[pete from TN]

glad you like what you see, I am sure happy it is finally doing something more than costing me money!! And yes those limit switches sure do look mighty fine don't they.... Sure wish I had one more for the Y axis tho....peace

[hoss2006]

It's been 9 months since you started, congratulations on the birth of your mill.
Excellent work, looking forward to see you putting her thru her paces.
Hoss

[pete from TN]

Haha I get it the preggo thing clever..... seems like I gave birth to this thing altho I will probably get a ration of abuse for saying that too.... Anyways, your super videos and ideas have been a large part of this and a huge inspiration for me personally.... Thanks man...peace

[bill south]

Pete;
Satus?
Enquiring minds want to know.
Bill

[pete from TN]

Well I was having a lot of noise problems with the machine once I got all three axes working. It would move when it was not supposed to and I was unable to accurately tune the servos because when One axis moved the other two might also move just a tad for some odd reason. I decided to see if the HEDS encoder problem was what I was experiencing. So I got on the net and found the specs for the capacitor that is recommended and tried to find some locally. Radio shack had one with the same 1 micro farad value but was rated for a slightly higher voltage. I ordered the Digikey ones everyone recommended but went down to the shack and bought three of the ones that they had just to try it. Much to my amazement the machine quieted down and I was able to make the necessary adjustments for the Geckos and the motor tuning in Mach.

Last night was pretty entertaining. I could not wait to save the money to get Bobcad or similar so I decided to download cambam and give it a shot. It took me some time to play with it to get anything working and managed to do an engraving test using my daughters name in some cool cursive script. I loaded the file into mach3 and looked at it on the screen only to find it had large scribbled circles all over it for some weird reason. I got on Cambams forum to see what might be the cause and was lucky enough to read a post where someone else had something similar. Apparently whatever the drawing was done in either absolute or incremental the Mach3 setup must be the same. I made the changes and voila!! The text appeared clean on the screen. I took one of my 3/8" tormach toolholders and secured a bic pen in it and ran a slow speed test run. To my amazement once I got the z setting right it drew the text perfectly!! I was so excited I ran upstairs and woke my wife up ( it was like 2:30 in the morning!!) Then I decided it was now or never and after changing the size of the text because the settings were wrong and the written text was real small I put an 1/8" endmill in another tormach holder and ran the program on a piece of 3/4 inch scrap plywood. It cut the design in no time and I ran the spindle at like 5500rpm. It looks great and now I wish I had run it on some nice Walnut or something because it looks real cool. SO now that the machine seems to be working right I am gonna spend the next little while trying to make all my setting and everything as accurate as I can and then I am gonna attempt to make a part in aluminum. The machine runs beautiful right now and the Belt driven spindle is VERY quiet!! I am real happy with it so far and I cannot thank you enough for all your help man....

The shop was an utter disaster from this buildup and I also took on some side cabinet work this past week so I tore the whole shop apart and setup the machine where it will be permanently and cleaned the whole shop from top to bottom. It is actually really nice out there now and I look forward to getting the enclosure built because after just some test runs there was aluminum in about an eight foot radius from the machine. Amazing what the higher spindle speed does for cutting aluminum. It is like a different machine now.....

I am now trying to work out a deal with my son to buy my nice Olympic weight set since I have no room for it and I never use it. He wants it so maybe I can get him to buy me my mach3 license or something and I am gonna try maybe getting an older version of Bobcad or possibly Sheetcam and use Procad as Art does....

I tried to put that other Gecko back in the machine hoping that now that everything else works it might also but no dice. I guess I did blow it up. I am gonna send it out tomorrow I hope and we will see if it can be fixed.

