Hey Fabrica,
Great job!!!!
You may want to check plan 10-20-454.
It says to bend in pair, one up and one down. and then again maybe I am looking at it wrong. I'm having mine bent tomorrow and was curios.
DocTanner

Hey Fabricia, what have u used to make the Z-slide of, hardened steel og ordinary steel..???

KM

Very good stuff!

The bend directions are not really important for that part.

Before the final coat of paint, I suggest you seal the joints with an acrylic filler such as "painter's mate". Note: It must be an ACRYLIC filler and NOT a silicon filler. If you look closely at the MechMate photos you can see see how it was filled.

Kim, I used Normal steel. But I am doing up another one with hardened steel. Just to keep as a backup.

Ok Gerald, I will do the fillup work with acrylic, thanks.

Doc, I think Gerald has answered your question.

Hi Fabrica,

Great Job. I was looking at your progress right from the begining but couldnt jump in because I was very busy. now I am also ready to start building Mechmate. Please do tell from where did you get that Ycar cut and bent. I dont have any laser or water jet cutting machine around me. so how did you managed.

Manjeet

Hey, Manjeet long time no see, where were you. I got the parts cut from a local company who has a laser cutting facility. The cost was around
US $ 500 including materials.

Hi Fabrica,

Thanks, Very surprising that you have laser cutting machine in Kandy sri lanka. Its quite expensive one I couldnt find around me. I going to get done on plasma cutting.

Manjeet

Further discussion on Plasma cutting moved here

The cutting was done in Colombo which is around 140 Km from Kandy.

Manjeet, How are you progressing with your job. Hope you are doing fine. Please keep us updated on your progress. If any help is required we are always their to help you out. Have you completed your V rails.

Hi Fabrica, Thanks for encouraging, I have ordered all the raw material for this "Beast MechMate" hope I will get them by tommorrow. Regarding V rails its not a problem for me as I have 12 feet planner so I will put the complete Mechmate frame in it and machine the rails in one shot to get more accuracy. Will let you know my progress as is goes up.

Manjeet

Gerald, If everything proceeds well as expected I hope to have the "Mechmate" up and running during the next couple of days.

Where should I start from. I a new to CNC stuff. How am I to comission the machine ? What are the first steps that I should take? I am totally dependent on this forum to provide me with the guidence (criticism, advice) to make this whole project a succesfull and a enjoyable venture.

Other than Gerald their are so many other guys who could help guys like us. Please your presence felt. Once I get over the initial hickups and gain experiance on this CNC machining subject I would be more than willing to help other guys to overcome problems during the process of developing this wonderful machine.

Fabrica, yes, we need a set of "commissioning instructions". But, some suggestions for now....

1. Test your motor movement while the pinions are not engaged to the racks. Unhook the springs and swing the motors down away from the racks. Run simple programs in Mach3 and use the cursor keys to move the motors. Check if all the motor directions are correct. Check if your Emergency stop works.

2. If you have connected the proxy switches as limit switches, move the gantry & car to the limits by hand and see if they stop the freely turning motors.

3. When you do get brave enough to engage a pinion into a rack, start with only the y-car. And start with that car in the middle of the gantry.

4. Then engage the x-axis motors. Realise that one motor will be turning clockwise while the other turns anti-clockwise.

5. Finally the z-axis.

7. Follow the Mach instructions and videos to set the motor speeds and accels.

8. Then commission the router and cut the table top flat.

9. After flatting the table, then set the axes pependicular to each other.

Through this whole process, check Gecko's, motors and toroid for overheating. Check often - they work the hardest when the motors are just standing still! Don't disconnect motor cables unless the red light on the Gecko is off.

This should give you some idea.....

OK thanks. Very restless until I see the beast moving around.

Congratulations Fabrica....
I'm envious. You have already helped me alot through your discussions and pictures!

Bill, how much of progress have you made on your machine.

Below given are some some pictures showing the progress of my project.

Below given is a photo of one motor mounted on gantry with springs loaded. You would also observe in the background the racks mounted on the underside of the X rail.

http://www.mechmate.com/Forum/messages/329/3233.jpg

The underside of the X rail showing the racks and pinions completed.

http://www.mechmate.com/Forum/messages/329/3234.jpg

Motors mounted on the gantry

http://www.mechmate.com/Forum/messages/329/3235.jpg

Bushes mounted on underside of the router to facilitate the mounting on to the Router bracket.

http://www.mechmate.com/Forum/messages/329/3236.jpg


The underside of the router shown with bracket.

http://www.mechmate.com/Forum/messages/329/3237.jpg

The side view of the bracket with router.

http://www.mechmate.com/Forum/messages/329/3238.jpg

stoppers assy and mounts for proxies assembled on the Gantry.

http://www.mechmate.com/Forum/messages/329/3239.jpg

Z azis partially assembled.

http://www.mechmate.com/Forum/messages/329/3240.jpg

Fabrica, I am very, very impressed! Tonight I will have a glass of wine in your, and your engineer's honour!

