Thank You for the video, but I will share some tips: The vertical plate where you mounted the harmonic drive is just too thin for this application if you have to use aluminum at least use a 1.5 to 2 inch thick 7075 T6 and better yet use cast iron or carbon steel. I cant tell for sure the thickness of your plate but it looks like half an inch. also for the sides hollowing them that way may look cool but it doesn't help your application, in fact it reduces mass and rigidity, you need the maximum mass for rigidity and vibration dampening, that sort of hollowing is used when you need to reduce wight which is something you don't need here. also if you need more speed just reduce the size of the gear on the back of the harmonic drive and reduce micro-stepping to the minimum , that way you can easily achieve X10 your current rotation speed at the coast of torque of course. also a closed loop stepper is better than open loop for this because you don't want to loose any steps.

The experience gained with this work is invaluable and will remain with you, and be applicable in so many different ways, for the remainder of your engineering career or interest in this field. Engineering is all about problem solving where if you don't try then you will never know or learn. Dump the discontent because its money well spent. 👍

Love the Lehey stumbling reference. Never worked late in the night to end up smashed like Lehey. nope...

Jack. I'm about to start a similar project. Use a servo motor and you can significantly increase your 4th axis RPM.

Subscriber #44 here. I'm excited to see this in action.

Fun Job. Although I don't think the Tormac is expensive compared to other brands. It's more beefy, has more torque and can be showered with chips and coolant too. Thank you for sharing your work. To improve yours I would, as mentioned before, use a servo motor instead of a stepper motor. Constant torque over the entire, higher, speed range compared to full torque at start only. Best, Job

While it may not be quite what you were hoping for. It’s still quite an achievement. I believe you could get more speed by simply changing your belt sizes. I think you’ll find you will still have plenty of torque even with a much faster gear ratio.and if you’re still unhappy, I would do as others has suggest and find yourself a servo motor. They have great amounts of RPM advantage over a stepper motor.

Change the pulley one the spindle side. You dont need 1000 steps per degree if youd rather increase the speed.

where did you get your harmonic drive from?

super great video, can you tel me where to find the harmonic drive and the chuck used.

It'd be way more interesting to watch ya try and build a 4th axis than just buy one. Keep at it, solve problems, no defeatistness!

If you want it to go faster, put a bigger pulley on the motor, and use a beefier motor - maybe upgrade to a servo instead of a stepper

👍👍😎👍👍

Why bother milling out the triangles on the side plates? Weight isn’t an issue here, I assume just to look cool?

Ahh, why not use a servo rather than a stepper? Servo can drive up to 6k rpm while maintaining the rotary precision needed with an encoder.

A cheap China integrated servo will keep a consistent 3 ish nm between 0-3000rpm

Why not use a simpler planetary gear drive. If the gear ratio is large enough, any backlash in the gear engagement will be moot with respect to the final motion. I would think by using multiple planetary gears it would make preloading easer to achieve, eliminating the backlash in the engagement anyways. But I'm a chemist, not an enginear, so maybe I'm missing somthing.

100 hrs? For this? uh... yikes. We built our first mill turn in under 100 hrs...

Can you speak up next time I can't hear you