To all those who are apprehensive about the tormach tooling I decided to try a little milling with the Wizards in mach3 ( real cool stuff there!) And I put a 1/2 inch endmill in a tormach toolholder and put it into the machine. Now I have no spindle lock right now as I am still working on building it so I just had to kinda hold the pulley on top with my hand and then tighten the wrench with the other. To say that I did not tighten it too well was an understatement. I ran a rectangular pocket in some 6061 with a .125 doc 50 percent overlap and a feedrate of like 30 ipm and had absolutely no problems. Now I realize that is not a massive cut but it is also a few of the first cuts I have made in metal so I was not pushing it. The machine ran beautiful and threw chips for miles and when I took the holder out of the spindle after the test it was real easy to loosen. I might have had a problem in fact because it was pretty easy to take it out. Oh well live and learn....
the point is that I ran this endmill about what I would normally run it and it was not even tight in there and had no problem. Gotta get the pneumatic drawbar ideas going now so I can have true quick change tooling. The machine will be real nice with it and maybe someday a toolchanger is in store. Right now I just have lots to learn about cam work and software and just making a part. I also was running the machine without the rubber guards since I am making new ones as the old ones were all crappy looking and were not going to be put back on my shiny new mill nosiree.....I just held my air blower near the cutter and blew the chip out the front. Lots to do yet but thankfully it is a working three axis mill now....peace


I will give you a call Bill and we can chat about all this and your buildup too...peace

[bill south]

Pete;
Good to hear things are going well. Now, the hard choice! What to make with this precise, fantastic machine!
Anyway, I'll attach the mister we spoke of the other day. Looks very simple and effective. Shouldn't be to very expensive to make.
I was going to email this but I lost your address somewhere!
Bill

[SCzEngrgGroup]

Pete;
Good to hear things are going well. Now, the hard choice! What to make with this precise, fantastic machine!
Anyway, I'll attach the mister we spoke of the other day. Looks very simple and effective. Shouldn't be to very expensive to make.
I was going to email this but I lost your address somewhere!
Bill

A Fogbuster is the *only* way to go. It provides all the cooling any benchtop mill requires, and puts nothing into the air. I made my first one years ago, and several more since. It's a WHOLE different animal from the $69 mist nozzles.

Regards,
Ray L.

[BobWarfield]

Pete, congratulations. The mill came out really nicely. I enjoyed your video (you sound like Hoss's brother, LOL), but am eager to see one cutting aluminum so we can see the belt drive in action.

My condolences on cleaning your shop though. These mills are prodigious chip throwers even when the spindle runs slowly as mine does. Seems like any little project and I'm up to my eyeballs in chips that go everywhere. You'll think you never cleaned it just as soon as you cut some more material on that mill!

Now that you have the mill running, I think you'll be amazed at how fast you can make stuff with it, but also amazed at how many things you suddenly "need" to make:

- Powered drawbar

- Spindle ring with a mister (gets old guiding the air stream by hand though it beats breaking endmills when you don't)

- Limit switches

- Enclosures

- Probe/Edgefiner/Toolsetter (real easy and fun)

The list just goes on and on. I think my next project will be the ring and mister, probably followed by a belt drive. Haven't been in the shop for a month, but I did just finish making a rack for my tooling from plastic that came out nice.

Cheers,

BW

[SCzEngrgGroup]

Pete, congratulations. The mill came out really nicely. I enjoyed your video (you sound like Hoss's brother, LOL), but am eager to see one cutting aluminum so we can see the belt drive in action.

My condolences on cleaning your shop though. These mills are prodigious chip throwers even when the spindle runs slowly as mine does. Seems like any little project and I'm up to my eyeballs in chips that go everywhere. You'll think you never cleaned it just as soon as you cut some more material on that mill!

Now that you have the mill running, I think you'll be amazed at how fast you can make stuff with it, but also amazed at how many things you suddenly "need" to make:

- Powered drawbar

- Spindle ring with a mister (gets old guiding the air stream by hand though it beats breaking endmills when you don't)

- Limit switches

- Enclosures

- Probe/Edgefiner/Toolsetter (real easy and fun)

The list just goes on and on. I think my next project will be the ring and mister, probably followed by a belt drive. Haven't been in the shop for a month, but I did just finish making a rack for my tooling from plastic that came out nice.

Cheers,

BW

Try running over 8K RPM and see how far the chips go! :-) I recently finished enclosing the table on my knee mill. It's one of the most satisfying mods I've done. Before, I'd be knee-deep in chips within minutes of starting a job, and could easily generate almost a full garbage can of chips in a day. I had the machine completely surrounded with shower curtains, but the chips still got all over the shop, and got tracked into the house (even though the shop is 150 feet from the house). Now, I can work all day long, and sweep up perhaps one dustpan full of chips off the floor at the end of the day. The enclosure catches the rest. Surprisingly, chips from small tools are the hardest to contain, because they're so small and light, the air from the mister will blow them a long way.

