Wrestling with Aspire on some carvings - Truckee, CA
 

Sorry for no other post but I’ve been busy. I started building 20 days ago.
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Thanks for all the help.:)

Doesn't look like you needed any :)

Congrats, welcome and lets have some details...

Good grief Pete! Did you get any sleep?? :eek:

Here was your first post. Amazing!! :D

Thanks Alan and Gerald

Not much sleep at all.:D
Will add more soon I took many pics and videos now have to sort through them. Here is some video.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=R3yK6aPXiF4

WoW - in 20 days - thats a record I think !

I have more than 20 months on mine :D and still counting :D

Congratulations Pete.
That's about the right amount of time - 120 hours of time to build a complete MM.

The controller form factor with the G540 inside is really a nice feature as long as all the RF and such is not an issue.

Well done.
Sean

Took a break from my day job and worked on it till it was cutting. I am home in NY now for the next two weeks, I can’t work on it:(, at least I can talk about it.:)

The table is 8ft(2500mm) by 5ft(1500mm). It will cut over the front edge by about 6 inches (152mm) for edge cutting and mortising (X is a total of 8ft 6 inch(2652). The Z-slide is about 11inches (280), X beams are C10x 15.3# (20ft (6000) cut at 45’s gives two 10ft 6in(3200).

Ground the rails with JR's skate grinder. Thanks JR. That was a bit tedious. Used 2" X 2"1/2" (50 X 63)angle and used cut offs for y-tube thread backer (forgot who thought of that but it was slick:cool:)and for the cable chain support instead of the 3/8" (10)round. Also used a 4" x 1/4" x 36" (100x6x900) piece of cold rolled steel for z-slide and used the skate to grind it.

Bolted together table, the ribs up the side of the channel are 1.5inch solid square 9 inches (228) long cut at 45’s drilled and tapped for one ½” bolt, and welded to the C3 x 4.3# channel. They help keep the main beams from rolling over and eliminate the extra side bracing to the legs. Look cool too.:cool: a lot easier to clean under i would think.

The control box houses the 35v power supply the Gecko G540 a Dell PIII mother board computer power supply and hard drive. No relay for the router (5620 Milwaukee) yet. There is a USB port installed on the gantry and a mount for the numerical pad as a bump remote. E stops are household light switches (cheep). I used cheep foil shielded wire (will see how long it last:confused:).

The Machine is in Truckee CA, in the mountains still too cold there to paint. Still have 3 ft of snow in front yard but that’s down from a high point of 11 feet of snow:eek:. So I will have to take it back apart at some point:mad: to paint it blue and add stickers:).

I also must confess I am a complete newbie to CNC:o. I am a car mechanic, turned diesel mechanic, in to house building, to fine carpentry. So sort of the "jack of all trades". I did a lot of reading before I started building. But now I think I found what I want to do when I grow up.:D

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Pete,
Nicely done! But it seems your first couple of pics disappeared.

Pete it seems that you spend more time in the workshop than in the house(having your meals on the MM ):)You can fit a matress on the MM table you probably spent some nights sleeping in the workshop:D

Hi pate - I was there is Truckee last year when I visited Lake Tahoe - its such a nice place and you are blessed to be a resident there - were you there when there was that big fire there -

love the way you have put your machine together!

Have fun

Irfan

Hennie,
Didn't need the mattress, I didn't sleep:D But I did have to slow down every few days to eat:eek:.

Javeria
I was not here for the fire I have only been living in Truckee for the last 4 months remodeling a house that should have been leveled and replaced. But yea Truckee is a great place as long as it is not a ski weekend. The down side is every time I need anything I have to drive 45min (if it's not snowing) to Reno NV.

I live in Hopewell Jct, NY. I have been commuting to CA to work. I built the machine there for a few reasons, like to help with finishing the house but mostly because I couldn't wait. :D

Gerald,
Yup they are back now! :) When I posted, the pics in post #1
were only showing up as file names, the rest of the photos were visible though. :confused:

Gerald,
No I was logged in, I have seen that before.
It was only in post #1 that showed the file names only,
Post #9 was showing pics fine, but it seems to be fine now. :)

Back with my MM
 

Well I know I have been slacking in the forum entry area for awhile. But I have still been reading a lot. Went home to New York for awhile now I am back in CA with my Machine.:) Have not had much time to play with it. As I have had to work.:mad:

So I need to get a good cam program and I am looking in to Aspire as I have Customers willing to pay for some of the things that can be made with it. (3d carvings) I made some carving with Aspire and I am having problems with them. I have started a threadhttp://www.vectric.com/forum/viewtopic.php?f=27&t=6528) on the Aspire Forum and I haven’t got anywhere yet.

