Hey Gerald,

yes the plasma is indeed 4mm, and the flame (if I can say so) is not round but more like a oval... so my parts are slightly off on each side with around 0.25mm difference kinda problematic, but really my only option for now.

So I already have all parts back except 1030455PB and they are all workable but need to put some amouth of work in to make it work. For example I did remove (had to..) all holes <10mm because the plasma cutter couldn't work with them well.

I will send them my new dxf and see if it works...

Ries

Here is a version with 2mm added inside your ovals:

Hey Gerard,

thanks for the file!
I have most commands here on qcad and used the office command to make a 2mm offset to the designs. I couldn't find a equivalent for Boundary yet...

Ries

Quick progress report
 

Hey All,

currently I am spending around 5-8 hours working on the mechmate a week, trying to do as much as I can, but time is a bit limited as always.... However I managed to find a plasma cutter that could cut my parts and bend them properly, they actually did a very nice job. Only the plasma left some debris I had to clean up, and I had to drill more holes myself because the plasma cannot cut thàt precise. Holes < 10mm are out of the question, besides, I liked to drill them anyways so they are more precise. Bottom line, if you can laser cut I would pay the extra bucks, will save you quite some time...

I did learn some welding hurraaaay, I think we have a mig/tig machine here and we used mig, quite cool and learning a lot. I only used to solder electronics the size of transistors, SMD and such... so this is quite a different story.

Today I bought all (almost all?) nuts and bolts so my father in law can do some turning on it where needed and prepare the second grinding.

As you can see, going strong but plenty of things to do, I am highly curious about how correct (or not correct) the current build is, but so far we double check everything and we take time to think about our actions. Hopefully next week we can try the the setup with the V-Rollers.

We decided not to cut the L rails lower and I am not sure yet the consequences. Should we expect problems when not cutting these?

Attached a photo of our progress.

have a nice day!
Ries

Some woodworking....
 

For some time (1.5 weeks now...) no work on the mechnate.... :( Family business took some time and my mom is coming over next week and had to make some furniture, to be precise a bookshelf and a 'new' table...

The bookshelf was needed because we don't have one in the house and we thought it would be nice to build one before mom is here. The attached photo's shows the stage of almost done, I only need to make rounded corners on it, I never made rounded corners (straight corners where always easer) so I was just thinking to make a block of wood and use some good gold sanding and shaving. I think it will work fine.... People must have done it already before electricity, right? :)

The table's legs are actually 20 years old made by my wife's uncle and looks nice, only the table top was made with a multi-plex and some very ugly borders nailed into eachother. We decided to replace the table top with 40cm mascarey and slightly bigger then the origional. As you can clearly see in our 'professional' workshop (my wife helped me with it, so I am fine...really!)


Ries

Ries,

For your edge round-over, if you don't have a router or shaper, you can use a table saw, or joiner (set at an angle) to remove most of the wood and then rough finish with a surform file or wood file, before finally using sand paper. Of course there are power sanding options as well.

If you're prepared to select and purchase the router (toolhead) that you will need for your MechMate, you could easily complete the round-over with the router now and use it for the MechMate later.

hey Irfan,

this is mostly what i was planning to do.. I made my 'shape' today and already cut most of the wood out.
Tomorrow gluing it one the frame, then removing the the wood using a shaver, then sandingf very rought. My wife will do the final sanding.
I already printed a 1:1 shape of the correct negative circle as guidance during sanding, I think it will look fine...

The table is ready to pay pained with clear satin water based varnish...

Ries

Hi Gerald
I worked there a few years ago at a site about 3 hours from Quito, 13500ft above sea level awessome view most times looking down! on the clouds.
and now I am almost down the road from you in Fish Hoek:)
starnge how it all glues together!

Some more work today + Pictures
 

Some more work has been done today,

attached a link to a youtroep video that shows the gantry rolling (I push it...) to see how that goes, how it rolls out etc... This seems to work fine as far as I can see and hear.

I also started to attached the little things that goes on the mechmate like the E-Cables holder, that is... if I can find them here for a normal price.. As always in Ecuador things goes for 3 times the US price, e-cable at 120USD/meter.... I might build a cable chain out of some materials for starters..

