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  #61  
Old Wed 29 October 2014, 05:14
Duds
Just call me: Dale
 
Canberra
Australia
IMG_0363.jpg
Painting the MechMate

IMG_0381.jpg
Assembling the sub-components

IMG_0393.jpg
I just realised in this dry fit that the idler wheel is going to foul the y car frame at the stub axle.

An interesting point here. I don't have a lathe and am too impatient to send little bits like stub axles out to be machined. I just used a short piece of twenty mm diameter rod and filed the ends neat. The bearing fitting was a slip fit not a press fit so I rolled the short piece of rod on a table under my bastard file pressing down really hard but avoiding actually cutting/filing the material. This causes the surface of the rod to become knurled and voila, press fit. Don't ask me why knurling makes it work, it just does.

IMG_0397.jpg
I tried to get a photo of the proxy brackets but the afternoon sun was causing problems. This is the best of a bad bunch.

IMG_0398.jpg
Z-axis mounted, and proxy looms starting. I have used NHP Sprecher and Schuh proxies and switch gear mostly. No reason behind this, I just gave my wholesaler a shopping list and he got me the S+S gear. Probably they are doing the best discounts at the moment and they do make great control gear. It's really robust and well designed.You might just be able to see, that I am using a yellow illuminated pushbutton for the stop/start stations. I'm going to run the flashing pause signal out to the lamp. So when running yellow p/b is off and when paused yellow p/b flashes. just a visual indicator if I go away for a cup of tea and can't remember if i'm in the middle of a job.

Also the stub V wheel bosses on the Z axis. Again, I didn't want to send out the little bosses to a machinist. I welded the nuts on the inside face instead of the bosses and am using the nuts as bosses. The nut height is slightly less than the boss height and caused a clearance problem with the little folded tab that hits the Z stopper. So I filed the tab down 1mm and it clears the Z slide.

That's all folks, have fun with your machines.

Dale
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  #62  
Old Mon 17 November 2014, 04:07
Duds
Just call me: Dale
 
Canberra
Australia
Another update

Mechanically the machine is complete.

I am now wiring up the machine, and have pre wired my control boards. You may remember, from a previous post, that I bought three switch mode PSU's and a voltage adder board to get my DC requirement for my drives. I have since taken the switch mode PSU's out and made my own simple PSU from a Torroid and some capacitors. I should have done so in the first place but was a bit blinded by everything that was going on at the time with the build and work.

Here's some photos

IMG_0448.jpg
I bought this fancy wall mount monitor arm and bolted it to the front of the beams. This photo shows Mach3 running, but I haven't got it working with my BOB or ESS yet. I have been playing around learning how to make 'Brains' so that I can get my stop button light on the control stations to flash at different rates for different events. EG. 4 quick strobes and a pause for tool change required, slow 50% on 50 % off for running machine no spindle, Slow 75 on 25 off for running with spindle, Fast flash for manual pause.

IMG_0449.jpg
Another photo of the arm. I'm really happy with the arm and the all-in-one touch screen pc. I have found I never use the keyboard, only the onscreen keyboard and the Mach3 UI responds really well to touch. I am able to adjust sliders and speed and set buttons.

IMG_0450.jpg

IMG_0455.jpg

IMG_0460.jpg
A photo of my pushbutton station. I have used 3 pair shielded instrumentation cable for my pb stations and run them back to a box near the start of the X axis energy chain. I also run the proximity switches all back to the box. I have used connector cables for my proximity switches with the screw on connectors for replacing proxies that get wiped out by accident.

The motors all use VFD cable and the same VFD cable for the spindle. 4 core and shield.

At the box near the X energy chain I have commoned up all the actives and neutrals and parallel stop and resume. I also have the series e'stop links in the box and only run one pair back to my main board.

My umbilical only includes 7 cables:
5 x VFD cables for axes and spindle
1 x 6 pair shielded instrumentation cable for proxies and pb stations
1 x earth single insulated

The 6 pair instrumentation in the umbilical includes:
1w - Active 24v
1b - resume button NO
2w - E'stop safety loop 24v
2b - E'stop safety loop NC
3w - pause lamp
3b - pause button NO
4w - Xa Proxy
4b - Xb Proxy
5w - Y Proxy
5b - Neutral 24v (needed for proxies but otherwise not used)
6w - unused (maybe for homing)
6b - unused (maybe for homing)

When I get a chance I'll draw it up neat, it'll make more sense.

LESSON LEARNED
Always remember to stop and break things back to first principles. You can buy this and buy that, but often it's just as easy to sit down and make what you want from scratch. Particularly with electrical stuff it often looks all fancy shmancy inside with lots of mysterious bits and bobs soldered to incredibly small contacts. Lot's of times if you take the time to break down the circuit and it's purpose, slowly... with a pencil and paper, you will discover it's not all that fancy shmancy electronics after all.

