What I intend to do is rigid pipe in the brackets and a short length of flexible between the bottom of the rigid pipe to the dust foot at is attached to the spindle that way we only need to change a short length of flexible as it wears. also this give us solid pipe to the clamp too. And a longer flexible pipe will attach to the top and this will go to the Dust Collection pipe that is mount to the roof in the center of the table

Skippy

See post 277 Skippy already said mate!! lol

Cheers
Tony.

Table Wiring Started
 

Hi All,

skippy and I started wiring up both the tables today :D probably another day to a day and a half, and we should be all done!! then it will be onto modifying and installing all the electrics and electronics into the control boxes we have with the touch screens.
We are starting to see the light at the end of the tunnel now so should not be too much longer before we are cutting hopefully :)

A couple of photos of Skippy hard at work today;) and a couple of our progress after the fitting of all the cable glands to the boxes as well as getting the spindle connected and the water lines for the spindle cooling.

Hope you enjoy!!

http://i142.photobucket.com/albums/r...k/IMG_1206.jpg

http://i142.photobucket.com/albums/r...k/IMG_1208.jpg

http://i142.photobucket.com/albums/r...k/IMG_1212.jpg

http://i142.photobucket.com/albums/r...k/IMG_1211.jpg

Cheers
Tony.

Looking good guys, wont be long now.

Just one question, why do you have adjustable stops on the gantry for the Y car? and why on both rails?

..wow that looks familiar. Fantastic work.

I never thought to put a panel mount connector in the button station box for motor connections. Nice detail.

Sean

Nice work!

Very interesting to watch the evolution of the MM.

By the time I get around to building another one, they won't have rails, but magnetic levitation for the gantry and Y car. :)

Great work guys! Good to see Aussies being kept away from the sports fields :)

Unshielded motor cables close to unshielded signal cables is generally not a good idea. I suppose it depends on how close, how much unshielded and whether parallel or perpendicular . . . . .

Hmmm. Good point since i seem to get really bad emf problems everytime i build a machine.

Alan,
At the time I did not realise that the second stops on the gantry were not required. I had also pre drilled and tapped all the stop blocks I had cut, so rather than waste them and the time I had put in to making them I decided to fit them:)

Cheers
Tony.

Hi Gerald,
Thanks for your encouragement Gerald, such a great thing you got started here, Aussies & Sports comment gave me a good laugh!!
All our motor, spindle and 7core cables being used are all shielded, with the shield connected at the control box end. I am a bit of a slow starter with the electrics, and really only starting to get my head around some of it now:( however that said the electrics falls under Skippys guidance as that is his area of expertise and I guess I will be watching, helping and asking lots of questions during the wiring and commissioning as we go.
So hopefully with all the reading here on the forum and the hands on stuff wiring both machines I will have a better understanding:D

Cheers
Tony.

I hope to see lots of video. Great Job guy's.

Looking good. Please keep us updated about tuning the machines.
Red

Todays Update!!

We had to replace one of the cable boxes on our gantry's with larger one's today as everything was getting to tight and we were going to struggle to fit everything in.

We are almost finished all the wiring to my machine with only the Pause, Resume and E-Stops to connect.
We also ran a few more cables on Pauls machine with probably another days work to complete his table.
I also made a small start on the control box removing a few parts that will not be required and adding wheels to the base to make it easy for moving.
We plan to complete the control box as soon as we are finished with the table, so not long now hopefully :D

http://i142.photobucket.com/albums/r...k/IMG_1219.jpg

http://i142.photobucket.com/albums/r...k/IMG_1221.jpg

http://i142.photobucket.com/albums/r...k/IMG_1222.jpg

http://i142.photobucket.com/albums/r...k/IMG_1220.jpg

Cheers
Tony.

Tony,
You have a good lot of cables in the box mate...what else is in there except for the motor cables?

Hi Tony and Paul

Super neat cabling there Paul.
No point trying to squash cables where they don't want to go, so a good idea to increase that one control box size. Keep up the good work and I hope to see you guys cutting up stuff real soon.

Regards
Ross

Sean,

We have also run a couple of 7 core sheilded cables which loops to all the cable junction boxes for connecting up all the E-stops, pause and resume, with a few spare connections for anything else we may wish to wire in.

Cheers
Tony.

Hi All !!

With the Australian dollar very very slightly under parity with the US dollar Paul and I have decided to bite the bullet and order our Vectric Aspire software for each of our machines:D
Now we have something else to play with when we are not working on the MM's at least until they are finished, then we can start to get serious :) onto the next learning curve now :D

Cheers
Tony

Good move Tony...I am also thinking of jumping in. I am just waiting for the NEW release due end November I think. I am sure if you buy now you are entitled to the upgrade for free.

