Still trying to figure out how this thread has not moved to the 'Construction Started' area yet.

Huh? What do you mean? :)

Deere Mich.
I see that you have moved.
I hope you like your new home.
Nice colour by the way.

What a good day today!
To start with spent the morning at the local woodworkers club, always a good time when mates are playing in a shed. We are in the progress of making a bar.
Then the afternoon working on the Mate. My daughter sorted out and the nuts and bolts, gee hope I can remember where they all go again.

Attachment 14540

Shimmed and aligned and spaced the X Rails. That took a little time! I'm to within 0.5mm which for now I am happy.
Attachment 14541

Made up a rack to spray my springs. I had these made so are not zinc plated or anything so a light coat of paint to keep the rust at bay. Can you guess what colour I chose.
Attachment 14542

Fitted up the racks on X & Y axis. spent a bit of time cleaning to give the 3M VHB tape the best chance of working. Still not 100% on the stuff but it looks to have work for all of you so blind faith in the forum stands for now.
Attachment 14543

Came across one issue today that had past my attention. I had a local engineer bore out the pinions for me. I picked them up a few weeks ago and never paid a lot of attention. A little hard to see but one of them must have spun in his chuck and left it a little rough. I had nothing to lose so spent some time with the diamond files and cleaned up a lot of the burrs. Time will tell if I need a new pinion. what ever happens I don't think I will go back to that engineer.
Attachment 14544

Mounted the prox switches
Attachment 14545

Fitted the spider into the Y car.
Attachment 14546

Repaired a flat tire for my kids. Don't know how many miles that cart has done in the last couple of days.
Attachment 14547

Made some teflon washes from a cutting board.
Attachment 14548

Did a bit of layout work on the control board.
Attachment 14549

And finally mounted the two control boxes. One for the main panel and the second for the VFD. I did a fan and filter system on the smaller box, but neglected to take pictures. Will post them with the next update.
Attachment 14550

Your build is looking great!!!

1. Without pics, your WW club isn't building a bar. :)
2. Blind faith has served me well on numerous occasions during my MM build.
3. Pinion looks fine to me.
4. Glad to see the kiddos wearing helmets. Hopefully they are seatbelted as well.
5. Keep up the good work. You are in the home stretch, and looking great.

The top of the teeth should not pose a problem, just remove the sharp burrs. The pressure angle is where the contact is made. Just do not forget to use a good grease to help prevent wear. I do not understand why they chucked it on the teeth and not the hub. If they needed to turn down the hub, they should have used a mandrel first then bored.

...or the 3 or 4 jaw chuck wouldn't close down far enough and they got lazy.

safety issue: I think that pink table on the drill press is dangerous:eek:

Hurshy one of the local cabinat shops gave me a 3.5m section of the pink counter top. It was lift over from a job (what job would ever require pink) and it had than sat around for years. No one wanted to buy it, don't know why!. As for me if its free I turn colour blind.

if it was free I would have taken it too. it looks like at the pace you are going that you are going to be running soon. Best of luck. what type of proximity detector did you buy?

The prox switches are "Inductive Proximity Sensor Detection Switch NPN DC 6-36V" I am hoping they will work picked them up on ebay for $2.50 a piece.

No reason they would not, just use small relays (coil > 400 ohm) to keep the current below their 100mA max, or if you are using them with 12V optocoupled board you should be fine

Which 12 volt optocoupler board do you mean Danilo !?

something like this:
http://www.winfordeng.com/products/rly104.php
Though, I used these:

http://www.factorymation.com/s.nl/sc...gory.259182/.f

I thought I did not need any relays if I was going to conect them upto a 126 BOB.

You shouldn't need the relays for your particular BOB. If you experience noise or faulty estops...you may need to add the relays or some other type of isolation. Make sense?

I've been running my sensors straight off the BOB for years and they have been fine.

@ sean Thnx, but I know the relay boards solution....but was asking for the opto coupler board (I only know the one of Mike offered on this board - with arduino - which is nice but more then I need. So I was interested into a simple 4 or 6 channel optcocoupler board to isolate the inputs (not want to use relays).

https://www.sparkfun.com/products/9118

This place has cute fun single and multiple isolation things

Thnx Sean.

Just catching up here. I run my proximity switches right to the PMDX board with no problems as of yet.

Progress now looks to have slowed, but I think it is like building a house the big frame and roof goes up in a week and then the fit out takes 6 weeks. Well I think I am on the fit out.
Motors all attached temporarily. will take them back off to do a table top test.

