A unique design for a desktop milling machine

Thesis (M.S., Mechanical Engineering)--California State University, Sacramento, 2010.A light duty, desktop size, 3 axis CNC milling machine is designed with a frame featuring a novel welded steel design composed entirely of precision cut plate steel featuring interlocking and self aligning geometry. The wide availability of high accuracy cutting of sheet and plate materials by laser and abrasive waterjet cutting has made possible the idea of a structure composed entirely of precision cut plate. Interlocking features are used at the joints between each piece which when considered in a three dimensional structure causes the assembly to be inherently self aligning and requires no assembly fixturing. \ud The design concept is intended to reduce or eliminate machining of the finished steel structure. Three dimensional parametric modeling and finite element analysis simulations will be used to design the assembly and make worst case deflection predictions. A prototype machine structure is fabricated and evaluated to determine if the design is a viable alternative to more traditional machine designs.Mechanical Engineerin