I was wondering is anyone using Aspire with a MM, if so any problems with V-carve lettering corners or 3d tool paths?

Pete, I'm using Aspire with my machine and Mach3. I'm trying to remember if I had the problem your showing, but I don't think so. I have direct drive steppers, not geared. There has to be something in your Mach3 settings. If I get time tonight, I'll copy screen my settings for you.

Is the router clamped properly - chk for it two time, then chk if your V rollers on the Z axis are holding the plate tight enough. I had a similar problem accounting to a loose V roller.

Thanks Mike I would appreciate that. I have a feeling that it is something in Mach causing the problem. I have been prepping a new computer for my machine, (Need more memory and faster CPU to run Aspire). this morning I was thinking that I should hook up the new computer with a fresh Mach 3 installed. Now I am having problems with that:mad:. The steppers sound as if they are Grinding. I hooked up the old computer and they run smooth.:confused: As far as I can tell all the settings are the same.

I checked the play of the router and the only play I can see is from the backlash of the geared motors. (I don't have a dial indicator here it's in NY). Some one else told me the problem could be from backlash too, but I would think it would be inconstant.

Pete,

Can't say these will work for you, but this is what I'm using. Let me know if this helps.

Pete,
I don't have anything to help with the main problem, but it dawns on me that your parallel port may be set to the wrong communication type in the BIOS. I don't remember what it is supposed to be, but I know I had to change it on my install.

Pete

Have you tuned your motors?

I would like to know what your printer port setting are.

:mad::mad::confused::mad::confused::confused:( smiley face banging his head in to the wall)

Must have reinstalled Mach 5 or 6 times not always the same problem. But now atleast I am back to were I was a few hours ago.

Did have the BIOS problem earlier today when I could not get the Charge Pump to activate but now it's set to EPP 378

Mike thanks but my set up in general config is the same. My port's and pins are not the same as I Am running the G540 not the PMDX BOB

Have not tuned the motors yet!!! I will. But why with one old PC smooth newer one makes them Growl like the gears are loose. (there not)

With old PC using Mach Wizards I got perfect cuts Squared my gantry to the point that I could see no difference between the 2 sheets.

Note the old PC is a DELL P3 1.0ghz with 256k RAM!!!
new one is refurbished IBM P4 3.0ghz with 1gig ram

Nils what printer port settings the bios or the pins to the G540??

Thanks so much for the help guys.

I gave up on the new computer for the moment. Wanted to watch the machine work for a little while.:)

So the guys from aspire tell me that the 3d carving example that they give you with the trial version of Aspire is not for you to actually cut!! They apologized and said they are going to remove it for the next version. But they gave me the correct files of the address sign to cut. The rough pass went great! Started the finish cut and almost set the board on fire!!! I guess that when they tell you it’s a 1/8 ball-nose bit they mean 1/8 all the way up. The bit I was using is a 1/8 inch ball straight cut (not spiral) and tapers to the ¼ inch shank about 5/8 inch up from the ball, Which hit the side of a steep shoulder and burnt write threw it. (Never missing a step, good motors:cool:).

Tell me guys could I still have backlash problems or motor tuning problems???

Pete,

If you want to remove most of those lines in the leaf, you need to change your stepover in your finishing pass to 8-10%. The lower the stepover, the longer the cut will take. But with lower stepover, you reduce sanding to almost nothing.

That looks beautiful to me Pete.

The file was sent to me from Aspire I could not play with any of the tool-paths. So I don't know what the step-over is set to, but it did not seem like much(less than 1/2). I will email them and ask. While it was cutting I tried slowing the feed rate down to 30% for awhile, than 160%, I could not tell the difference.

Doug, I have not seen enough cuts made with a MM up close to know how good this is or not. (Never seen another CNC machine to compare it to in person either.) The only thing I don’t like are the rounding of the corners in the V-carve lettering.

I remember reading a post from Gerald about making a MM test cut program to test your machine was that ever done??