Dale

Last edited by Duds; Mon 17 November 2014 at 04:16.. Reason: Added Lesson Learned
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  #63  
Old Mon 17 November 2014, 04:22
lonestaral
Just call me: Al #114
 
Isarn
Thailand
Send a message via Skype™ to lonestaral
Looking good.

Some day when I have the time and money I will do a world tour and visit all the MechMates.

Dream on
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  #64  
Old Mon 17 November 2014, 04:24
Duds
Just call me: Dale
 
Canberra
Australia
Al, you'll never get finished on that world tour! By the time you get home 10 more will spring up.
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  #65  
Old Mon 17 November 2014, 06:36
darren salyer
Just call me: Darren #101
 
Wentzville mo
United States of America
I'm digging that touchscreen. Cool.
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  #66  
Old Sat 22 November 2014, 11:15
pblackburn
Just call me: Pete #98
 
South-Central Pennsylvania
United States of America
You are moving right along.
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  #67  
Old Sun 23 November 2014, 03:37
Duds
Just call me: Dale
 
Canberra
Australia
Thanks Pete, I started testing tonight. Just point to points and insulation resistance on all my circuits. Haven't applied any power yet. Also started figuring out my Mach3 io and BOB settings. I have one conundrum, I have setup my estop relay to open the main contactor which drops power to my BOB. This means MACH3 gets left in the dark with IO. I'm assuming it just says ok estop fault. Is it better practice to give the BOB its own power supply?
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  #68  
Old Sun 23 November 2014, 06:44
pblackburn
Just call me: Pete #98
 
South-Central Pennsylvania
United States of America
It can be done either way. You can use it to disengage all energy except the BOB power or kill all energy.
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  #69  
Old Sun 30 November 2014, 18:02
Duds
Just call me: Dale
 
Canberra
Australia
I have just spent the weekend trying to get the ESS to communicate with my Windows 8 Dell AIOPC. I have had no joy, I have come to the conclusion that the ESS and Windows 8 don't talk. Does anyone have an ESS running on Windows 8.

The good news is I have been able to get the ESS communicating with and old MacBook Pro running Windows 7 as a virtual machine under VMWare. I will continue configuring on the MacBook Pro until I either downgrade the Dell to Windows 7 or figure out a solution for Windows 8 to operate.

The best news is I can communicate with my ESS! YES, I'm right now configuring my IO. I have test run my spindle. It's noisy when it gets up to 400hz ~11K RPM. It's also very exciting watching it spin up. I have not installed a braking resistor but am definitely going to do that. The spin down time is a bit scary under e'stop conditions.

Well time for me to get back to my IO config.

Lesson Learned:

Be patient grasshopper, be patient.

Dale
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  #70  
Old Sun 30 November 2014, 19:56
Duds
Just call me: Dale
 
Canberra
Australia
Emergency Mode Active Output Help?

Hi Folks,

Can anyone point me to some documentation on how to take the "Emergency Mode Active" (EMA) screen signal to an output?

I want to use the EMA signal in my hard controls. Ideally I want something similar to the System Hotkeys OEM triggers except for outputs from system status.

Thanks in advance.

Dale

PS: I also want to make an output into a "one-shot". Is this possible?

Last edited by Duds; Sun 30 November 2014 at 20:08..
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  #71  
Old Sun 30 November 2014, 20:17
Tom Ayres
Just call me: Tom #117
 
Bassett (VA)
United States of America
Hey Dale, I don't think you need a braking resistor, the spindle stops within a couple of seconds which is way less time than a regular router. The resistor is just another unnecessary expense IMHO. As far as the other I definitely can not help you there although I understand what you are asking.
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  #72  
Old Sun 30 November 2014, 20:17
Duds
Just call me: Dale
 
Canberra
Australia
Asked and answered, Brains are the answer to both questions.

See http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=O8V7dZy02og for a good primer on Brains.
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  #73  
Old Sun 30 November 2014, 20:22
Duds
Just call me: Dale
 
Canberra
Australia
For more information on oemLED see also http://www.machsupport.com/Mach3Wiki...title=OEM_LEDs

OEMbuttons see http://www.machsupport.com/Mach3Wiki...le=OEM_Buttons
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  #74  
Old Thu 04 December 2014, 05:32
Duds
Just call me: Dale
 
Canberra
Australia
Well folks, I am very pleased to announce that as I write this my machine is surfacing its own table top. I'm just cleaning up the top I have used as a work surface for the past months before I glue down the spoil board.

The biggest thing I can't believe is how quiet it is. I don't get any squeal from the drives or that high pitch hum. I get more noise coming off the wheels on the rails.

