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« on: May 25, 2012, 04:56:54 PM »
Just an update, now that I've got quite a few miles on the PDB - I absolutely LOVE it! Other than the quill drive, probably about the best thing I've done for this machine. Over the last several weeks the PDB has proven to be bullet-proof. A few days ago, I did the necessary re-wiring to get it running on the KFlop, under my controller app, instead of running under Mach3. This has enabled me to speed it up considerably, since I'm no longer limited by parallel port and "kernel" speed. That allowed me to triple the speed, with no loss of reliability, and I suspect I could go further still, just haven't had the time to try. But, I can now do a complete manual tool change in under 4 seconds, and it has not misbehaved once in hundreds of changes. It does a wonderful job of very consistently torquing the drawbar, and it has never once failed to engage or disengage, loosen the tool, or pop the collet free. It's also FAR quieter than those hideous impact wrench PDBs. This was a little bit on the expensive side, due mostly to the $150 gearbox, but it was dead simple to build (I could easily build one now in about half a day), and it was absolutely worth every penny. And, it should work, unchanged, when I finally get around to swapping out my R8 spindle for an ISO30 spindle.
Now I can finally get to work on a real tool-changer!
Regards,
Ray L.