Alright fellas, Progress report...X rails cut, ground, bored, stops welded, primed and 2 coats of paint, needs sanded and another coat... Y rails cut, half ground, bored, no paint yet...gantry welded, one side bored, because I went with heavier material I'll tap the tubes directly. Main beams bored and tapped, still haven't sandblasted the table yet (figured I can do that when I get the gantry completed and when its not raining). The y car has been completed for a while and the z stuff is done including the spindle mount which I fabricated myself from aluminum (copied from a simple mount). If time allows tomorrow I'll finish up the last of the rails and might get to some blasting. I won't start leveling rails and stuff until I can move it into position sometime this next week. Still have to fab the energy chain supports yet :( Pete you were right, a whole lot left to do, but its moving faster now. Thanks for all your support.

Still have no pics to offer up, son has a few though.

Update, Finally got a chance to spend some time in the shop, Painted the frame and gantry, ended up using spray cans (9 large cans of primer and 12 of blue)(still could use more) because too cold outside (20 degrees) and because of that I now have blue hair from climbing under the table. Call it 'Smurf Syndrome'. I attached the x rails, I'll place the gantry on this morning and get it rolling, bore and tap the beams to attach the e-chain supports. I do have a question about the proxy/stop blocks, what thickness of the material is OK? I bought 1 X 1 angle at Home Depot and it seems a bit thin. Should I fab them or just order them from Metalhead Mike?

Next is final assembly of the control box (I may end up changing some of the configuration, not sure yet) and placement on the side of the machine, attaching the e-stop boxes, rough in wiring, final assembly of the y car and rails, mount and connect spindle and vfd, pump, cooler and water lines. Still a lot to go, but this is the fun stuff.:)

The blocks I mounted on the rails are different than the plans. 10 10 248 and 10 20 248 I modified into an L shape out of longer piece of steel. The block portion is the same size as the prints but the I added the thin strip for the proximity switch location with a safety distance calculated in as seen here. I made a completely different block for the B axis with adjustment for racking as seen here. The M1 18 20 I used .25 angle and flat steel instead of .2 and .3 square stock.

They are not that hard to make just tedious.

Pete, How does that adjustment work for the racking? Are you using micro switches for your proxys? I ask because I don't see any holes in the rail.

Most machines will use a normally open switch wired NC and monitor for a loss of signal voltage or a mechanical switch held closed looking for a recess to cause a change of signal (I do not prefer the later as I have seen mechanical switches break internally and the plunger not release). This is where I am assuming you are stating about a hole in the rail where the prox switch would be constantly be sensing the rail and when the rail would disappear it would switch off. I have my home switches (PNP prox switch) set to look for a gain of signal to trigger. That is why the one plate is elevated. My thought process was that since the machine will most likely be moved, it would be nice to have a fine adjustment for the home switch for adjusting the racking plus since our base is not a huge chuck of cast milled out I figured a little movement is most likely going to happen. Early on I read that most set the racking by powering down and pulling the gantry against the stops and powering back up. This assumes a perfect world where nothing would change. I elected to do it electronically with home switches. I must admit that I have not gotten to the mechanical Emergency stop switch yet and I am using the proximity switch for the Estop for the time being. The inherit downside of this is if there is a break in the wire the signal will not make it back to the breakout board to trigger the Emergency stop circuit. This is why the piggybacking of home and Estop from the same source is not preferred to me. But not being endowed with wealth and money leaves me with the lesser option for the time being. The Estop would be the one wired NC looking for the loss of signal on my machine and would be just prior to the hard stop blocks.

Does this answer your question?

Well Pete that makes perfect sense to me. There's always more than one way to skin a cat. Thanks for the explanation.

Pics of Ol'Blue
 

Here is a few pics to show the progress.
http://farm8.staticflickr.com/7411/1...5b794acc_m.jpg
and
http://farm4.staticflickr.com/3767/1...c59c761a_m.jpg
And the rail picture before I pulled the tape off the V part
http://farm4.staticflickr.com/3695/1...2892809b_m.jpg

Still working on the rest for now

Wow does the underside picture make it look long.

Well it is 14 feet long, 168 inches or 4267.2 mm long.:D I tried to follows Darren's lead as far as size and storage underneath. Don't you love all the blue paint everywhere? What a mess. Its OK though because I'm painting the floor white epoxy once everything is moved back into some sort of order. The shop has become the catch-all and really needs reorganizing (one day).

Love it.

Just out of curiousity, why 14' and not 16'?

5 X 12 table, another 2 ft makes it even tighter in the shop, still thinking of adding an indexer to the last bit. You don't find much material at 12 ft as it is. Funny you ask, I thought if I decided to go to larger I'd have to build that much more on the shop:eek:

I thought maybe two 4x8 sheets.