I'm still playing around with settings. I have the drivers set at 64 microsteps and with 40 tooth gears on at the moment. While i'm learning i'm not so interested in setting rapid records or anything I just want nice clean calibrated cuts for now.

Lessons Learned.
I'm sure you are all going to laugh but although I initially set up my A drive as the X slave on the right hand drive correctly and had some great fun making my axes go this way and that, during commissioning I made changes in Motor Tuning to the X axis but forgot the A axis. I went to test my new Steps Per and the machine groaned and shuddered and crabbed. I checked my settings, rechecked, checked my notes, reset my X back to my original settings. Drove the X all good, made changes... Groan shudder!!! Agh I redid this little process back and forth over and over checking and checking and checking before I realised I needed to change A (X slave) every time I change X. Traps for new players

Will post some video tomorrow.

Dale
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  #75  
Old Thu 04 December 2014, 06:27
Duds
Just call me: Dale
 
Canberra
Australia
Hi, need some help. My computer went to sleep and lost ethernet traffic to the ESS. I was having a cuppa at the time and actually saw it when it happened. I have recovered the program and restarted the job, no problem there. But, I am very concerned because when the ESS lost its connection to Mach3 it didn't fail the charge pump. This meant the axes stopped because they didn't have any new step and direction signals but the spindle kept on spinning.

Lost ethernet connection should fail charge pump and cause the BOB output interlocks to come on.

Anyone seen this behaviour before? Is there a setting somewhere?

Dale
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  #76  
Old Thu 04 December 2014, 07:45
smreish
Just call me: Sean - #5, 28, 58 and others
 
Orlando, Florida
United States of America
Dale,
You may want to check you settings on the smooth stepper plugin.

Watchdog:
- check value for ESTOP timeout. Max value of 3.1 seconds will trigger an estop
- check FEED HOLD setting, If controlled by Mach or Smoothstepper. If by smoothstepper, it looks at the watchdog setting and triggers an estop. If by Mach, I may only do what you observed - which was mach stopping running the file, but spindle kept going.

...I'll do some more reading later to see if I see anything else to look at.

Cheers.
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  #77  
Old Thu 04 December 2014, 12:30
Duds
Just call me: Dale
 
Canberra
Australia
Thanks Sean, much appreciated.
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  #78  
Old Thu 04 December 2014, 12:41
smreish
Just call me: Sean - #5, 28, 58 and others
 
Orlando, Florida
United States of America
Dale,
( I am pretty sure you have already done this )

Also, go and turn off the SLEEP settings on the PC.
Interestingly enough, it's mentioned in the MACH manual due to how Mach takes over the Kernel of the PC during the run of the routine. The idle / sleep of the PC does a lot of bad things to CNC software.
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  #79  
Old Thu 04 December 2014, 19:15
racedirector
Just call me: Bruce #122
 
New South Wales
Australia
Dale, as far as I know the charge pump only works in parallel port mode and has no effect with the Smoothstepper.

In my control box I have a safety relay that controls the e-stops, if anything bad happens it closes everything down but leaves my 126 & ESS active to handle the report backs. You might want to look into that sort of thing.
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  #80  
Old Thu 04 December 2014, 22:55
lonestaral
Just call me: Al #114
 
Isarn
Thailand
Send a message via Skype™ to lonestaral
Dale.
Ref your twin axis motors X and slave A.

Just wondering why you used a slave.

On my machine, the twin gantry motors are under control of 1 axis output.
One of the motors is wired so it rotates in the opposite direction to the other.
There is only one set of values to change.

You probably have your reasons for using a slave.
Just wondering.
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  #81  
Old Fri 05 December 2014, 00:53
racedirector
Just call me: Bruce #122
 
New South Wales
Australia
Al, I use X & B on my PDMX 126 (reserved A for the day that I get a 4th axis )
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  #82  
Old Sun 07 December 2014, 05:01
Duds
Just call me: Dale
 
Canberra
Australia
Hi Al, I didn't even consider using a parallel signal from the BOB output. I don't have any good reasons, it just didn't occur to me to do it that way. I knew before I ever even started playing with Mach3 that it would have a slave function. I wired up the BOB a long time before I installed Mach3 or even made a decision on the controller.

I have used Siemens and Fanuc controllers and used slaves for both of those setups. And they weren't CNC machines.

One setup drove a multidirectional drive chain that pulled Bodies In White (BIW) around a vehicle assembly line. The was a complete loop, had thousands of links and was over 1200m in length. It had to push up inclines and around multiple bends. The slave drives were used to prevent the chain bunching and stretching and tuning was PIA!

