Well done Ted....
Also, my advise, I use a tiny drop of loctite blue ( 242) ( or equivalent).
These grub screw, even at two, do have a tendency to loosen with time, hence, attracting other issues :eek:
All the best Ted !! ;)

Thanks, guys. Robert, I will heed your advise on the loctite 242. X and Y are complete and are working fine. I have to say that it is somewhat scary seeing all of that metal moving so fast on the rapids! Should have the Z completed by the end of the month, I have a local machine shop grinding it right now. Seeing the blue beast move on it's own for the first time was fantastic. I rigged up a floating ball point pin to the Y carriage and had it draw a few things. Road Runner first, of course. I was giggling like a school-girl when it finished that first drawing.

Ted

" Robert, I will heed your advise on the loctite 242. " ??
What's the advise i can help u with ??
Later, R

Robert, I was referring to your suggestion of Loctite blue on the grub screws.

Ted

4th axis question
 

I have a question about a 4th axis. For they type of woodworking (hand turned goblets on my lathe) I do now manually that makes me money, a 4th axis actually would be used constantly. As I now get to the implementation part, I am getting a big headache trying to just pull the trigger on a drive system. My primary question right now is harmonic drive vs planetary vs belt reduction for driving the 4th axis. Do I need the <1 arc-min accuracy of a harmonic drive for what I will be using it for, or will a planetary gear driven accuracy of 3 - 5 arc-min be sufficient? Initially, I would just like to be able to use the machine to rough turn the piece to shape and then I would finish by hand on my lathe. Eventually, though, I would be doing more complex, wrapped carving and inlays. The largest diameter blank I turn is about 120mm.

Thanks!
Ted

Z Slide plate
 

Z slide plate back from machine shop.

It surly looks....pretty nice & well done, but.....at what cost :eek:

Your build is getting closer & closer to the magic....day.
all the best, later.

Thanks, Robert. It cost $300 USD to have machined. It was strictly about the time savings for me. I have been traveling for work 5 days a week lately, and with my time at a premium, it was well worth it. I scheduled having this part back for this coming week since I have a week off to spend completing the beast.

Spindle wiring question
 

Wiring up my VFD now. Running a Sunfar E300 2.2kw. Mains 240v single phase. The manual shows a breaker and contactor on the mains side. Couple of questions: For my model, E300-2S0022, it is recommending a 32A breaker and an 18A contactor. Any idea why there would be such a large delta between the breaker and contactor ratings? Secondly, the manual calls for 10AWG wire for the mains. Is this little VFD actually going to pull that much current to need that large gauge wire? Also, for the folks running a separate enclosure for your VFD, are you running a contactor in that cabinet as well? If so are you feeding it from the control cabinet's main breaker or from the contactor ?

Thanks!
Ted

Z-work
 

Have my Z close to completion. Had a few gotchas. I'm going with the 350mm Z and ordered McMaster-Carr 9416K54 Gas Spring. The tube body is larger and it caused interference issues with the spider. I added some metal to the upper gas spring mount and re-drilled it to move the tube body a little closer to the Z-plate and it now clears. I also had to put my spindle mount on the table saw and cut off two corners at a 45 to clear the v-bearings. Tapped the spindle mount for one 10mm bolt and two 6mm bolts. Hope that is enough.

Quick question, the geared z-axis laser cut plate I got from Mike looks like it has a 6mm hole for the pivot point, where as the direct drive plate and the mounting tab on the spider are 10mm. I'm assuming I just need to drill it out to 10.5mm. Just wanted to be sure it wasn't laser cut to 6mm for some obvious reason that I am oblivious to.

I have power to the spindle now from the VFD (under manual control) and that thing is so quiet! Love it. Cooling system seems to be pumping water just fine with no leaks yet. Getting closer. Travelling up the east coast this week for work, so won't be able to go any further until this weekend.

Ted

Sorry I still have you beat by 22 days :)

1st Cut
 

Steve, your record is safe.

First cut today! Still so much left to do, but she can make dust!

Ted

https://vimeo.com/330372072

Congratulations.
Have fun:)

Very nice build, Ted. Have you figured out what you're going to do about the 4th axis?