Here is a video of the gantry rolling : http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iOxyzZZ_vFI


Attached some Photo's also of:
1) Quality of the plasma cut
2) Grinded V-rail
3) A good weld, or at least it looks good to me...
4) Grinder setup
5) Home made V-Roller (made by my father in law)
6) One of my first vertical bad welds :)


So far this has been a great experience, never did any serious metal working, never welded or really grinded.

This week I am going to start gathering a list of electronics stuff to buy and a bug to put it all in.

Ries

Buen vídeo Ries, rueda muy bien ese pórtico. se ve que tiene un buen suegro :D

Good video Ries, wheel good this grantry. i see you have a good father in law :D

Today was shopping day,

left at 10AM, came back at 5PM.

I bought most parts in one shop so I am pretty much good to go...
There are some small issues though,

1) shielded cables (2 and 4 core) was something we couldn't find yet. So for the time being I bought un-shielded cables. At 1.06/meter for a 4 core AWG 16 I think this is a good experiment. We might beable to buy them in a other valley (100 meter rolls) but since that is around 1.5 hiurs away I decided to first go for this, after all... a cable is easy to replace, just I need to be reminded that if the steppers do 'weird' I need to take teh cable into account for any problems.


2) A 35V / 500VA transformer was also quite impossible. Funny thing is, if you tell them that you need a transformer for 500VA, they look strange at you and ask you if you really need 500 V. Then I am generouse and tell them I need them as around '15 Ampere' (I calculated 5 engines, motion-tech at 4 Ampere each)

Needs some small stuff still like Alu-plate, 'trek ontlasting' (no idea what that is in english) and some other small things.

That's all for the quick update!

Ries

Ries…
'trek ontlasting' (no idea what that is in english)

Not sure where you got this…but it is dutch and in English it's “ pull relief ” !
Maybe you are looking at some Netherland parts supplyer ?

Good luck with your build & shopping !
Amicalement, Robert ;)

Robert,

I got it because I am dutch, just happen to life in Ecuador...
Pull Relief/Strain relief will do it for me :)

Ries

Ries, you are doing okay! Goed gedaan! Maybe practise some more welds on scrap first. With MIG, go downwards when you do a vertical.

Kitchen science!
 

Thanks Gerald, and having fun aswell :)

Today's project was all about kitchen science.

Although I don't have the transformer yet, I was going to make the rest and left enough room for a big transformer in the size of 110x130 on the back plate of the cabinet.

Pictures are attached.

The first picture shows the global overview of the wiring.
The second just a nice 'look through'.

Todo still:

1) Make room for the cables for the micro switches.
2) Add resistors to Gecko's
3) Triple check the high voltage 115V wiring.
4) Ti-wrap the high voltage wires if I know for sure everything is fine and tested.
5) Attach the transformer to the backplate
6) Create cable holes in my cabinet, we needed to buy a puncher for this but we couldn't find one yet...

On the Mechmate itself I need to do all cabling and I need to order and drill the Z plate still, the Y car is also done....
I think I will assemble it first without the paint, and if everything is file I will dis-assemble, paint and re-assemble, so I know for sure I don't have to do any welding after painting.

Ries

Control box testing with EMC2.
 

Hey all,

today I could finally test my control box. I used EMC2 for testing because MACH3 refused to start on my Dell C840 computer, it just hung there waiting for something I have no idea about. Not sure but well, it didn't work. Although EMC2 also didn't work in the beginning, for some reason I messed up the installation on teh computer and had to re-install EMC2. However, I do have some latency problems with testing because it's a laptop, sometimes the latency jumps through the roof from 8000ns to several ms. I am trying to get hold of a new old computer to fool around with and see how that will go.0

Here is a video of todays work: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TUHiGlzrYlA

So today it leaves me with a working control box, didn't test all gecko's and steppers though but it looks good. 115V circuit is working, PMDX is working, ventilator, switch for router.
Since I am still missing my transformer I had to make a sacrifice to get a transformer of my amplifier, I will put it back in, but for now it's my test transformer. (25VAC 150VA), good enough for testing I think.




