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#61
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Well done.
It feels good when the smoke stays inside. ![]() |
#62
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Wild Kingdom around here... and still working on 4th axis
Finishing up the mount for my 4th axis. It lets me drop the center of rotation to roughly even with the top of my spoilboard and in front of the machine. Should be able to turn up to a 15cm x 120cm cylinder, which is much more than I need for my application. Hope to have it finished today or tomorrow and will get some pics up for ridicule!
![]() Anyway, when I came in to my shop yesterday after being in New York all week, I found that I had unauthorized tenants. Loud, angry tenants. A nesting pair of Carolina wrens had set up a nest in an old amplifier I have on a shelf and proceeded to hatch their family. They take a dim view to my banging, cutting, welding, grinding near their home so I have been fussed at for two days. For a little bird, they have a very loud tweet! Also, I checked one of my game cameras that I have mounted back behind my shop. I have been trying to capture some of the deer that wander through, but I caught a sneaky bobcat instead! No wonder my German and Australian Shepherds go crazy when I let them out into my fenced in back yard at night. Okay, back to it. Ted |
#63
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congratulations on your build and good luck for the 4th Axis
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#64
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4th axis pics
Here is the 4th axis installed. Need to drill and tap for 4 more M10 bolts and get a longer M12 bolt for the alignment adjustment. Both head and tailstock can be moved on the rails and are both easily removable to get out of the way and store if not being used.
Ted |
#65
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Impressive design and implementation. Thanks for sharing.
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#66
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Excellent work.
Where did you get the head and tailstock from? Keep on going, it's looking good. |
#67
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Thanks John and Al.
The head and tailstock are an Amazon purchase. K11-100. 6:1 ratio. $330.00 US. I really wanted a harmonic drive with a much higher ratio, but hopefully this will at least get me going. I ran some manual tests using my pendant and it seems to do well. Hopefully I'll get to try some wrapped toolpaths this weekend and I'll let you guys know how it works. Ted |
#68
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Hey, guys. Going through extra stuff from my build that wasn't used. When I ordered my racks from McMaster-Carr, I ordered 5 of 5174T21, 20 pitch, 20 degree pressure angle, 6ft long racks. They shipped me 4 of those and one mystery rack. The mystery rack was an extra and if anyone needs it, they can have it for the price of shipping. It looks like 16 pitch, 20 degree rack with .45" pitch ht and .5" face width, 6' long. It doesn't quite match anything that I see in their catalog. If anyone wants it, shoot me a PM. Also have a few other parts as shown in the pic. All for free, just pay shipping.
Ted |
#69
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![]() Hi Dude, please could you post more pictures of the detail design of your 4th axis
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#70
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4th axis details
Vustasmith, sure!
It is made out of 2 pieces of C-channel steel, 3" x 1.5" x .1875", full table width. The end plates are 15" tall by 5" wide .25" steel with 1.5" 90 degree angle welded to the backs for stiffening. This is what I had on hand, so this is what I used. On the headstock end (left looking from front), the steel beams are welded to the mounting plate. On the tailstock end, the beams rest on another piece of 90 degree angle welded to the bottom of the mounting plate. This allows me to adjust the angle of the beams relative to my Y axis for alignment. This is done with the M12 bolt that is threaded into a captured nut that is welded in between the beam ends. Any adjustments needed to be made vertically are made by shimming the tailstock or headstock on their mounts. The mounts for both head and tailstock are made from cutoffs of 4" square tubing with 2 pieces of 1.5" sqaure tubing welded to the top to give me the correct width to match the bottom width of the head and tailstock. There are 2 more pieces of the 1.5" square tubing welded to inside of the 4" tubing that protrudes down through the spacing between the 2 main beams. This is to keep them from being able to shift alignment when they are moved. The bottom of those pieces has a tapped plate welded to them that accepts a bolt coming through a bottom clamp that tightens the whole thing down. Wow, it sound complicated, but it is a very simple design that the pictures probably do better at explaining. I would say that if I had a method of easily slotting the end mounting plates where they are bolted to the table main beams, the adjustments could be made there rather than what I ended up doing. I just didn't have any tool that would give me good enough results doing it that way. The headstock is a K100 system. NEMA 23 with a 100mm 3 jaw chuck. 6:1 belt driven. I have it set as my B axis in Mach 3. All of my testing so far has been with my pendant. I'll be testing some wrapping with Vectric this weekend. Oh, also, with the travel of my X axis, and where I have located this 4th axis, I should be able to do 4 sided machining of up to 4.5" blocks as well. Ted |
#71
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I also got this in today to play with. 2.5 watt diode laser. Not to cut with, but to do some engraving. Plan on creating a separate machine profile in Mach and use the spindle control to control the laser instead. Have to fabricate a mount for it and run another DC line through the chain. Also waiting on a set of decent glasses to come in, as I don't trust the free ones they throw in with the laser. I do a lot of work with lasers in my real world job, but this is the first time I get to play with one for me!
