I didn't run any programs, since it is the 1st run-in test, I set it on the bios page.
result look positive.
Condition:
Ambient temperature range : 31C~37C
max ambient temperature 36~37C (warmest ~3hour of the day)
No external fan.
No ventilation (almost sealed box)

Result
Chassis temp range : 34~38C
Max Chassis temp : ~38C (I also measured my daily PC at the same time, 41C)
Processor temp shown on Hardware monitoring page : 60~60.5C
Remote temp (shown on Hardware monitoring page : ~49C

I may run another test with a high performance task. Do you have any programs recommendation for the task?

Could be a videogame session but may be some of the computer guys

in the forum can suggest a more technical test.

Ken, try Furmark, it will stress the graphic card, don't know any cpu specific application. But Furmark will make it hot :)

If you want to stress test the cpu try running Prime95 (its freeware). its purpose is to calculate prime numbers, which can be set to run on however many cores you have. give that a try.

Finally completed the water bed which made up of 2 painted shallow mild steel water trays made out of 2mm thick M.S. plates.

Pix speaks better than I could.

Attachment 13434
Attachment 13435


Finally! NO MORE HEAVY LIFTING!!! :D :D :D

Great going Ken,

I think then you are very close to movement!

That too :D :D :D

I get the rush evertime I think of it :D:D:D:D

Ken - did you ever mention the length of your table? seems a large one :) on the pictures

I don't know if I'd mentioned my table size previously. It has working size is 1550 x 6100mm (5'x20') & the table foot print is 2020 x 6700mm (6'7-1/2"x 22').
the rail height is 650mm (~25.6").

Due to press brake limitation, my bending contractor could not bend the gas spring mounting on the Z-spider.
After toying around with possible modifications, it seems a waste & counter-intuitive to throw such a beautiful ball joint (which came with the gas spring) away & go around cutting, grinding or whacking the spider with a hammer to ben the tab...

Wonder if this will work.

Attachment 13436

Hi Ken

You sure did not make a small table this time !!
Keep the pics coming, we are all watching with interest.

Regards
Ross

Thanks Ross,
4'x8' looks tiny in-comparison... BTW, this table is capable of 3 ton static load :) My calculator said so :D:D
Building a table isn't difficult but building one of such size that is square & straight is torturous. Especially when you are building it alone. Not forgetting, alter/tweak the design as it went along.
BUT once its done, its difficult no more :D

you building over head crane to load it?

Overhead crane or anything concoction that can load 3 tons is THE future plan. It will eventually take 5'x20'x62mm thick MS plate.
Surely I don't want to build another table just to take the extra load when I need it...
Until the overhead crane is realized, smaller pieces with muscle crane seems like a good idea....... :o steroid free muscle :D

Some update,

Made myself some cable chain with my MM from three quarter of 4'x'8' 6mm PVC sheet, Bit wear is bad!!! & because I wanted tighter kerb corners, I used 3mm bits, it breaks &/or blunt, it went through 4 bits... damn
I design the cable chain on the gantry with 140mm radius, it turn out perfect. :D :D :D

Attachment 13542

Attachment 13543

As for the beam side cable chain, I made it 220mm radius, & 3.6m long it managed to stay straight without load up to 2.4m span after which it started to sag..., but once I stuffed in the cables & the Plasma torch cable, it started to sag ate about 1.6m free span... :( :( :(

Attachment 13544

Cable laying took forever to get to this stage...:mad:
AND I have to remake all the brackets just because I wanted to place the Car motor on the far side...:o:o:o

Attachment 13545

Attachment 13546

Next is to power up the control panel..... Did I mentioned I skipped kitchen table project...:o
Wish me luck....

Very impressive on the machine and cable chain.

Very well done Ken

Ken,
looks good Ken, you workshop is getting filled. the cable gutter looks nice
regards Rik

Thanks for the kind words.
Rik, Yes, workshop is filling up quickly... can barely move myself around... The shop floor is only 1100 sq ft after all... The next workshop I'm looking for has to be at least 3000sq ft.
The cable gutter are the thickest off-the-shelf hot dipped galvanize cable tray. They come in 8ft length, good looking & cost less than US10 a piece, perforated too... :) Definitely better deal than making my own... :)

More update,
Power up the control panel went well, all those LED which are supposed to turn on came on; not smoke & explosions.
Since my panel is a sealed one, hence I took the effort to do some torture test on it. I left the panel on for a few hours & the panel temperature went to just below 40C & the drivers temp were around 55C.

