A silly experiment in cutting labels
 

I owe many pictures, so here's a few. First, the pieces all over the yard getting paint. Then three attempts at cutting some contact paper I glued to a piece of MDF. First with a 45 degree V bit, next with a micro end mill, and finally with a specialized roundover. The latter two both pulled the material
upwards and ate it, so to my surprise the 45 degree V bit did the best job.
None of it was particularly good though, so I'm still thinking up other schemes. Maybe I'll cut a stencil and then paint through it.

Could I be considered for a provisional Serial Number while I keep playing? ;)

Brad,
Congrats, good work!

Brad,
That logo looks really good. Congratulations on your build. :)

Gerald, thanks for the number, thanks for a great design, and thanks for operating a spectacular forum. I'm thrilled with my MM, and I had a wonderful time building it.

Brad, I think I enjoyed your build as much as you did - All that I had to do was to sit back and watch it happen in a very short space of time! :)

Just to confirm the correlation in another thread:

Yes, that's a '99 R1100RT. I've taken it from Boston to Washington DC. Maybe next time I'll try to stretch down to Orlando and say hi to Sean. :)

Nice bike...I had a R 1100 RT until my son managed to T-Bone a Fiat Uno at 08:00 on a Sunday morning....Son OK, Uno and Bike not so OK...Insurance decided to scrap the bike....does not look like it, but damages were close to book value they said.:mad:

Attachment 2666

After 171 000 km on the clock without a hickup...it came to a sudden death

Attachment 2668

This is the Uno.....why is it so difficult for cars to stop at STOP signs ?:mad:

Glad your son is OK... Feel sorry for your toy !
Amicalement, Robert

Just finished reading your build.
Not many things more exciting than seeing a MechMate run for the first time.
Congratulations on a nice job and extra points for using Linux.

Donald Ross

Hmm. I haven't updated this thread in quite a while. Here's what I've been up to:

I upgraded to a chinese water cooled spindle. The flow through the spindle itself involves very small apertures, so it's difficult to get a strong flow, regardless of how large the fittings or tubing outside the spindle are. If you're willing to just waste water, it's pretty easy to get flow using a fraction of standard water pressure, but it definitely bogs down small pumps, ranging from various aquarium models to 1/6 HP sump pumps.

Something to watch out for with sump pumps: They dump their waste heat into the water (duh!), so it's pretty easy to end up with hot water after a bit of runtime.

If anyone has found an inexpensive pump that works well, please let me know.

I've written a plugin for Sketchup that outputs GCode. I'll be looking for people to test it on their own drawings and objects soon.

I've been thinking about playing with vacuum hold down at some point soon.

Today, I bumped into a rather obvious mistake I made some time ago: I snapped the head off a screw I was using as a hold-down. The break was below surface level of the spoilboard, so I just forgot about it and moved on. Today I resurfaced the table (for the second time since that break), and I found the buried screw shaft, rather violently. It jogged my memory rather effectively.

My Hitachi VFD (purchased separately from the spindle) is wired to report faults back through the G540 to EMC2, so when it detected the increased current draw / sync problem on the spindle from the crash, it shut itself down, and that shut down everything else (that was nice!). I was lucky, the bit survived.

So, the obvious moral of this story is: If you lose part of a fastener inside your spoil board, dig it out immediately.

Thanks for the interesting feedback.

Brad - let us know how you have wired your VFD to get to activate teh estop, I have a relay on my Delta and sure know that i can use that - what parameter on you hitachi r u using to - is it the increased current consumption one?

RGDS
IRfan

Irfan-
Just the run mode one. If it drops out of run mode for any reason (like faults), it will stop EMC2.

Ok then even if the VFD is powered down a estop is in place right? does that not form a infinite loop - meaning while switching on if the VFD needs to power up - but we still have the relay on the vfd not letting it off the stop status???

i am hoping you are understanding what I am trying to tell here -

if I have understood you properly - you are trying to say that the estop request is just communicated to EMC but not exactly triggering a hard estop by letting the contactor off?

