Messages

3881

General Mach Discussion / Re: CS Labs CSMIO/P-A

« on: August 08, 2018, 03:45:26 AM »

Hi,
what are you trying to achieve? If I understand correctly you have a working three phase asynchronous spindle motor of 5kW.
Is that correct?

What are you hoping to achieve by replacing it? You mentioned the desirability of having it operate from a single phase supply.
Hood and I chimed in and we agree that the potential for a single phase servo is in the region of 2.2 to 3kW. Even that will put significant
demands on your supply and still be well short of power compared to the original spindle motor. I recall that you thought that operation
from a single phase supply would be a favourable selling point, and I imagine it is....but are you planning on selling it?

You will have noted that the higher the input voltage to the drive the faster the servo can run before the torque diminishes. That would lean you to
a three phase input servo drive, but that really is contrary to the idea of running it from a single phase supply.

I understand that you are going to buy a couple of 750W servos and drives for the axis drives. I commend that idea to you, it will give your lathe a new
lease of life. May I suggest that at least for the time being that you retain the existing three phase spindle motor while you get your axis drives and
controller on line. I suspect that the experience you gain with programming and handling the smaller servos will give you good insight to the potential
performance of a larger servo for a spindle and also maybe an appreciation of it problems also.

If you are dead set on having a servo as a spindle motor, and as you know I have done just exactly that for my mill and delighted with it, then you will want
the most capable motor you can afford and/or your electrical installation handle. That would tend to favour 400V drives, the servo being run with such a drive
goes that much faster and retains its torque that much longer. I would think that the exemplary torque characteristics of a servo would mean that a 4kW servo
would hold its own handily with a 5kW induction motor, if not absolute power, but the handling characteristics would be favourable. Below about 4kW
and I suspect that you would start to notice the lack of power.

A 400V servo and drive capable of 4kW is not going to be cheap, even at the discount your wife can secure. Also a large servo like that is going to place
real demands on your supply and you would have to allow some budget to improve that situation as best you can, I'd think line reactors as a minimum.

Craig

3882

General Mach Discussion / Re: CS Labs CSMIO/P-A

« on: August 07, 2018, 06:03:03 PM »

Hi Mick,
HSM Advisor, liked it so much i bought it.

Craig

3883

General Mach Discussion / Re: Need Help With New Setup (Mach3, ESS, AccuCut XPS)

« on: August 07, 2018, 04:58:18 PM »

Hi,
no. I think your two gantry motors should be slaved together.

Craig

3884

General Mach Discussion / Re: Need Help With New Setup (Mach3, ESS, AccuCut XPS)

« on: August 07, 2018, 03:11:19 PM »

Hi,
no.

Have a look at Config/Slave Axis. 

Craig

3885

Mach4 General Discussion / Re: Home and limit switches

« on: August 07, 2018, 02:42:57 PM »

Hi,
the UC100 will work....its just that the limited number of inputs requires you combine limits and home switches. It results in confusion
for you and small changes can break homing and limit functions. I suspect that whats happening to you.

Craig

3886

General Mach Discussion / Re: Need Help With New Setup (Mach3, ESS, AccuCut XPS)

« on: August 07, 2018, 11:50:42 AM »

Hi,
so in effect the machine and the breakout board are all wired up already.....according to the book......

So many people set every thing
up 'according to the book', parts of it wrongly and end up with so many conflicting faults they end up hopelessly confused.

I can see that got a lot of traction.

You will now have to work backwards and use the information about the pin assignments for the breakout board to then set the ESS inputs/outputs
and then back one step further to the Mach inputs/outputs so they are consistent with the ESS. There is room for a lot of confusion in that
process but is a consequence of having it all wired up already.

Craig

3887

Mach4 General Discussion / Re: Toolpath not showing on custom profile

« on: August 07, 2018, 11:37:09 AM »

Hi,
Byranna has reminded me that I've had exactly the issue that you describe and for exactly that reason. That is that the toolpath of the object/part
is so small because of the scale of the display.

If you zoom in you may fid the toopath is actually there, its what happened in my case. What I found  was that if my machine is not referenced (homed)
prior to loading a Gcode file and associated toolpath that is possible for the machine to set a scale such that the toolpath disappears because its so small.
The second thing that I do is have the tooplath display the table limits. Its convenient to confirm that the tooplath is within the machine boundaries
but it also constrains Mach to selecting an appropriate scale with which to draw the toolpath.

Configure/Control (also called Mach on earlier builds)/Toolpath  check <display toolpath limits>

Craig

3888

Mach4 General Discussion / Re: PoKeys57CNC and Single Index Pulse Threading

« on: August 07, 2018, 11:23:16 AM »

Hi,
threading requires realtime control to synchronize the thread and is consequently a controller function. Mach can't do it, it can provide
the Gcode in the interpreter and even provide the P(osition)V(elocity)T(over time) data for the controller but the controller has to do the
synchronization.

May I suggest placing this question with PoKeys, either directly by email or in the PoKeys section of the  forum. The guy from PoKeys could
answer this.

Craig

3889

Mach4 General Discussion / Re: Home and limit switches

« on: August 07, 2018, 11:14:38 AM »

Hi Ken,

Why would this happen now after 3 days of working fine?Huh?

Something has changed. The problem is that your machine is wherever you are and we are elsewhere. You are going to have to dig in
and find it.

I suspect the problem comes about because you have home switches and limit switches doing double duty. I realize that using a UC100
you have to combine them because you don't have enough inputs. If you had say, a UC300, which has many many inputs you wouldn't have
to do it and confusing faults such as you've come across  don't happen.

Turn Mach on but instead of referencing  using the <Ref All> button, go to the machine diagnostics page and using the buttons provided
reference each axis in turn. I'm guessing what is happening is that the Y axis is homing per normal but then as the machine goes to home the next axis in
queue the Y axis attempts to move and immediately limits out. By referencing each axis individually you may catch the machine doing something a bit weird
at a certain time and therefore give you an insight into whats changed.

I really want you to think about getting a controller with more inputs than the one you've got so you can wire switches individually. I can hear you moaning and
whineing from here! Guess what....I don't bloody care.....I've time and time again urged people to NOT combine home and limit switches so this sort of rubbish
doesn't happen. I've long since lost patience when it craps out for those who don't bother to listen.

Craig

3890

General Mach Discussion / Re: CS Labs CSMIO/P-A

« on: August 07, 2018, 03:40:28 AM »

Hi,
you have been looking at the Lexium 28 series which are 220V single or 220V three phase units.

You need to look at the Lexium 32 series:

https://www.schneider-electric.com/en/product/LXM32SD30N4/motion-servo-drive---lexium-32---three-phase-supply-voltage-208-480v---3-kw/?range=2302-lexium-32-%26-motors&node=166536672-servo-drives

There you will find 380-480V versions.

Craig