Ted |
#72
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Very interesting! Could you provide a link to the source of the laser?
Please keep us posted. |
#73
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4th axis and Z chain
John, sure. Amazon listing as: "2.5W Laser Module Head Blue 450nm DC 12V 2500mW Dot Focal Adjustable Focusable for 3D Printer CNC DIY Engraving"
https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B0...?ie=UTF8&psc=1 I looked really hard at the Endurance lasers, and I'll probably upgrade to one of theirs if laser engraving and or cutting is functional and worthwhile on the MechMate platform. http://endurancelasers.com/ I also finally got my Z axis energy chain mounted this morning. Ted |
#74
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Laser test
Got a mount made for the laser and couldn't resist doing a quick test. Have not played with focus/height/feed speeds. Just slowed feed way down, guessed on the focus/height and tried the ol' Road Runner g-code. I think this is going to be fun. I ended up just using the coolant relay to switch the laser off/on. No PWM control yet. Just kill the power to my VFD so the spindle doesn't try to spin up, and switch the 12volt power connector from the coolant pump to the laser feed. I'll work on a more elegant solution, but this works for now.
Here's a link. Caution, the steppers are pretty loud with my cell phone sitting on the Y carriage, so check the volume. https://vimeo.com/339775680 Ted |
#75
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Nice work. Thanks for sharing. Thanks for the links, too.
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#76
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Nice work. Thanks for sharing. Thanks for the links, too.
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#77
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Makin' dust
Tried out PhotoVcarve today. Have to spend a little more time fine tuning.
This was a good long run, several hours, and it showed me a few things. Couple of loose nuts and a faulty water coolant power supply! Glad I was checking on it every few minutes or my spindle would have paid the price. Haven't hooked up my flowmeter yet, but it is definitely on the high priority list now! After I swapped to a higher capacity power supply, I restarted mach, but forgot to manually enable the spindle first... sigh... lost a few seconds as my brain tried to figure out what was going on. Got it stopped, started spindle and restarted. That is what the skipped line is about in the photo. Overall, machine did very well. My temp sensor on the G203V heatsink showed a max of 47 degrees C. The temp control internal fan ran properly and sped the fans up as needed. Voltages never dropped by more than a few volts, staying right around 48V. Not too bad for the first long run. Photo is of Tank, our much loved GSD who passed away a few months ago. We got Tank when I was building this shop and he spent many a day sniffing up saw dust and spider webs. Ted |
#78
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Continuing to work with my 4th axis, using VCarvePro. Think I am beginning to wrap (ha!) my brain around at least the basics. Also, digging deeper into Mach3. Discovered the function to set rotary feed rate based upon radius. Much better speeds. One thing that I don't like about VCarve is that I am forced to use a a single cylinder that protrudes from both ends of the model as the tabs for the head and tailstock to maintain their grip on. That's fine, but some of my models have very small radius sections, which means that the cylinder being used for the end tabs, can not be any larger diameter than the narrowest part of the model. It would be nice if I could place individual tabs on both ends of the model of any diameter I choose. I could always add the tabs as a part of the model in CAD, but that is not the workflow I want. If any of you 4th axis folks have any thoughts, please feel free to share!
Ted |
#79
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So setting up homing today was interesting. Finally got it set up using the NPN NO proximity switches. I made it much worse on myself by waffling back in forth between wanting to use mm or inches for my native units. I'm comfortable with either, but have generally used inches for woodworking. Finally just made the call and went with mm. After realizing that Mach3 does not do the unit conversion for you when you switch over from inches to mm, and a couple of spectacular crashes, I got it all sorted. Also got my SHINA DT02 wireless touch off block installed and working. Seems pretty repeatable, though the contact surface is pretty soft aluminum and I can see some divots from where I had slightly faster than expected Z travel. In the middle of all of this, I went ahead and installed the 2010 screen set, since I just love punishing myself. Not sure if I would recommend learning Mach3 and the new screen set at the same time, but I am getting there. I am also having an occasional bug pop up where the ESS smoothstepper throws an error and locks up Mach3. I have gone through the complete recommended setup that Warp9 published, but still get it occasionally. Seems to only happen when using my wireless pendant to make axis moves. Enough for today.
