“Sir Clive”

My latest CNC bender, “Sir Clive” has finally been finished and released to the production floor. Sir Clive is the 3rd CNC bender I have completely re-fitted, and is also the most heavily involved upgrade out of all of them so far. The name “Sir Clive” was given to the machine after the great Sir Clive Sinclair, inventor of many great things in our time including the world’s first handheld pocket calculator, the ZX-81 and the ZX Spectrum computer. The ZX Spectrum holds a dear history to me, which is another reason why I decided on the name 🙂

Clive is the 3rd CNC bender to be completely fitted with new controller equipment. It was also the most involved upgrade. Not only did I replace the controller components on this machine, but I also installed new motors & encoders as well, making it far more accurate even than Joshua.

What Was Involved:

Installed a new Parker 6K4 Controller unit, and accompanying VM25 unit to handle input/output to the hardware.
3 new Zeta83 stepper motors with encoders, replacing the existing (ancient) MAE motors. This gave the machine a significant improvement to it’s accuracy.
Dell Vostro laptop to handle the custom written software (My FlexIO Program).
More detailed hardware information can be found HERE. Details on FlexIO can be found HERE.

As a result of the new upgrades and software, the machine has increased it’s operational accuracy as much as 30%. A pretty big deal when bending high performance semi rigid cables that require it, so as not to require any manual tweaking later.

The machine was completed in June 2010 and is currently bending a mixture of 0.141″ through 0.250″ semi rigid cables.

Gallery of “Sir Clive” Development Photos: