even the XL, but on the XXL it doesn’t take much weight to see it deflect, it’s just a large span floating out there and the split stock wasteboard doesn’t help. In the end it’s a hobby for me, so if I improve it great, if nothing happens no biggie.

Thanks,

Dan

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Dan,
I understand what you are referring to. When I went to move my XXL into the enclosure, I was going to remove the feet, and discovered that there was a sag in all straps front to rear. I was going to place on a mat in my enclosure, then reworked my unistrut for support and incorporated non slip discs on ash spacers between the SO3 frame so only the straps are supported and placed the non slip discs on the unistrut so in effect I have two layers of isolation plus the support of the unistrut.

Very pleased with the dampening of the foam discs and added support of the unistrut frame. I’ll try to post better pictures tomorrow of the unistrut frame installed, but it may be Monday before I can get a chance for good photos.

With the enclosure closed and router at 18k RPM, I am barely able to hear it cutting above the level of my Festool dust collector. I can actually hear the chips hit the cyclone, wish I had made the enclosure earlier.

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Wow, that’s impressive! From what I can tell it looks as though your ash spacers/pads go under the straps/end plates right where the wasteboard screws go? Or in between? I can see several ways to do this if I wanted to get really precise like even adding small jackscrews at various points and adjusting till near perfect? Right now I’m going for the low hanging fruit, but I can see where once it’s “close” I could really go nuts with a dial indicator till my head hurts, haha!!!

Cool stuff!

Dan

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The blocks/discs fit into the underside of the straps and span from outside strap web to outside strap web, the center block supports the middle strap just forward of the PEM nuts where the wasteboard is attached. The blocks go up to the end plates, but do not support the end plates. This provides even support to the straps and wasteboard.

Hi Dan, nice of you to muse with us. I did changes to my setup also. The machine sits on a benchtop that is self leveling cement (so it’s level) the machine has a new base plate under it of 3/4 melamine shelving board (So3 not xxl) and between the base board and the waste board is a piece of tempered hard board that fits between the edges of the angle iron front and back supports. the hard board is the same thickness as the angle iron so now the waste board has complete support over it’s entire surface area and no availability to sag. It all sits on a level surface so I just surfaced the top face of the waste board and done. I was dissappointed with my previous efforts and now there is no sag because it is solid from the top surface of the waste board thru the middle layer of hard board thru the 3/4" base board that the machine sits on and finally to the self leveled concrete bench top. So there it is, my way and probably as level as the surface of the Earth which we all suspect is really round. Like those pictures from space that “prove” the Earth is round, or are we looking at the flat surface of a round disk ??? That’s why they call it a 'quarter moon".

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Well I measured the thickness of the sheet metal straps/end plates at 0.138", then measured the folded edges of the straps in a few places and got 0.490" on average, so: 0.490-(0.138x2)=0.214" of gap roughly. So I did a little looking for suitable shims and found some 7/32" (0.21875") by 1 1/4" moulding at HD (I know, that’s nearly 0.005" difference in height, guess I’ll hold my tongue just right while the machine is running, haha!). Think I’ll just cut two strips to length, drill some holes to match the PEM nuts and slide one each under front and rear end plates. I’m still up on about 7/8" rubber mat, so it all should all be supported and near level enough I think? Decided I’m not going to go super exacto geekio on this since I still plan to add a secondary wasteboard that I’ll tram flat, I just want full support and reduced sag/deflection in the middle. The full experiment will cost about $4, and if it fails I’ll buy one less cup of coffee from Starbucks this week. We shall see!

Dan

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The Earth is round? What a silly notion, pshh…

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yeah, I got rid of the rubber mat underneath, I thought it would absorb the pem nuts but it didn’t evenly. I forgot that I bored recesses for them in the shelving board base. How come the oceans don’t drain over the lip at the edge, the flat landers never discuss that???

Because Chuck Norris tells it not to!

Got anything else to throw at me? Better work harder than this time, haha :joy:

Foam doesn’t absorb PEM nuts, noted! Will drill holes.

Thanks,

Dan

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Sorry, I forgot about the Texas Rangers. Of course Glen Campbell (in True Grit) didn’t help their reputation either. Although his horse did a mighty good job. I was gonna just pull the pem nuts out but than I would be saving them for some future unknown use because they are very good pem nuts, and I just filled up my last empty coffee can with more unsorted bolts and nuts and screws and little “good” pieces of brackets. But I can only muse about what I put into those cans.

Well if Steve McQueen had told the water to start flowing over I’m afraid Chuck Norris would have to back down,…gotta make space for dirt tracks and all…

I cut out the middleman and only collect full coffee cans😉

Dan

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