Hey all, I recently bought a 6040T from ebay:
6040T 3 AXIS USB CNC ROUTER ENGRAVER ENGRAVING CUTTER MACHINE MILLING USB PORT | eBay
Arrived and was 90% assembled, just fit the stepper motors and plugged it in. Came with a Parallel to USB Cable and CNCUSB program, plugged it into my New laptop with Windows 10 using the USB cable and imported the supplied settings file and it connected and worked straight away... Carved out a few mickey mouse pieces from the sample file and worked well.
But I had spent abit of time learning Mach3 and wanted to use that, So I got a Parrallel cable and using the PC I bought for the project with Windows XP and used the settings I found online it works... Altho with the 2800mm/min feed rate the steppers were locking up, Reducing it down to 2000mm/min and it rapids fine 80% of the time while manually jogging altho had no issues while running the program at 2000mm/min, 1500mm/min and seems fine altho this is abit slow for some operations. I didnt go back to double check but it didnt seem to have any issues Rapiding with the USB program.
I made a Spindle vacuum boot and a cut out a GTR Logo which worked out alright after I worked out why it was plowing the bit in to the spoil board which was because Fusion 360 was posting G28 but I had not home/limit switches setup.
Here is a few pics of the board
I noticed the Dip switches (SW1, SW2, SW3) were set to 2.5 amps but the Steppers are labelled as 3amps.... Should I adjust this to 3amps?
The KP 1/2 Switches were originally set to both "on" which would have been "8" which im guessing is 8 steps for one full step? I have changed this to "2" which Im guessing is a half step, Hopefully this will help with the steppers stalling while rapiding at higher speeds... Im guessing ill have to adjust my steps per revolution which was 320 and would now be 80? my thinking is if 8=320 then 320/8=40 then multiply that by 2=80
KP 3/4 is for buffering but im not sure what that means exactly.
I would like to setup good earthing throughout the system, as you can see in the following pic the Earth from the Mains plug is actually connected to the "pnf 221-g-3a" which a quick google search says its a EMI filter but then does not go any further... Altho the PDF for it I found on google shows a Earth output from it, Should I open up the case in the hopes of finding the output and then run a cable from this to a point on the chassis to become my Earth Star then earth everything to that?
Ive mounted my home/limit switches on the machine and want to wire them up, I did a test connection to the point Labelled Xlimit and to the ground point, setup the relevant pins on Mach3 and it lights up in the diagnostics so I know that works... But im a little confused about how to wire them exactly, Found all different ways on the net. From what I can tell the best way to do it is to wire the two X-axis switches in series and Mach3 will tream them as limits during normal use and Home while its homing correct?
Lastly is the Nowforever VFD, had no issues with it yet. Wish I could work out how to make the display show RPM rather then my having to work it out, altho its quite easy to... just multiply the frequency by 60... Runs smoothly even from low hz altho not much torque under 50hz. From abit of research ive heard that under 100hz and the spindle creates excessive heat, altho it is water cooled... not that Ive had to run it that low yet.
Looks like both the controller board and VFD have the ability to run the spindle through to mach3 for software speed control but would need to add a relay?
Still have some questions about ball screw lubrications and adjusting the screws/slides that Ive not found answers for yet but overall quite impressed with the machine. I bought it planning to upgrade to a G540 and 48v power supply and Am still planning to, but just want to get it running as good as I can with current setup so I can see how much of a difference the Gecko and power upgrade is.