Attachment 14563

Finish of a fan and filter for the VFD Box.

Attachment 14564 Attachment 14565

And ran all of the wiring, coolant and an air line around the frame. Well at least I thought it was all until I remembered the earth line.

Attachment 14566 Attachment 14567

Wow...

Like the Adel clamps...very clean and tidy!

..you may consider a small sticker or label to cover that hole on the back of the stepper. It will get VERY dusty soon.

Great progress!

Sean I had read many reminders in various threads about the covers for the hole in end of motor, and always thought "I must do that" but until today I had just kept putting it off. Thanks for the prompt . I will gratefully except all suggestions.

The masking tape I put on years ago starting to peel off.

Well progress is being made, much of the wiring is connected. I am having some trouble getting my head around mapping the pins and ports through PMDX126 - Ethernet Smoothstepper - into Mach. If anyone feels like sharing their wisdom please feel free to share away.

My setup is Mach3 - ESS - PMDX126 - PMDX133 - G203V

then PMDX107 for Huanyang spindle control

and hopefully PMDX145 for HEDSS pendant

I have had the steppers turning under PMDX test mode and tuned the geckos, but as yet have been unable to move them under Mach. I know it is just going to be a setting or three in the ESS or Mach that I need to get correct.

I see on one off the million or so pages I have printed off this forum that I should probably put and EMI filter on the mains input to the VFD. Can someone point me in that direction of where to find one.

You may not need one. I only have ferrite cores on my mains. It all depends on how noisy your VFD is.

Pete will wait to see what happens with the noise problem first.

I do have a question. I am wanting to add some safety into my tool changes. (disable all movement & spindle). I have read much here about switches on gantry to isolate spindle and killing power etc.
I was thinking could I use a toggle on the fault input on the 126 BOB. my reading of the manual says that this would disables all outputs. (steppers, PWM to VFD drive etc.) without tripping contactor and killing all power like the estop. Will this work.

The BOB has limited features that will allow you to do this as a MACRO or subroutine other than a feedhold or spindle power down feature.

If you using the VFD, you could wire a remote switch to the enable/disable input on the spindle.
On a router, I used a simple switch on the gantry to remove power to the device.

Since VFd's don't like switch or contactor between the "drive and the head", your options are limited, but not unsafe.

Switching off power is the safest.

Ken I know switching off power is the safest but not completely practical with a VFD.
1. they don't like power on and off on a regular basis.
2. it turns a 30sec job into minutes with the time taken to let drive completely drain capacitors and then after bit change time for VFD to initiate and power up. Now a 3-4min job. A dozen or more changes turns into and hour or so a day.
I know electronic control through BOB is not 100% but we put our lives in the hands of electronics every day and trust them to do what they were made to do.

Save your fingers or the VFD, u gotta decide.
I just switch off the VFD manually. i.e. press the red button on the VFD. I don't find it troublesome at all.
So far, the stepper motors stay put when I change tools. Maybe I'm overly optimistic, but I feel extremely safe & secured doing it after a few thousands tool changes.

The Hitachi WJ200 I have has a safety circuit built into it that I use to disable the spindle while doing a tool change with an emergency stop button that is linked only to it. It will not run if a forward or reverse signal is sent to the drive until it is reset. I do not run mine through a safety unit as shown only through the contact on the emergency stop push button.

Below is a snapshot from the manual.

Need a little guidance!
I cannot get any movement in my steppers through ESS.
I have movement on all motors in test mode on the PMDX126.
But when connected up to ESS and mach nothing.
I connected up the Estop, pause and resume they all activate mach. So I have a connection through the ESS no motors thou.



Any suggestions

Verify your step direction terminations according to the 126 to your ESS to your Ports and Pins.

thanks Pete I don't know how many times I checked the pin outs yesterday. I had one of those light bulb moments during the night. Charge pump. set the pin out for that and to life did the motors come.

Now onto the spindle control with PMDX107. I have manual control on the 2.2kw huanyang spindle. changed all the specs according to various post here and all seems well. starts and stops and spins right up to 24000rpm. But as yet no control through mach. More reading tonight and trials tomorrow. If any one has used this combo. PMDX126 - PMDX107 - and huanyang drive could you point me to your thread...

Dust is close...

Mich, I'm setting up the same combo and with any luck it will be up and running by this weekend. I'll pass on any info. I'm sure there are others with the same that may impart some knowledge.