Regards,
Ray L.

[BobWarfield]

Try running over 8K RPM and see how far the chips go! :-) I recently finished enclosing the table on my knee mill. It's one of the most satisfying mods I've done. Before, I'd be knee-deep in chips within minutes of starting a job, and could easily generate almost a full garbage can of chips in a day. I had the machine completely surrounded with shower curtains, but the chips still got all over the shop, and got tracked into the house (even though the shop is 150 feet from the house). Now, I can work all day long, and sweep up perhaps one dustpan full of chips off the floor at the end of the day. The enclosure catches the rest. Surprisingly, chips from small tools are the hardest to contain, because they're so small and light, the air from the mister will blow them a long way.

Regards,
Ray L.

Cool beans, Ray!

I must have missed the pics of your table enclosure, is it anything like this one I got from eBay for my mill:

http://www.cnczone.com/forums/showthread.php?t=79088

I am embarrassed to say I haven't installed it yet though I've had it for months. I may have to accelerate the test based on your remarks.

BTW, to avoid tracking the chips in (hey, SWMBO might sell the shop or worse cash in my life insurance!), I've been keeping "shop shoes" for a long time now.

Cheers,

BW

[SCzEngrgGroup]

Cool beans, Ray!

I must have missed the pics of your table enclosure, is it anything like this one I got from eBay for my mill:

http://www.cnczone.com/forums/showthread.php?t=79088

I am embarrassed to say I haven't installed it yet though I've had it for months. I may have to accelerate the test based on your remarks.

BTW, to avoid tracking the chips in (hey, SWMBO might sell the shop or worse cash in my life insurance!), I've been keeping "shop shoes" for a long time now.

Cheers,

BW

Bob,

Similar, but different. I made a tray bolted to the front T-slots on the table, extending out about 12". I then fastened posts to the corners, to support slide-in Plexiglas shields 20" high. The front center will, in a few days, be two 12" x 20" doors. The back has a fixed shield about 5" high (as tall as it can be without hitting the underside of the ram when the knee is fully up), and can be extended up with slide-in sections. But, I do plan to add a flexible sheet (maybe just blue tarp) to extend that up higher, as soon as I figure out a way to retain it so it doesn't snag as the knee moves up-and-down, and the table side-to-side.

You will find on yours, if you do heavy CNC milling, that it fills pui with chips very quickly. Mine has enough capacity in that front tray for probably a cubic foot or so of chips, and they'll quickly pile up 6" deep in the corners, so I still have to empty it about every hour. I put trap doors in the tray, so emptying just means moving the table over, sliding a garbage can underneath, popping out the trap door, and pushing the chips out through the hole - just takes a minute or two to empty the whole thing. I made the tray slanted, so it's about 3" deep at the table, but only about 1-1/4" at the very front. I wish I'd just made it flat, so there would be more capacity.

The first picture below is the tray, before I put the posts and Plexi in place. The second it after about an hour of work. The third was taken at the same time, and shows how little got on the floor. And, I've since increased the height, from about 12" to 20", so even less gets out now.

I guess next the step is a chip auger! :-)

Regards,
Ray L.

[pete from TN]

I am glad it is working too as it has been a real pain to get it done. I did however manage to run my table past the limit and hit the hard stop last night frying another gecko in the process. Both of the bad Geckos are off to Geckodrive as we speak and I got to speak to Marriss on the phone today. SUPER GUY!! Learned an awful lot about the drives and their operation. Did you know that there have been two Gecko drives in SPACE on the space shuttle?!! I thought that was super cool....NIce to know that I have the same tech as NASA in my Garage!! Anyways, he told me a lot about the new G320x and I gotta tell you that sounds like one super drive. It has current limiter circuitry, encoder presence circuitry and about a million other cool new ideas. You cannot even wire it wrong, it will just not work instead of the current drive releasing the magic smoke!! Wish I had been able to buy those when I ordered my Geckos I would have definitely gone that route. If one or both of those that I sent out are unfixable I will probably replace them with the new ones...