Ted |
#80
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Thanks for the info and pictures of your 4th axis
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#81
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4th Axis work continues
Here's a quick video of my 4th axis in action today. Slowly getting it tuned. Still a few issues/glitches to iron out, but getting much better.
https://vimeo.com/342147786 Ted |
#82
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![]() Well done Ted
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#83
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impressive
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#84
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Spindle cooling system failure
Almost had a catastrophe! I was running a long 3D finishing pass on my 4th axis while I was at my design computer doing some CAD work. I got up and walked around the machine and just glanced down at the water reservoir. There was no splashing in the tank from return water! The return line at the top of the tank was empty! The coolant pump was not running. I used my e-stop for the first time in production! Quickly checked temp of spindle and it did not feel any warmer to the touch than normal, so I suspect the pump had failed just a short time prior.
Now motivated, I threw together a quick water flow alarm with a flow sensor I had bought earlier meaning to put one together sometime. With just a very, very loud alarm. Checking the pump, the inline fuse had blown. I replaced the fuse and tested it and it seemed okay. Reset the machine and started running again. Not five minutes later, the alarm went off and scared the bejeesus out of me. I assumed my alarm hardare/software was faulty, but sure enough, the pump was not running. I did a feedstop and then spindle stop and checked everything out. The pump I was using was a Rule 12Volt inline pump that was really overkill as far as volume and pressure goes. Looks like the backpressure caused the impeller to slide up the motor shaft and jam against the housing. I've got a couple of different ones on order right now. This made me think, though, what if I was out of the shop when this occurred, what would have happened to my spindle? So I put together some hardware/software to monitor the flowmeter and do an automatic feedhold and spindle stop if wanted or an e-stop if preferred. It will sound an audible alarm first for a few seconds and then, after a programmed delay, it will issue the feedhold and spindle stop to my bob through a couple of inputs or it can be set to do a full e-stop. I'm putting a display on it right now so that it will show the measured flow rate as well as alarm status, battery voltage (it has a battery backup) and the voltage of the incoming 12v power brick that powers it. If it's own power supply fails, it switches over to the battery backup and gives a quick audible alarm every few minutes and an alert on the display. The battery pack would actually run it for a day or so, so it will just give the audible chirp until it sees the battery pack voltage starting to drop and it will then go full alarm and send the stop commands. Not sure what everyone else is doing to monitor their spindle cooling, and I am sure there is a commercial product out there to do this. If my spindle had a temp sensor built in, I would probably just use that, but mine doesn't, and monitoring the water flow should catch a problem before the spindle starts to heat up. If anyone wants the info on what I put together, just PM me. As soon as I get everything finalized and tested, I'll put some documentation together for it and will be happy to share. Ted |
#85
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Again, very nice work. Glad you were "present". You might consider one of these to monitor and "alarm" on your spindle over-temperature
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#86
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Thanks, John. As much as I like to make my own boards, for that price, I can't pass it up!
Ted |
#87
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Spindle coolant monitor prototype
Got a prototype flow monitor put together and starting to test. Ignore the wiring mess, I'm a professional, and that is a professional grade nest of wires! Trying to calibrate the flow sensor, but it may not be that important, except for spotting trends. I have the software logic working, and it will drive 2 pins on my bob for feedhold and spindle stop, but it is a long run from my water reservoir to the bob, so we'll see if the 5v signals are good enough.
Ted |
#88
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Not enough sleep!
So, I have been tinkering with the spindle coolant flow meter (if anyone can think of a cool acronym, let me know!). As typical, I keep thinking of cool new stuff to add. Ended up adding a bunch of I/O lines to the design, for future features if nothing else. I was up late last night, finishing some honey-do stuff, and got back to this project. Everything has to fit on a 100 x 70 single sided PCB, and I am doing a photoresist etching with resist film and the negative being printed on my inkjet. So I can't do very fine traces with this setup and it requires some post Kicad work in Gimp to clean it up. Anyway, it is a time consuming process, especially when tired and late at night. Finally got it printed, exposed, developed and etched. Looked great! Went ahead and drilled the tiny holes for the components and couldn't stop myself from going ahead and placing the components and soldering it all up. Then went to bed. Got up this morning and mounted the board in the enclosure and started wiring it up. Then I realized what I had done at 2:00AM. I had inverted the image and everything is backwards. Pin 1 on the ATMEGA chip is actually where pin 28 will be when I plug it in. Doh! I am an idiot. Reprinted, re-exposed and re-developing it right now. Sigh...
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#89
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Oh my! A lesson re-learned. I'm still impressed with your perseverance.
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#90
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Spindle coolant flow monitor up and running
Finally had time to finish the monitor and get it in place for testing. Ran a series of tests where I stopped the water flow and it engaged the feedhold and spindle stop correctly. It also monitors the incoming ac for the coolant pump and it properly stopped everything when I manually killed the pump power. It will also issue an estop to the bob (not the high voltage e-stop) if it has issued a feedhold and spindle stop but still detects ac to the pump, just in case the spindle stop did not work. Running some production runs now and keeping an eye on it. It's going to take a while and a lot more tests for me to feel comfortable walking away from the machine.
Ted |
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