After some digestion and celebration I will give you some detailed comments, but for now we just enjoy.... http://www.mechmate.com/Forum/clipart/happy.gif

Thanks Gerald, for you encouraging comments. How could I enjoy with without seeing the beast (Mechmate)running around. I will not have a peacefull sleep until I see the machine in full flow. Believe me, during the past one week we all in our workshop has put in more than 10 hrs of work everyday to come upto this level.

That beast is still a baby under its mother's care - be gentle with it. Don't force it to walk too soon.....http://www.mechmate.com/Forum/clipart/happy.gif

What a nice job. Congratulations . It is really and inspiration for all off us that dream with a beauty like that. Please don't forget to show us your first cut.
Regards
Hugo Carradini

Thanks for your compliments Hugo. I will definitly post the pictures of the cuts no sooner I start working.

The router must sometimes work in "deep" areas and you want maximum space around the collet. Suggest you minimise distance C (to zero) and use countersunk head screws at B. Most important is to use the longest screws possible to use all the thread in the plastic at A.

http://www.mechmate.com/Forum/messages/329/3252.jpg

My project completed! - Fabrica (Sri Lanka) - Serial No. 1
 

Ok, I will do the required modification.

http://www.mechmate.com/Forum/messages/329/3254.jpg

Screw head A (8mm) is supposed to be a countersunk because there is a risk that it can touch the angle iron rail. Head B (10mm) is above the rail.

There is a secial trick to hold screw A while adjusting the nut for tension. The tip of the screw (other side, away from head) is slotted with a hacksaw and then a screwdriver can hold the screw from the "outside".

If you have enough space for the screw heads, then don't change anything.

The wiring is done and for the last three hours we have been playing around with the mach3 software get the settings correct.

Maybe we still have not got the pins and other things configured properly. When we try to jog with the sofware the motors do not move. No voltage is developed at the outputs of the steppers drivers.

I think it took me 3 days.......
I started on the kitchen table with one motor and one gecko - after that I built the gantries and cars.

A big problem for me was to understand what the E-stop does and how to "reset" the Mach main screen. Nothing will move while the reset button on the bottom left of the screen is flashing red - it must be only green.

To see if Mach is working, you do not need the Gecko's and the steppers. You can just look at the PMDX board. There are LED's that will flash where the gecko wires are connected, when the step/direction pulses are received correctly.

The PMDX looks like a discotech when everything is working right.

Ok Gerald maybe I made a mistake by during the process of posting.

This is what i wanted to inform you in the earlier post.

" Gerald Finally I got the motors to move (of course with racks detached from the pinions). What i did to overcome the situ was to switch the jumper settings on JP2. From the original pin connections of 2 to 3 I changed to 1 to 2. This made the PMDX card LED's to light up and the motors to move.

By doing this I have disabled the E-stops, Fault and charge pump circuits. After doing this change I never expected the E-stop to work. But it still did work. What could be the reason for this?

Another reason why I did this change was because I suspected (after reading your earlier mail) that the e-stop settings are a tricky issue. Once I sort out the other matters I could get back to this problem later. The charge pump was also enabled through mach 3 settings.

After changing jumper settings all 4 motors started to turn, other that one motor fixed to X axis (A axis, slave of X).

At the driver point I changed the wire connections (switched the wires connected to non working driver to to the driver which was working) and the non working motor started to work. We could suspect two things. Either the stepper driver is playing up or the Output circuit of the PMDX card which connects the faulty driver board is not working. At this point we called it a day and wound up operatins since it was 8.00 pm in the night.

One more thing which I observed in the suspected stepper driver unit was the the LED in that was glowing much more brightly than the other drivers which were working normally.

Gerald Can a stepper drive be repaired if it is faulty?. Anyway I have one spare driver board in stock.

fabrica,

The Gecko website has a nice "Stepper Motor Basics" page that will walk you through the theory and hookup. Go to: http://www.geckodrive.com/photos/Step_motor_basics.pdf

There are many similar pages available online as well. Another is:

http://www.rmsmotion.com/resources/step_basics_v1_0.pdf

Brian

Brian, Thanks for your input. But how does the info provided by these links relate the issues that I have raised in my earleir mail.

The first issue which I raised was when I disabled the E-Stop (through jumper settings) to get the motors to turn how come the E-stop is still working.

The second issue was the problems that I am encountering with the Gecko drivers (only suspected not yet convicted).