Thing just went south when I connect the panel to the PC....

I ticked all the necessary boxes & punch in all the necessary numbers to config the motor, input & output pins in Mach3 & went on pressing the arrow keys on the key board. when I press the left & right arrow, the y-car moved accordingly (which is my X-axis), but when I press the up & down button, I expected the gantry (my Y-axis) will move to or away from me, instead the Z-axis moved. & when I pressed the pg up & pg dn key, nothing happened. The first thing which came through my head is wrong pin config or cable termination error, I hence went to swap the pin numbers for Y & Z axis around, but yet, the Z-axis moved when I pressed on the up & down keys, AND the gantry remain un-responsive to any keys...

Any comment on what happened?

Ken, 40C and 55C seem a little warmer that I'd like to see the electronics before you're even moving motors around. I see you have fans - is there an air inlet hiding somewhere not shown in the photos?

Your description appears to say that on your first test, Up and Down moved the Z,
and after swapping pin numbers for your second test, Up and Down STILL moved the Z.

If that is the case, then clearly your software configuration isn't taking hold, and you need to look at that.

I would use a multimeter on the "direction" input to your drivers, and confirm that you are getting the expected changes when you have the computer command one direction and then the other. Also, you mentioned that your gantry (Y) is the one that isn't moving. That's the one with two motors. Do you have one or two sets of pins controlling the drivers for the Y? Perhaps you can post a list of which pins are wired to which drivers, and a screen shot of your config. You might even find the problem while you're doing that. <grin>

There are no ventilation, the panel is sealed... I think 55C is a tat too warm... may have to put in a piltier cooler in there or figure out something for cooling...

Yes, the gantry (Y) is the one with 2 motors, they share the same pin via 2 separate terminals conneted in parallel on the bob, opto isolated.
From the TinyControls PP-BOB-v2 – Parallel Port Breakout Board manual,
"PP-BOB-v2 has dedicated STEP /DIRECTION outputs for four independent axes named X, Y, Z & A axis. The X axis signals are double buffered and taken out to 2 individual connecters named X1 and X2 axis allowing easy connection to 2 motors on the same axis."

I should had posted the pinout list earlier... my bad...

##PS,
I went through the wiring again & realized I must had went color blind when I was connecting up Y1, & Y2... corrected accordingly, I don't think this mistake will burn the Driver... but I'm sure the motors are alive & well ;)

(OUTPUT) Pin 1 => charge pump (on board charge pump)
(OUTPUT) Pin 2 => STEP for Y1-axis & Y2-Axis (share pin with separate opto-isolated terminal)
(OUTPUT) Pin 3 => DIR for Y1-axis & Y2-axis (share pin with separate opto-isolated terminal)
(OUTPUT ) Pin 4 => STEP for X-axis
(OUTPUT) Pin 5 => DIR for X-axis
(OUTPUT ) Pin 6 => STEP for Z-axis
(OUTPUT ) Pin 7 => DIR for Z-axis
(OUTPUT ) Pin 8 => -----
(OUTPUT ) Pin 9 => Plasma ARC ON/OFF->Mach3 《ENABLE 1》
(INPUT ) Pin10 => CAP04 (Yellow) UP =>Mach3 《TORCH UP 》
(INPUT ) Pin11 => CAP04 (Green ) DOWN => Mach3 《TORCH DOWN》
(INPUT ) Pin12 => CAP04 (Brown) TOUCH =>Mach3 《PROBE》
(INPUT ) Pin13 => Plasma ARC OK => Mach3 《THC ON>
(INPUT/OUTPUT) Pin14 => Limit switches
(INPUT ) Pin15 => E-Stop in pin (dedicated pin on BOB) using a 240V relay to from the Physical E-stop circuit to feed a 5V signal via a signal relay should do the job.
(INPUT/OUTPUT) Pin16 => Remote START/RESUME button => Mach3 hot key
(INPUT/OUTPUT) Pin17 => Remote PAUSE button => Mach3 hot key

Update on troubleshooting
 

More test & fiddling,
Re-installed Mach3, re-configured, re-whatever I can think off.... No good...:mad:
I swap around the Motor pin designation, disregard of what pin number I plug in, including mixing up STEP & DIR of all motors, the result is the same:mad::mad:
X-axis (Y-car) response only to Left & Right key, & Z response to up & down key. the Y (twin motors) never response to any key... just bite on hard... Same result using the on screen MPG buttons...