Todo is still:

- to wrap cables to it's final position
- get the transformer!!
- make some more holes in my cabinet a punches was sold here for 150USD so I need to find a better method :)
- strip cables, the usual...

Ries:)

Ries, looking good! Hole saw are expensive & you still need to drill a hole. Hole saw will do the job at a fraction of the price. A light deburr with a needle file after cutting will yield great finishing.
Attachment 7323

Ken,

correct... in the end I indeed bought a 22mm hole saw, and I noticed that when I did it really slow, I get a nice cut.

I do need to buy one a bit small for my cables. Then the control box is done :)

Ries

For your cables, are you using connector or just letting cable through the chassis. The later also call for some rubber gourmets.

I will to use these US$~1.0 5 pins 5A rated industrial connectors I found at local store for the stepper cables. they do come with 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8 & 9 pin. I choose the 5 pin just in case...

Attachment 7326

Ken,

at first I was planning to run them through the cabinet using the rubber gourmets and then connect them straight to the gecko's, I think most people did it this way, right?
I will hardly disconnect the cabinet anyways, so this seems like a good option for me.

However, I also like the idea of these plugs, I would need to see if I can get them here through.

Ries

Here is a quick update from my end.

After a 6 day holiday in Florida in the beginning of Dec and some holiday and family time, I could manage the squeeze in two full days of working.
Last week I welded plates for the feet aswell as finalizing welds on various places that where initially some tack welds and we are getting ready to have the whole system to be painted!

I am starting to be more excited about it, because now it finally will look like a real MM :)

Oo... and still, my welding is not as good as I would like it to be, but I am having fun with it.


In the mean time at home I have been playing a lot with EMC2. I have been re-compiling a Linux kernel with just the modules and settings that I needed to, aswel as compiling RTAI 3.7 and the latest version of EMC2. I used Debian lenny as my base system and installed xfce4 as my desktop environment leaving me with a much faster and responsive system that looks very appealing. I need to find some cool looking mechmate colored background for my desktop and login screen....

In EMC I set my pulse frequency to 40Khz, which seems to be plenty enough as far as I can see and at the same time I can plug in USB stick, do network communications and such. I have been even tempted to do some programming around Q-CAD, but first I need to finish the machine.

attached a picture of me and Jairo and the machine in it's state of last week.

Ries

Proud parents for sure :)

I see you have very high x and y rails, and I see the one stop block on the x-rail is low down - I hope you understand all the factors with the high rails. (Have you tried to fit a motor and rack yet?

(Your y-car is the wrong way around, probably just for the picture)

Happy to see news from you, Ries.
Happy new year and good luck.:)

@Claus, thanks!

@Gerarld:
1) The y-Rails are indeed higher then was planned, this was mainly due to bad grinding disk available here in Ecuador so we decided to just leave them high.
We already made provisions so that the stepper will fit (tested) and that we have slightly different stop blocks.

2) I don't see how the Y-Car is wrong :confused: I did check if a router could fit and tested if I can reach the whole bed with it. Would it matter if it's rotated 180 degrees?

thanks for the quick peek on my build!

Ries

Ries, in the above photo, I believe your 0,0 position is furthest away from the camera. (Can confirm that by the x and y cable chain brackets).

However, on the y-car, the 45 degree bent lip for mounting the pushbutton box, should be towards the 0,0 side.

I think I see what you mean, my 3D brain isn't working at the moment almost 12 here...

However, we can turn the Y car around.

thanks for the look.. something to remember.

Ries

Gerarld,

you whew right... I did orient the car incorrectly, however at the same time I discovered that my I car was bend in teh wrong directions...Ooops. Nothing mayor though, I just moved the par that connects the rails to the other side of the Y-Car.