Suggestion. Slap some logo's on it and earn a serial number. It would be my pleasure to add your build to the Builder's Log.

Thanks, guys.

John, I am looking for my MechMate adhesive logo that I got years ago, but no luck so far, except for the little South African flag that somehow has survived. :) If anyone has a set for sale, I'll buy!

Yes, I have added a 4th axis to try out. Went with a belt driven Nema23, 6:1, 100mm 3 jaw chuck with 65mm tailstock. Amazon purchase just to get something in my hands to try. About $350 USD. Have to decide if I am going to mount it below table surface or not. I went with the longer Z with that in mind, so that is what I'll probably do.

Ted

Ted,

PM me your address again and I will mail you some logos.

PM sent, Mike, and thank you.

Also, thank you to all of the folks who have helped me on this forum through their comments and advice. It has been far too long coming. Also, a very sincere thanks to Gerald for starting this thing, and to you, Mike, for carrying it forward. I am really looking forward to getting my serial number and beginning to learn how to use this blue beast.

Funny story about what happens when you take so long to finish your build. Going to try and get my spoilboard down here in the next few days. Wanted to hook up my XHC wireless pendant and try it out too. So I hooked up the pendant and used it to run out to all of the stops to get a rough idea of where my spoilboard was going to be positioned. When I started this project, I remember choosing to go with a 49" x 97" workable area. When I ran the gantry from stop to stop I came up with 103" and I couldn't figure out how that happened. Then I remembered that over 8 years ago when I started putting together my build, I had thought about a 4th axis even then, and had extended my axis to give me room to mount a 4th axis in front of and below my spoilboard. I had forgotten all about that. So, now to weld up some sort of brace/mounting system for it. I think I was a lot smarter 8 years ago!

Ted

Quick update. Have my spindle under Mach3 control finally. I have some concerns about pins/ports. I'm using pins 2-9 for my x/y/z/slave a axis and pins 1 and 14 for my 4th axis (b). Pin 16 is my PWM pin for my spindle. Pin 17 would be used for Charge Pump signal to spindle, but I have it ignored for now. The problem is that the PMDX-107 daughter board I am using on my PMDX-126B board is looking for a Run signal on pin 14 as well. There doesn't seem to be a way to change the 107 to look at another set of pins. Right now, with both the b axis and spindle Run set to port2, pin14, everything works. I have no idea how. I'm using an ESS Smoothstepper on the 126, and 2 PMDX-133's daisy-chained from the 126 as well. Looking through my notes from years ago, it looks like I had planned to use the 2 pins not used for a 5th axis, pins 16 and 17, and use those for the PMDX-107, but I guess I did not research that well enough back then and assumed I could control those pin assignments. I have reached out to PMDX and asked for their advice. Since my 4th axis jobs with not have a need for X movement, I suppose I could steal those pins for when I am running a rotary job, but I would rather not have to do that, especially since I will have others running this thing when I am absent. If anyone has any advice, it would be appreciated.

Ted

Update to the update. Tonight I put the PMDX-126 K1 relay in multimode setting so the PMDX-107 is controlling it now. This is handling the switching for my coolant pump. Pin 14, port 1 is putting my VFD in run mode and pin 16, port 1 is accepting the PWM signal for spindle speed. My 4th axis is using Pin 1 port 2 and Pin 14 Port 2. Everything seems to be working correctly. At least I haven't let out the magic smoke!

Ted

Well done.
It feels good when the smoke stays inside.:)

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! ;) I'm sure there is an easier way to do it.

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

congratulations on your build and good luck for the 4th Axis :)

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

Impressive design and implementation. Thanks for sharing.

Excellent work.
Where did you get the head and tailstock from?
Keep on going, it's looking good.

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

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

Hi Dude, please could you post more pictures of the detail design of your 4th axis

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

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

Very interesting! Could you provide a link to the source of the laser?

Please keep us posted.

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

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

Nice work. Thanks for sharing. Thanks for the links, too.

Nice work. Thanks for sharing. Thanks for the links, too.

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

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

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

Thanks for the info and pictures of your 4th axis