Maybe this will make you salivate

From the archives

Yeah but that would make the cutting surface 16 and the OAL 18, That's Too Much for what I need. For the most part 12' materials are about max, the only thing I've seen longer was marine grade luaun at 16' many years ago. I currently buy 5x12 Sapele faced 20mm marine ply ($400+/- plus freight per sheet) that is imported through Florida). Overall I think 2 MMs would be better.

Ask your wife, she will tell you that bigger is better is a man thing, personally I think the bigger the better. :D But you are right, 2 machines would be better as you can make the machine to the process needed.

That indexer look pathetically easy to make, even I could do that. Hmmm, I could modify a grizzly lathe, throw it up onto the table, fasten it down and Voila, ready to roll. (sounds easy anyway). I don't think that guy even did that.

Hey Pete, should I go ahead and level the rails and all that where it sits or should I wait until its moved 20 feet away to the other side of the heap?

Wait til you move it to its final position.

Yeah that's what I thought. Thanks. Happy New Year Everyone! I'll spend some time working on the MM this afternoon.

Alrighty then, I'm wiring the control panel now and had a question about grounding the shielding to something if anything. Particularly the signal wires. I did my table testing successfully (a long time ago) but grounding wasn't an issue and since then had taken it apart to put away until this day. I don't know if ground loops are created or if a common ground to the box is good. I've looked in several threads and have become more than confused. :confused: Please help me find a thread with the info. Thanks

It is good if you connect only one end (preferably at the source, in the box) you can connect them in star (all to one point, common point) but be sure that you have good ground coming from the power lines connected to that same spot only.
On couple of our machines on which build I participated we always made cables from every shield, but have not connected them to anything if not needed. Usually it was not needed, except we always connected spindle cable shield to ground.

So you are saying that the connection from the bob to the drivers don't need grounded? Or commonly grounded?

You "should" ground them its a correct way of doing it, always use star grounding.

the quotes on "should" mean that I encountered few situations where the ground was maybe not correctly done in the building and was doing more harm than good transmitting noise all around, so for the time being it worked better without it, until ground issue was resolved.

It is a 'Drain'. Therefore it must run from one point to another. If it is connected at 2 points, it will 'Loop' and not Drain. Most people make the common mistake of using the drain wire for the ground at both ends and that should not be. A drain is something different altogether. A Drain captures the noise around the wires and drains it to ground. A ground carries the unbalanced load of a power device. That is why idiots get killed when they cut the copper ground wire at a substation when stealing copper. It carries the unbalanced load.

I wasn't quite sure if I needed to for the short runs to the drivers but clear now, thanks guys!

Very good description, Pete.

This is how its done.
http://www.mechmate.com/forums/showthread.php?t=282

Tom,
The pictures are privately listed, you need to change that in order for them to show up. The link is shown in the notification email that you posted something but is not shown on your thread here.

Coming along nicely from the pictures in your photostream.

Sorry about the pictures not showing up, I'll get them to show one time and not the next.:confused:

I am still working on the wiring right now but not done, will try to post pics later, maybe, perhaps...

try looking at these

http://www.flickr.com/photos/thomas_ayres_jr/

Man, that looks cold. Nice trailer

Thanks, that's a 'dog kennel/shooting brake' that we did for Garden and Gun Magazine. They hosted a hunting show in Charleston in late November. These were taken for reference (memory is getting shorter as I get older). The whole idea of the thing was to take your dogs (up to 4), mount your guns on the side, go into the field, release the hounds, gun down unsuspecting prey, come back to the trailer, pour a glass of scotch from the decanter set (not shown), or glass of wine stored in side cabs, fire up a stogie from the humidor (inside the drawer) in celebration, blah, blah, blah. You get the picture.

Alright I need opinions, other than 'you're taking a long time on this build:rolleyes: Should the spindle power be controlled by the main switch inside the control box with a separate on/off switch & separate contractor, or, just run mains from main power switch to general breaker with/without switch control? Estop? If I run the power through the control box should I run the e-stop off the BOB through a contactor?

Wow. A lot of questions!

Since you are in the states, you should use one disconnect to kill all potential to a machine

An emergency stop should kill all dangerous potential unless the disabled potential is more of a hazard than leaving it energized. Air ballast, etc...

Emergency stop should interface with both the BOB via signal and a main line contactor that kill all power to the devices the are required to be disabled per NFPA 79 and UL508.

The e-stop stops the pulses to the spindle but not the power, does that count as compliant?

The VFD should decelerate and ramp down to 0 Hz. However you are controlling it. It is better to have it ramp down than to allow it to coast in most applications.

Sorry Tom, I should have explained better. Killing power to a VFD (incoming power) when the VFD is under load can destroy a VFD just as breaking the lines on the load side well running can destroy the VFD. Most brand VFD manufacturer state this in their manuals and have wiring examples supplied for how to handle most basic wiring schemes. Some VFD manufacturers allow external overloads between the VFD and multiple motors but have additional parameters and wiring to accommodate this. TB Woods and Vacon to name some. Hitachi has additional safety features for personnel protection devices.