Current status is that the control box houses my old laptop (thank you shipyard Jongert!) and fully tested with EMC2 and my control box is ready... My transformer is on it's way to Ecuador from the USA. Send from Antek to a friend.. he send it to me...
My Z-Plate is ready.. hurraaay! because it took me some time to find one in the first place, not a gauge plate but this one will do for my kinda work, it's stainless steel and hardened aswell. Broke on bit on it :)
Table and all other parts are ready for painting.

Hopefully by the end of this week I will have it painted, need to say how my freelance programming works goes... Don't want to have to clients waiting :)

As soon as it's painted, I will post pictures again.

Ries

It's blue and ready for wiring - Quito, Ecuador
 

Unfortunatly I didn't had time for the paintjob myself, but my father in law did find some time to make it all blue.

It's one base layer and 4 layers of blue and I think it even looks close to the original MM blue !

Here is a picture: http://www.rvantwisk.nl/~systemcms/IMG_0227.JPG

since my control box is ready and well tested by powering up/down my laptop and testing all realtime related items in EMC and electronics I am ready to do some wiring. So tomorrow we will start doing just that.

I have also tested the path going from q-cad to EMC2 using a dxf2gcode converter that runs right in the control box aswell as doing this really fancy in pro/engineer and pro/nc, makes me very happy.. although I still need to learn a lot in that area.

But first I need to concentrate on wiring and thinking about the correct order of doing so...

Ries

Hi Ries, would you mind reducing that photo size please? (Or give me permission to do it)

Gerald,

sorry about that! It's rescaled to 600 width, I though that the forum would do that for me with external URL's....

Ries

Maybe the forum could be set to re-scale external pic size, but that wasn't the BIG problem . . . . your file size was 2 000 kB and no forum can scale that! :)

It's breathing, humming and moving, seems to be happy to, a new MM is born!
 

Hey Guys,

We are more then happy to announce that our mechmate is born, is breathing, humming and did made it's first baby steps into some wood working (at 600mm/sec).

First of all I want to thank Gerald for his excellent design, during the build I keep being amazed by it's simplicity but well though of concepts and design. When my motors are 'engaged' the thing is amazingly ridged!!

Second I want to thank all the forum members here for there support towards other builders give ideas help out and find solutions, amazing!

For what we initially did, it worked perfectly, both EMC and MM did work very nice together and I have almost guesstimated correctly (at 5cm over the long axis) the site of the table correctly in EMC's settings.

We had a slow build of around 12 Months (looking back at my first message, and first build image :) ) but this was well worth, we took the time, no rush for us in-experienced people... We (my father in law and me).

Status right now is since that the baby is born, we need to write the emergency stop still (important!) build also the start/stop buttons. For now I am going to leave out the limit switches, I am not sure if I need them at this point, it seems that when proper homed EMC/MACH protects you quite well, need to have some more experience in that though.
Also we need to tighten up some wires on the MM and control box, stickers!+ number, we need to have a vac (some day) we need to have a cable chain (impossible here in EC!)

Anyways, here is a little video of that we did: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0nPUuqPKtYc

PS: turn of the sound, I made a mistake with the music... I am uploading a new one, but first I need to sleep....

Ries

Congratulations Ries! You did everything at the right time......you researched and planned and took it step by step. It must be the Dutch blood that we share ;):D

Well done Ries. Congratulations (Felicitaciones!) Joe

Well done and enjoy.

Congratulation Ries! Well done!

Oops, I forgot to mention Jairo and Karina, who were the biggest helpers for Ries. Felicitaciones feliz cumpleaños! :D

Great progress Ries. Congrats for your first cuts and your upcoming number. You did a great job. Claus

Ries,

Congrates and well done!!!

Thanks everybody!

Jairo was a huge help and I couldn't have done it with out him.
I am also going to teach him to use the machinel. He is a retired metal worker and always in for a challenge, since we met 5 years ago he started to like some woodworking and he seems to like it. It's funny, I speak just a tad spanish, and his english is limited to 5 words, but together we could pull it of using hand and feed signs, and showing examples of ideas using materials.
He always made is drawings on his work using MS Paint, but I am planning to teach him some Q-Cad so he can make better drawings, so that can be fun to...

I will keep posting pictures...

If any of you have questions, please let me know...

Ries