Wiring were checked & re-chanck but don't seem to see any mistake in this department, but I could be wrong...

Its an hour to mid-night, the forum Sages' wise words... starts to ring in my head... "have a pint & everything will be all right" :cool::cool:

I'll do just that :) :)

Ken,Just saw this and realized there is something wrong, Pins 14,16,17 you marked as (INPUT/OUTPUT) actually can't be used as inputs because they are buffered in OUT direction. If you try to drive these pins externally (treating them inputs) you are actually fighting the output buffer and can destroy it. :confused:

Ken, Just a thought, can it be possible that the twin motors are fighting each other ? I mean you need to swap one stepper phase wire from motor to drive if you want them to move in opposite direction (as the step/dir signals are common for both drives)

Thanks Anil for the heads up. Looks like, I must re-arrange the pins later :mad:,
For now, only the motors are connected, so I hope the BOB is still healthy ;)
I know from previous experience that if everything is working, the twin motor in opposite direction wired, the gantry will move vigorously bot will not trevel. BUT the current situation is that the 2 motors didn't even make a move... hence opposite wired or not isn't an issue.
Will swap a proven working PC with a Mach3 copy in it... I had a hunch that the Mach3 copy is corrupted in some way...

Hi Ken

As you know we normally slave the A axis to the X axis and then reverse the step direction for the A axis in Mach3.
Your BOB makes provision to slave JP3 "for a gantry style machine" but does not actually make any mention of reversing the axis direction.
I am not good at assumptions so as you have not said specifically - have you dropped the motors to see what happens when they are not in the rack?

Regards
Ross

Swapping PC didn't work. :(:(

Will do as Ross suggest, drop the motor from the rack

Ken

For the time being just point your attention to the part that does not work.
Instead of slaving on your dual X axis on JP3 connect two separate axis to the motors like X and A and slave them in mach and then reverse the direction of A in Mach.
This will confirm your wiring to the motors.

Regards
Ross

Like that idea ;) Thanks
Will get on with that.

Ken, just to rule out problem with BOB, Wiring and Computer Cable, assign each outpput pin as x-axis DIrection in mach (one by one) and use a multimeter to check changing level at BOB terminals (at the same time you can check the other end of wiring that is connected to drives for level change).

By the way did you try to swap the BOB itself, or the Cable ? I see you have 2 of them :)

Not yet swap the BOB.

Update, Pull out the twin motor & plug them into pin 8 & 9 together. The motor moved but only in 1 direction.

Will come back after lunch... I'm starving...

Ken your notes indicate that pin 9 has been set in Mach3 to control your plasma arc. Did you check that it was disabled in Mach before your tests?

Regards
Ross

Ross, I changed the configuration for test purpose.

Update.

Swapped the PC, MACH3 copy, BOB. Result remains bad.
The last thing to swap is the printer cable, going to local computer shop to get a new piece.

Anything which I over looked???

be sure to measure resistance between pins on the extreme ends, more resistance means bad cable!

Swapped to a short cable...
Nothing works!!!

ken have you set up the charge pump in mach?

Also, Have you checked the e-stop circuit.

Sean, I did set up the charge pump in Mach3, it works ok as I see the charge pump LED on the BOB lit up gloriously.
Also, the e-stop works flawlessly too.

I took the night off for re-read the Mach3 manual word by word. will re-install Mach & see what happens next...

Even more update,
After some fun playing with my 5 year old, I came back & re arrange the motor pins, both physically on the BOB & in Mach3 assignment.
I found out that pin 2 & 3 on the bob doesn't work. hence I use pin 8 & 9 which actually work.
wit Mach3, I realized a very weird behavior, as long as I connect my physical motor pins on pin 4 & 5 pair, 6 & 7 pair & 8 & 9 pair, the table will move the y car when I press left & right arrow key, the twin motors will move when I press up & down motor & Mach3 disregard what pin assignment, changing the motor pin pair does not change this.... Super weird :confused:


Anyway, I am now certain that my drivers will experience meltdown if I don't improve the panel cooling... :(