Hi Kobus,

Yes you are correct, if you buy now you not only save a few $$$ you also recieve the update to version 3 which they are looking to release the end of November, all going well.
I have been playing around with the trial version prior to the purchase, Vectric Aspire appears to be a fantastic and fairly easy to use program with heaps of functionality.
I am really looking forward to using it and designing all sorts of stuff to cut :D

Cheers
Tony.

I like the word's UNWRAP 3D STL....in the new V-3. My indexer should be more productive....with the help from Fabrice..;)
I have been a Vectric fan from day one. Looked at most CAM programs when I started, and found Vectric to be very user friendly for a stupid oke like me. This was the first program that I could take and within 5 minutes generated the CORRECT G-Code for cutting.
First bought Cut2D...then V-Carve Pro...now serisously looking to get Aspire....I need it to go forward and hopefully it should satisfy my fantasy for a while...or forever.

Kobus,

See what turned up in the mail today. Already been playing around with it, as I was able to download it and register it once I had paid for it.
No fuss and quick service from the Aspire guys!! :D

What I have seen of it so far I'm impressed ;)

http://i142.photobucket.com/albums/r...k/IMG_1225.jpg

Cheers
Tony.

Ok Ok rub it in...:p

Todays Update!!

We started the day by finishing off the last of the wiring to my table, we were also able to pre cut some of the wiring for Pauls table whilst doing mine.

http://i142.photobucket.com/albums/r...k/IMG_1226.jpg

I'm so glad we changed the main switch box to a larger box as it made things a whole lot easier to fit everything in and to do the wiring.

http://i142.photobucket.com/albums/r...k/IMG_1232.jpg

Also managed to find the time in between jobs today to paint up the mounting brackets that will be used for the dust collection on the back of the spider as well as our coolant reservoir for the spindles.

http://i142.photobucket.com/albums/r...IMG_1231-1.jpg

Paul (Skippy) hard at work pulling the last of the cables through the E-Chain.

http://i142.photobucket.com/albums/r...k/IMG_1228.jpg

And finally both tables fully wired, with all circuits being checked and found to be all good :D got to be happy with that!!

http://i142.photobucket.com/albums/r...k/IMG_1233.jpg

http://i142.photobucket.com/albums/r...IMG_1236-1.jpg

Next weekend we will be tackling the control boxes. We have a fair amount of work and modifications we wish to do to them, so probably another 2 to 3 full days and we should be getting close to at least having the Big Blue MM's moving under their own steam!! :D

Cheers For now!!
Tony.

Hi Tony ........SNAP !!!


Attachment 10563

Kobus,

Congrats on your purchase :D looking forward to seeing what you do with it now ;)

Cheers
Tony.

Todays Update,

With the tables all wired, it was time to start on the control boxes. We had to remove a lot of the existing parts from the box to allow for installation of the Geckos, and the bobs, and all the transformer stuff was retro fitted into the existing power box of the cabinet.
We also had to remove the existing work shelf as it was too small and had some metal sections fitted to it that were going to get in the way of a keyboard.
To this shelf but inside the box we also fitted a backboard and lined it with aluminium sheet before then installing the VFD and filter directly to that.
Everything fitted in and is all looking very neat.
I am having to go interstate again so no work for a couple of weeks, but as soon as I am back we are into it again wiring the box and then fitting our coolant resorvoir and flow control, then we should be ready for some cutting :D
Anyway heres some photos of todays progress.

http://i142.photobucket.com/albums/r...k/IMG_1238.jpg

http://i142.photobucket.com/albums/r...k/IMG_1239.jpg

http://i142.photobucket.com/albums/r...IMG_1240-1.jpg

http://i142.photobucket.com/albums/r...k/IMG_1244.jpg

http://i142.photobucket.com/albums/r...k/IMG_1248.jpg

Once we are up and running the control box will be preped and painted to match MM.

Cheers
Tony.

Very Spiffey - I like it

Wow !!! That is super nice !!! time to read back on those cabinets!!!

Hi Boys

I see the support board offcuts have come in handy already.

Regards
Ross

Nice work, congratulations!

two pmdx125 per machine? thats 4 parallel ports, how do you plan to use them with mach3? smoothstepper?

Nice build!!

Very nice!
Would you be a dear & tell me the inclination angle of the screen? I'm planning to build a control station like the on you have here. Love it!

Hi PEU as we are planning on running an indexer and the BOB's only support 4 motors plus I/O in standard mode. We decide to use two BOB's. You only need the secound parallel port if you as doing the Extended I/O. Also gave us and upgrade path to smoothsteppers as true parallel port on PC are getting rare.

We decided to wire up the Control box with 5 gecko's and all hardware to support the Indexer later on. Less work later on also. We can orginise to fit every thing in nice a neat and planned out.

