I've got some hardware issues and bugs I'd like to sort out.
On the hardware side I've noticed the belt driving the z-axis is wearing unevenly and one of the toothed idlers has a loose retaining nut and no way to hold it to tighten it up (I'm assuming all the upper sheet metal needs to be removed?). Does anyone have specifics on the belt (length, tooth style, etc?) and any experience on tightening things up or adjusting the pulleys to fix the wear?
While dealing with the belts, I'm wondering if anyone has instructions for 'tramming' the head/beam. Based on my fly-cutter, it seems to have a slight tilt.
The other hardware issue I have is with the bearings in the spindle. I followed JT's instructions for tightening/preloading the bearings, but they still get crazy hot after running for a bit. I've been milling aluminum with some very small bits, so the F&S calculators usually have me running pretty high rpm's. I'd like to upgrade the bearings or replace the spindle all together. It definitely shouldn't be getting as hot as it is and the truth is that I'd like to re-gear the spindle so I can run even higher speeds eventually as well as installing a power drawbar (that sheet metal is always in the way of tightening/loosening the drawbar or I have to wait forever for it to climb high enough to clear from the top).
On the software side of things I have a few big problems, two of which might be related. I'm hoping someone with a decent running machine can post their machine settings and maybe their XML profiles. The computer that came with my machine was missing a lot of the files (shortcuts to nowhere on the desktop) and has had a lot of odd behaviors.
My most immediate problem is with the canned G73/G83 peck drilling cycles. They should rapid down to the start of the peck height, peck at the specified feed-rate, then retract at rapid speed & repeat. Mine is travelling down to the peck height at the feed-rate, doing a more-rapid peck, then retracting at the rapid rate (most of the time). If I'm doing multiple holes the machines does a diagonal move from the bottom of the finished hole start of the next hole failing to retract first snapping the drill bits and ruining my parts. I can work around the tool-snapping by hand-coding each hole separately rather than using my post-processor, but nothing I do seems to fix the downward feed rates and friends machines running Mach3 and the same g-code don't have any of these issues. EG.
Code:
G83 X5 Y5 Z-10 R2 Q0.5 F100
X10 Y10
G80
The second software bug concerns the Config/Safe_Z Setup. Most of my work is in metric while the machine's core config is all in inches. If I specify a safe-z-height in the config the number changes every time I switch units in my gcode using the M20/M21. A half-inch becomes 12.7, then I load up another program or restart mach3 and the value has jumped to 127, pretty soon it's escalated to 10" or 254 which I'm assuming is the z-max defined elsewhere.
The last software issue seems to be tied to the CV settings. I noticed Mach3 was rounding some tool paths that appeared straight with right angled turns . In the motion mode section of the general config the machine was set to exact stop instead of CV, but I had to disable CV for angles >80 degrees in the CV control to fix the odd rounded corners, but now other tool paths have gotten really jerky (lots of very brief stop and go). I had another issue a while back where having the backlash compensation turned on in mach3 would cause the machine to make a banging noise at the steppers when they were changing directions and they'd miss a bunch of steps.
Thanks.