The Sendt-3D designed rotary enclosure for your XTool D1\D1 Pro machine that you never thought you needed. The enclosure itself is made entirely out of 3/4" wood.
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- 3 x Hinges
- 1 x Door Handle
- 6 x Feet
- 2 x Drilling Templates
- Both for the Motherboard
- 2 x Gantry Mount
- left and right side
- 4 x Gantry Elevator
- This is what secures your gantry to the enclosure via the Gantry Mounts, while still allowing the adjustability of raising and lowering the gantry depending on the work piece
- 2 x General Tray
- Designed to hold your smaller tools and pencils
- 1 x chuck key holder
- 2 x hangers for your rollers
- 8 x LED strip mounts
All part quantities are a minimum. You may be sent more than the listed quantity if one or more parts doesn't meet my quality standards
- 6+ M3x30 Panhead or Socket Head Cap Screw
- 2+ M3 Nuts
- 41+ #10-3/4" Countersunk Wood Screw
- 12+ #6-1/2"
This is not set in stone and is by no means the 'best' way to do it, so take it with a grain of salt and do whatever is best for your setup. The most important thing here, and perhaps the least obvious, is setting up your laser gantry, RA2 and elevator. They must be square with eachother.
Theres two ways to go about setting up your gantry:
The following methods require the following
- Carpenter square, ruler, or speed square
- A level
- A centerline scribed into the bottom and side surfaces inside the enclusure
No matter what, the most critical part of this is making sure your gantry is level and square to the working surface of the enclosure
There is an obvious minimum height you should first establish. Depending on how high your RA2 sits will change everything else. If you set everything up with the RA2 flat on the bottom surface of the enclosure, that's as low as it gets. I say this because if you also have my alignment jig you lose some height so everything must be raised up a bit. You can stick some reference piece into the chuck or onto the rollers but whatever it is you want it to be the smallest diameter you might use. Personally I stuck in a drum stick, which is about 15mm in diameter and is pretty close to the minimum possible workpiece that will fit into the RA2 chuck. Also, at this point you should have decided whether or not you want your laser home to be on the right side, or left side of the enclosure. I chose the right side, but its really just personal preference. Remember though, your cable lengths come in to play here. If you choose to home to the left side, you need to swap the left and right panels, and also flip over the top panel. Also, I never ended up implementing a laser safe window in my unit. If you want to keep your motherboard on the right side but home to the left I'd suggest extending your cable lengths. You can get longer cables from Geeks-at-large here if needed. I wish I did, but never really found a need for it. My rotary has been set it and forget it ever since I completed this enclosure.
Remember, a pencil and some lines are your closest ally here. Lines can be erased, holes can't.
This part is tricky and theres a lot of ways to skin this cat. I'll provide a few options...
For reference
🟥🟥🟥 My centerline runs 8-3/4" from the back wall of the enclosure.
🟦🟦🟦 my elevators run 3-1/8" from the back wall of the enclosure
🟩🟩🟩my elevators run 4-5/8" from the bottom surface.
Use this picture to reference the colors annotated above.
I would suggest using these values to start as I've done all the maths for you. No two enclosures will be identical so you'll find yourself tweaking as you go to make sure everything stays perfectly square. Just remember, you don't want your gantry too close or too far from the back\front wall or you end up reducing your max workpiece diameter capabilities and we don't want that!
Now to the knitty gritty!
Method 1: You can use your side panel scribe lines to mount your rearward elevators to the side panels ensuring they stay aligned with your scribe, then mount your gantry to the rear elevators, then mount the front elevators to the panel
Method 2: You can use your centerline scribe to visually line up your laser. You first need to mount your gantry mounts to the laser gantry. Then mount the elevators to the gantry mounts. Set the laser in the enclosure and visually line up the laser to your centerline as best you can. You can even power up the laser with the laser fired (2%) to check your work. Once you're happy with the position, you can draw some lines where the elevators end up for your reference and mount it. Note: the further away from the target the laser is, the less helpful this method will be. Make sure the laser is as close to the centerline as possible so that the beam is as tight as possible.
Method 3: The perfect way (my opinion obviously) to do this (but more difficult as it requires more hands) is to have an alignment tool of some sort. It doesn't need to be elaborate, it just needs to be straight. Like I said earlier, I used a drumstick. Believe it or not, the first one I grabbed was warped to hell and back. I simply rolled it across my desk and saw it wobble - grabbed another one and it was wobble free. This method will require you to have your RA2 centered to your centerline scribe, and also make sure your "drum stick" is rotating cleanly without wobble (the base support helps here). Grab your second set of hands (equally cut pieces of wood also work). Once your RA2 is centered, you can hold/rest the laser so the cup is just above your "drum stick" and jog it back and fourth with the laser fired (2%). If the laser is consistently at the top most part of the "drum stick" then you're centered. Mark it. Mount it. Carefully.
If you get your elevator is tight enough on the gantry mounts, you'll only need to screw in the front elevator screws. I actually use 3 sets of screws and don't use any in the rear elevators. Its snug!
- at the bottom most hole to make sure I don't drop my laser when I'm adjusting it keeping it from slamming into my RA2
- at my lower mount point, generally used for smaller items
- at my upper mount point, generally used when I use AlivePixel's RA2 tilt mechanism to make my workpieces perfectly level To each their own here.