I am warming up to the idea of the mister/fogger setup. Both of you fellows seem to like them and I know ray makes some serious chips with his machine. I gotta have a look at those plans and maybe I will try to make one with the Knee mill until my Geckos arrive.

Those table enclosures look real appealing, much simpler than an entire enclosure and still do the same job. I intended to make a fixture plate large and wide for the table and this might be an option to incorportate one into this type of enclosure. Just some aluminum flat and some steel sheet and plastic sheet and I would not have to totally redo my stand. I gotta think on this one....


Bob, I intend to make a nicer video of the machine running in aluminum. In fact I was getting setup to run a part for the machine with the machine when I had the crash. Luckily no real damage other than the drive and my pride. The part I was making was actually another limit switch to go on the Z axis to match the IH models I have for the X and Y. I would have bought one for the Z too but Ray only had the two.... Nice switches and waterproof as well... The machine has run using the new spindle for several hours in wood and aluminum doing test cuts including some circular and rectangular pocket wizards as well as engraving my Daughters name in some wood. IT runs real quiet and the spindle control with the vector drive is the cats meow!! YOu can ask ART how quiet it is because he heard it over the phone the other night.... haha This machine has NEVER removed material with that kind of speed before and I was just doing some test runs!!!

I have a lot of projects this machine is being built for as well as some new ideas but I still have some accurizing and final touches to do on it before I call it work ready. Then I gotta start on the REAL HARD PART!!! getting my pea brain wrapped around the Cad Cam software!!!! Peace

[BobWarfield]

Pete, interesting that the hard stop blew the Gecko. They are pretty delicate, and the new drives will be welcome. I've blown two Geckos myself.

I'm kind of wondering about that hard stop though. I've had a fair number of hard stops (no limit switches yet ) and never blown a Gecko over it. One I lost to a tuning mishap (there was some oscillation I missed/underdamping until I did a long running job in real metal, now I put a little tuning margin for error!), and one to a lightning strike that blew up stuff all over the house even despite surge protection.

Anyway, do you have your system setup to stop if a drive faults, or do you just tie that Err/Res off so it resets immediately? When I hard stop, my drive faults (because the encoder shows the servo is no longer at the commanded position), and everything stops real fast. Just thinking its hard to believe you're able to feed so much current it blows the drive unless you keep reseting that fault.

I guess you may also want to turn down the limit pot on the Gecko as an additional safeguard. I have bigger servos than IH stock, but I keep my limits at about 2/3's travel.

CAD/CAM is definitely a challenge. Be sure to try several and don't shell out the bucks until you get to one you like. They're all different and people react differently. Lots of people love Alibre, I tried it and hated it and use Rhino on the CAD side for example.

Cheers,

BW

[pete from TN]

Yeah I am kinda confused by that too. In fact someone else I know told me that they had had several hard stops and not blew their gecko. My motors are kinda huge for this setup at 1150 oz inch and they are probably taking all the current that these little Geckos can provide to run( just a guess...) and when they hit that hard stop it was a max current jolt maybe and now they will not come out of fault just like the first one I damaged. It may come back from Gecko with nothing wrong with it for all I know. I took the Y axis cables and hooked them to the X axis motor today and the motor runs fine so nice save there. I had my X axis limit working but took it off to trouble shoot my servo setup for the Z problems I was having not getting a ready condition. So crash was bad....

I am gonna try to get the Y axis limit installed this weekend and maybe the Z if I can get it machined. You mind telling me what size the hole is on the aluminum block that rides with the movement? I am sure it is obviously larger than .25 that the rods are but I thought it might be kinda loose to allow for some misalignment. What do you think?

Right now I am leaning toward what my bud art uses which is a combination of my workplaces Autocad and procad at home and Sheetcam for the cam side of things. Unless something better comes along I am gonna probably go with these once I get some spare cash....peace

[BobWarfield]

As you suspect, the travelling block is loose on the rod. It's sole purpose is to capture the collars on the rod.