Control PC setup is
Mach3
Plugins
XBox 360 Controller (Jog)
Flash (Maybe needed to run some screens)
Barcode (Maybe)
Screens
MachBlue by Big Tex (Give us Zero Touch)
Other software
Touch Screen Driver (As we have Touch LCD screen)
Dual PCI Parallel port Card Driver
XBox 360 Driver (support XBox 360 plugin)

Our Main PC
Apsire Ver 2.5 soon to be Ver 3 with free upgrade:D
CAD program as well

Todays Update!!

All this small fidley stuff is taking longer than planned, but we are getting there. Still no movement as yet, hopefully next weekend we should have the control box finished and some movement happening.
We will be doing some work on the control pc's upgrading them, setting them up and loading the software so fingers crossed we should not be too far away from maybe seeing some cutting being done :D

http://i142.photobucket.com/albums/r...k/IMG_1485.jpg

http://i142.photobucket.com/albums/r...k/IMG_1489.jpg

http://i142.photobucket.com/albums/r...k/IMG_1488.jpg

http://i142.photobucket.com/albums/r...k/IMG_1487.jpg

http://i142.photobucket.com/albums/r...IMG_1486-1.jpg

Cheers
Tony.

Tony,
Nice panel work. Be careful about the Male 4 pin connectors you used. The choice of male sex on the panel will allow motor voltage to be touched by your fingers if energized when not connected. Albeit, it's DC, it might bite a little :)
Of course, if the 4 pins aren't for your motors...then everything looks UL perfect!
I am certain your aware of your choice, new comers to the forum may not see the little issue.

Awesome work as always.

Sean

Sean,

You are absolutely correct regarding the male pin fittings, probably should have been female for the reasons you stated.

Now on with todays update!!

In our case they are going to stay that way for now as the plugs will never really be removed anyway.:(

We had a busy day again today, with Paul working away on the electrics wiring up and terminating the motors back to the Geckos. He also wired up the spindle and after a little bit of setup and installation and trialing of our coolant resorvoir we test run the spindle, :D boy these things are very quite.

http://i142.photobucket.com/albums/r...IMG_1492-1.jpg

http://i142.photobucket.com/albums/r...k/IMG_1498.jpg

Some of the components to make up the coolant resorvoir.

http://i142.photobucket.com/albums/r...k/IMG_1504.jpg

This photo shows the end of the coolant resorvoir where we are able to fill and top up from the top, we also have the return coolant line from the spindle feeding back in which is the small fitting on the left hand side. There is also a drain line on the bottom and a little coolant level viewer tube on the front.

http://i142.photobucket.com/albums/r...k/IMG_1501.jpg

http://i142.photobucket.com/albums/r...k/IMG_1505.jpg

At the other end of the resorvoir we have the pump which draws from the resorvoir and pumps the coolant through the system. Resorvoir holds in excess of 15Ltrs of coolant.

http://i142.photobucket.com/albums/r...k/IMG_1503.jpg

http://i142.photobucket.com/albums/r...k/IMG_1500.jpg

We also upgraded the ram for the computer to 1 Gig and installed Mach 3, pluggins, X-Box wireless controller, and spindle pluggins. Still need to do a lot of configuring but starting to get there.
We did plunge the spindle with a cutting bit into a piece of Mdf today as well, so I guess we actually made some dust today all beit such a small amount. Who knows we might even be able to cut something next weekend :D

Cheers
Tony.

Tony
Genius idea about the coolant reservoir and level indicator.
Hopefully I didn't embarras you publicly about the connectors....your right; you really only make the connection once. But is sure makes it convenient when you want to move the machine, or move the controller inside the air conditioning to work on during the upgrades :)

Awesome work.

Sean

No worries Sean:) and thanks for your comments regarding our builds. Its great having people looking out for potential concerns with other MM builders, as some MM builders may not be as experienced as others in certain fields of the build especially when it comes to the electrics.
I would rather people advise on things than not say anything, at least you can then make an informed decision as too what to do.
Once again cheers.

Tony.

Sean
Don't worry we have will be wiring the E-Stop on the control box to turn the following power off Gecko, BOB's and VFD power but still let the computer run. So we can run the Computer running with out the other hardware running.:D

Regards

Paul (Skippy)

Paul - the Estop (AKA kill switch) is typically used for an emergency situation and is not the accepted method for de-energising industrial equipment for routine service or repair. Sean's warning and Tony's acknowledgement of the potential risk might be a better perspective to have on the issue.

My sparky takes no prisoners on the safety side of things and just last night reminded me that he wanted to install a RCD (Residual Current Device or Safety Switch) on top of the existing 4 circuit breakers already installed in the control box. He has added expense with safety devices and wiring choices and is ruthless about the whole issue of safety. Although grudging it at first I now well and truly agree that inbuilt safety in the design is a requirement, not just an additional cost.

On a more upbeat note - bet there was two happy blokes in the garage when the end mill hit the MDF for the first time. Every time I see your Saturday night pics on the forum it reminds me to get a wriggle on and work a bit harder.

Kind regards
Ross