RGDS
IRfan

Hi Brad, sign me up to beta test your sketchup script! :)

Brad,
I would be glad to add to your beta testers.
Thanks for thinking of us!
Sean

Irfan, good question! I actually have a series of contactors for everything heavy in my shop. It allows for one disable key switch, as I have small to medium children running around, and I want to know FOR SURE that my shop is OFF when I'm not around. You wouldn't believe how attractive a green ON button two feet off the ground on a table saw is to a little person. Some of the control logic for those contactors interlinks with the mechmate.

On the mechmate, I have effectively a 'soft' and a 'hard' estop. The soft is low voltage, and disables the G540 and the spindle. The hard drops the contactor out and kills the power. The computer keyboard, and a spindle fault will both trigger a
soft estop, which maintains power. The red buttons on the mechmate trigger a hard estop. So what I described above triggered the soft estop.

More specifically, the VFD is configured to go automatically to run mode when powered on, with the speed controlled by the G540 (default is zero). The G540 enable is controlled by the VFD run mode output. So any spindle fault disables the
G540 (and informs the PC). The PC has a PWM enable for the G540, so it can kill the G540 and with it cause the spindle to go into a controlled decel to zero. So both the PC and the VFD have to be alive and happy before the G540 goes to enabled state.

Now, as for those other contactors: The digital outputs of the G540 operate low voltage relays that trigger the contactor for my dust collector, and future vacuum holddown. That is one of several possible trigger points to turn on dust collection.
The vacuum holddown is going to exceed the maximum available power in the shop, so it is interlocked with my compressor. If the vac holddown goes on, the compressor can no longer be on. I have an overall shop power budget of 40A at 240, 1 Phase.

Thats a very nice explanation Brad, and that is what exactly I had in mind too.

RGDS
Irfan

Brad just one more thing - do you have a optoisolator in between the VFD and the BoB (G540) or just have it directly connected.

RGDS
IRfan

I have optoisolators in between the VFD and BoB, but they are furnished by the design of the G540. The G540 optoisolates both the parallel port, and the spindle speed control output. For the estop, I'm running that via the relay on the VFD, which is then programmed on the VFD to provide the 'run mode' output; the relay provides isolation.

Update
 

was asked over in another thread.

The answer is that it's been working beautifully for my weekend warrior projects. It's currently configured at 420 IPM rapids on X and Y, 180 IPM Z; homing runs at 180 IPM X,Y and 30 IPM Z.

I've had zero problems with the G540, the OM7.2s or with EMC2. I had a cold solder joint in one of my DB-9s that eventually failed and was redone. I had some misery with getting waterflow through the chinese spindle with long tubes running through the cable chains.

Thanks bradm !!
 

Good to know.

Nice info..!!

I have just downloaded this package
UBUNTU-8.04-DESKTOP-EMC2-AJ13-I386.ISO,

And I will use the DIY belt drive gear.

Later on when I "understand :)" EMC2 the G540 will be ordered.

Thanks again.!!

/oopz

Brad, how is your g-code project going?

Ries

Very well for basic stuff; it's just the usual defending against weird cases that I'm wrestling with. For example, cutting sloped faces, and dealing with models that have uncuttable geometry (like voids underneath solid surfaces). I should spend a little time and package up what I have so far.

Brad, I would love to sign up your beta version.

OHHH S@#t !!! SOOO SOO NICE !!!!
 

[QUOTE=bradm;39013]was asked over in another thread.

The answer is that it's been working beautifully for my weekend warrior projects. It's currently configured at 420 IPM rapids on X and Y, 180 IPM Z; homing runs at 180 IPM X,Y and 30 IPM Z.

I've had zero problems with the G540, the OM7.2s or with EMC2.

Do understand your statement above. To be frank I have not paid attention
to EMC2..and Im the one who lost on that. (I Love MACH3 don´t think otherwise) ....

But Today
I could manage true EMC2 my 5+-axis card in all directions an with a bad but functional tool.. change message.. more to do and understand maby only 5-axels motion BUT THATS NICE... !!! even with out toolchange ! Like IT !!

THANKS BRADM guy's like U and ALL U Others U make it so NICE !!

/oopz