The other slave setup was on a casting carousel for pouring molten copper into anode holds. The carousel spun around and delivered the next mould to the tundish. Further around the carousel were stations for blast cooling and a lifter to remove and stack the anodes. The carousel had to accelerate and decelerate very slowly and evenly to prevent ripples and waves freezing in the copper during cooling. The carousel had two drive pinions that were slaved together and tuned to prevent back-lash. The lead pinion pushed a carousel gear tooth lead face and the trailing pinion maintained pressure against a carousel tooth trailing face. The second pinion was a kind of driven idler that placed a load on the carousel gear to close the backlash gap.
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  #83  
Old Sun 07 December 2014, 05:07
Duds
Just call me: Dale
 
Canberra
Australia
BTW see my video as promised will make more soon. http://youtu.be/laNYzyqTuFM

And a big shout out to Kim https://www.facebook.com/KimsCustomCarvings, who I met at the Hand Made Market today! Those dinosaurs where doing a roaring trade

Dale
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  #84  
Old Sun 07 December 2014, 14:10
Ailmik
Just call me: Kim
 
Gundaroo
Australia
Thanks Duds, nice meeting you. Would have been good to have a longer chat, absolute cracker of a weekend.
Cheers
Kim
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  #85  
Old Wed 10 December 2014, 22:35
Duds
Just call me: Dale
 
Canberra
Australia
Cutting tuning

Hi Folks,

I have started cutting some things and am learning the CAM part of it

I have trialled the following CAM software; CAMBAM, MakerCam, FusionCam (Fusion360) and ESTLCAM. So far ESTLCAM is out on top for ease of use. FusionCAM is almighty powerful but the learning curve is longer than it first looks, and both CAMBAM and Cut2D seem to have hobbled their demo versions, at least I can't get code out of CAMBAM longer than ~500 lines and Cut2D will only let me play output their demo files. MakerCam.com, seemed promising but I'm not sure what is going on with it, all I get is progressively large circles from the origin. At first glance the gcode looks good but when you simulate it its just bigger and bigger circles.

For the following questions my parameters are:
Design -- Adobe Illustrator
Export -- DXF
CAM -- ESTLCAM
Control -- Mach3
Units -- mm

A couple of questions:

1. I cut three tuning objects; square, circle, right angle triangle: all objects are 100mm x 100mm. All objects have been cut 99.1mm. Any ideas where the .7mm error might be coming from?

IMG_0690.jpg
BTW the cutting direction was counter clockwise.

2. The triangle has an excellent 90deg right angle and two great 45deg angles on the hypotenuse but there is a slight concave in the hypotenuse towards the inside of the shape. the concave is approximately 1mm. What could be causing that?



Thanks in advance.

Last edited by Duds; Wed 10 December 2014 at 22:43..
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  #86  
Old Wed 10 December 2014, 23:00
racedirector
Just call me: Bruce #122
 
New South Wales
Australia
Cambam isn't hobbled at all, sounds like you have a unlicenced version of Mach. I have been using Cambam for ages (still on my 40 uses) and I can produce multi thousand line files without issue. Unlicensed Mach limits you to 500 lines.
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  #87  
Old Wed 10 December 2014, 23:54
pblackburn
Just call me: Pete #98
 
South-Central Pennsylvania
United States of America
The triangle should be really short g code. Point to point basically. Look at it to verify some arc is not being translated. The .7 could be an offset in your cam program or wrong tool diameter. I have not used those programs but you can double check it.
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  #88  
Old Thu 11 December 2014, 12:57
Fox
Just call me: Fox
 
Amsterdam
Netherlands
Is it just me or does 99.1+0.7 mistake still not make a 100? I would measure if your toolbit is actually what you think it is. If it is bigger then you think cause you are using inch bits instead of metric it could cause the size issue. Your illustrator drawing should just show three control points for your triangle, and ctrl+f should show a nice vector. Ctrl+u turns on your snap for drawing.

Last edited by Fox; Thu 11 December 2014 at 13:02..
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  #89  
Old Sat 13 December 2014, 05:48
Tom Ayres
Just call me: Tom #117
 
Bassett (VA)
United States of America
Could be Steps per unit calibration.
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  #90  
Old Sat 13 December 2014, 06:33
lonestaral
Just call me: Al #114
 
Isarn
Thailand
Send a message via Skype™ to lonestaral
Are there any diameter offsets active ? (G41, G42)
Check the Tool Settings page for diameter settings.
Measure the diameter of the tool in use.
It might not be what it says on the box, carton, packet, tin, container.

The curve on the hypotenuse might be tool deflection.
Reduce the feed rate.
If it is still there check how rigid your Z axis is.
Have fun.

I knew you would have reasons for a slave axis.
Sounds like you have had a lot of experience with them.
Keep at it.
It is usually the small things that make the difference.
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