[bill south]

Hey Pete;
I'm still kinda bothered as to why the out of control sequence happened. Again, as we spoke of on the phone, sounds like encoder problems to me. Never had my machine just fly away while running a program. Also, did you put the fuses in the hv lines to the motor?1. Do not use slo blow fuses, use the fast blow to prevent over voltage on the motors.
But, I'm still guessing a loose connector on the encoder. Ohm every line from the gecko hook up to the encoder and use clips on the ohm meter so you can move all the wiring by hand while looking for a bad connection.
Wow, I'll bet you'll be glad when all this is behind you and you can concentrate on all the future projects you guys have been discussing.
Luck.
Bill

[SCzEngrgGroup]

Hey Pete;
I'm still kinda bothered as to why the out of control sequence happened. Again, as we spoke of on the phone, sounds like encoder problems to me. Never had my machine just fly away while running a program. Also, did you put the fuses in the hv lines to the motor?1. Do not use slo blow fuses, use the fast blow to prevent over voltage on the motors.
But, I'm still guessing a loose connector on the encoder. Ohm every line from the gecko hook up to the encoder and use clips on the ohm meter so you can move all the wiring by hand while looking for a bad connection.
Wow, I'll bet you'll be glad when all this is behind you and you can concentrate on all the future projects you guys have been discussing.
Luck.
Bill

NEVER put fuses either in the motor wires, or the DC supply wires to the Geckos! That will greatly increase your chances of blowing up the Geckos if the fuse blows. The ONLY safe place to put fuses is on the AC side of the supply. The Geckos are *supposed* to protect themselves from a simple over-current condition, so something else must have happened if they really blew. I would suggest talking to Mariss, and asking him what can cause them to blow up that way.

Regards,
Ray L.

[pete from TN]

I think there is a thread on the Gecko forum where I read that if you run a 320 into a hard stop it may blow the gecko an when I talked to Mariss Yesterday he affirmed this. That is one of the reasons for the new drive and the protections it has inside that shiny black box. Wether or not it blows I would imagine has a lot to do with your power setups, motor current rating and just how fast you can react to the motor driving into the stops before you hit the e-stop button..... that drive may be working but as I said I hooked the Y axis control to the X axis motor and it worked fine but no matter what I did to the X axis control I could not get it out of fault condition. Again sure wish I had ordered the G320X drives but they were apparently not available when I purchased mine... would have probably saved a lot of heart aches....peace

[BobWarfield]

A couple thoughts:

First, on the fuses, in fact there are posts where Mariss says it is ok to put a fuse. He indicated it would blow before the Gecko would in most cases. I don't have the link handy, but I'm not imagining it as I researched it at length before wiring my own controller. With that said, it is very bad practice to interrupt the Gecko's supply very often, for example with a switch. It's a last resort.

Second, Pete, when you talk about it being a function of "how fast you hit the e-stop", again, if the encoders are working properly (good idea to check that carefully Bill!), it'll fault the drive before you could ever get to that e-stop. I don't know that you ever responded to how you'd wired the Err/Res. It can be a pain to set it up so the faults shut everything down. On my system, I use a CNC4PC board to do this. If it faults, it throws a relay that cuts the AC to the DC supply (per the note that fuses are a last resort!).

In any event, I agree the new Geckos should be a vast improvement and I'll definitely replace any more that I blow with those.

It can be so demoralizing (not to mention expensive!) to blow up a drive. It's just a real downer.

Cheers,

BW

[pete from TN]

I also have a cnc4pc board. I think I have it wired as directed in their manual. However while it did fault and I am not exactly sure how the drive works but it was enough to put it into a hard fault that would not go away despite many varied attempts. Right now I have it setup for when a drive faults you just reset the system and throw this toggle switch which puts the 5v reset signal on the err reset pins of the geckos and if there is not a hard fault all three will reset in about a second or so.... The end of the day is that if I had not tried to run the machine without limits installed I would not be having this conversation. The system was working VERY well before I goofed it up and I was actually getting some very nice repeatable accuracy with all the tests I was doing. Hopefully Mariss will get my Geckos soon and I will be back up and running and enjoying this amazing machine.

I was looking at the pictures of Rlberg's machine and I really like how he put the manifold for the one shot oiler on the back of the column. SOme nice cnc machined parts and an elegant design. I hope to try to make something like that for my main manifold using the machine under cnc as I had to redo my manifold idea due to differences in the fittings on the bijur type oiler I got. I am gonna try to draw them in cad and get some code run to make them on the mill once I get the Geckos back... This should be fun!!! peace