Messages

11

General Mach Discussion / Re: Limit switch issues

« on: December 27, 2015, 10:01:50 PM »

I understand how "on the grid" power generation works...to a certain degree. If I remember the info during the tour of the Niagra Generating station, I seem to recall the guide stating that in off peak hours, they shut down generators and or divert water away from them.....so at 1 am, on a tuesday, in June, for the past 10 years demand has been 100 MW, why would you run every generator at every generating station at 100%? A sane person would say "to meet that demand I have to run 25% of my generating capacity therefore I can shut down 65% of my generators, I'll keep the extra 40% capacity JIC.....then when demand increases at 5 am, at 3 I'll start to spool up all my generators to be ready when that demand hits.

WHat is 100% LUDICROUS is to keep all your generators running at 100% capacity then sell that excess energy at a LOSS. Then because either I'm an idiot, or the system is flawed, I'll charge all my customers a premium because I have a system that is inefficient.

See, the biggest issue with electricity generation, least in Ontario, is there is NO competition. A "supplier" is given carte blanche to do whatever the hell they want, with NO recourse...

I'll tell you one clue that the system is flawed: back in the day when generating your own electricity was as rare as an albino raccoon, a guy in Kingston Ontario built himself some windmills to power his farm. He disconnected from the grid (for the most part) and then...what the hell is this? He got a bill from Ontario Hydro for the electricity HE was generating....he got a lawyer and discovered that Ontario Hydro had a monopoly contract (which is illegal in Canada) to recoup the revenue from ALL electricity generated in Ontario, whether they made it or not....Well, the bills piled up, and he took Ontario Hydro to court....FINALLY a judge with common sense ruled that Hydro One was operating an illegal monopoly, made them pay the farmer's legal bills, AND pay him 6 cents per KWH for every KWH of energy HE generated which he fed back into the grid....So now, if you DO have solar, wind or geo-thermal electricity generation and you're connected to the grid, Hydro One (the new name) has to pay YOU for that electricity....

12

General Mach Discussion / Re: Limit switch issues

« on: December 27, 2015, 05:56:54 PM »

Power outages can be handed a variety of ways . The simple way it to use a UPS backup and have Mach3 setup to respond to an outage by stop machining move to a known location and shut down. Then when the ouage is ove simply set the reference again and restart.

Generators CAN be made whisper quiet as well . BUT that would not be cost effective to run a generator for 12 hours of machining on a what if senario.

As to your comment about your locality MAKING their own electricity instead of buying it off the grid. There is NO WAY you could do that as cheap as buying it. NOT EVEN CLOSE . I worked in that industry for years.

(;-) TP

Yeah, the whisper quiet ones are crazy expensive though.....and yes, it is inefficient to run it all the time due to a might have or what if scenario..

As for generating our power locally....initially I would tend to agree....but considering we have (actually a major protest against it) a hydro electric project going in to a local water fall we could really in fact create our own "grid".

In addition, I ran off the grid for almost a year when I ran into financial difficulties. I ran my whole house off a 5000 peak wattage gennie...Now I was very careful about what I could use and when, and I used about half the kwh than when I was on the gird, but due to the price of our electricity, delivery charge, debt retirement, 13% tax, TOS pricing, It cost me about $160 per month in gasoline, vs over $220 for being on the grid....

It was only a 110v gennie so I didn't use the stove, and the fridge was basically unplugged during the day, (because I didn't run it when I wasn't around). I bought a small 110V water heater for my naval showers....I had a wood/electric furnace for heat which worked on convection when there was no power...and it worked quite well frankly.....

Yes, you would "think" that running on the grid would be cheap...but not here.....we pay some of the highest rates in North America, ludicrous considering our total usage is half of what it was 20 years ago and we are almost daily selling electricity to the US at a loss....The auditor general just last week announced that we paid over $13 BILLION dollars too much for our electricity over the past 10 years....at the time they also posted the number of residential customers and I did the math....without accounting for the customers that had large homes/were large consumers and those small homes/small consumers, we paid about $7000 each too much for our electricity....or about $60 per month, to me, that's 33%.....

ANyhow, back to cnc lol....(and yes, electricity prices are a bone of contention with everyone in my province due to us getting continually hosed by the government run power agency)

13

General Mach Discussion / Re: Limit switch issues

« on: December 27, 2015, 05:37:29 PM »

truncated to save space

The work side is another completely independant set of coords that YOU the operator use to setup work and reference to for machining parts.  Why are they called offsets ? because they are ALL an offset from the original refhome position that the machine uses for reference. The word offset can be either in NOUN form or a VERB. You can "offset" a position or you can use an "offset".

To be able to reset after a work stop ( outage ) all you have to do is Reset teh Work 0,0,0 to what it was originally on the table. To use the centerpoint of the tool is very hard to do. Using the side of the tool is very easy and very accurate. But yo have to realize you are setting it up as an offset so teh centerpoint of the tool will be established.

When you first setup the material i would machine a simple  L corner somewhere on teh material that runs up and down and left and right to the table motion. That will give you a reference point for X and Y axis. Record those positions somewhere in case you need them to set back up after a work stop. To reset the table simply move the tool over and touch off the tool to that spot in X and Y then set the dro for each axis to that value. NOW your machine is set back up to the exact point on the material (part). THAT is just one way of doing it there ARE many ways it can be done.

Another would be to use accurate home switches and Work offsets to setup the part then if needed you can simply refhome and go to the correct offset.

However you do it just pick a method and stick with it. ONCE you have figured it out you can restart a dozen times and it will machine correctly each time.

(;-) TP

Thanks, I've gathered that after the last couple of days....see, in regards to the terminology, when they say THE offsets, I take that as a noun....

I'd be interested to know how you can set the machine coordinates manually....I don't know how, but my machine coordinates are like -100" so when I tell it to go home (home being 0) I think it's trying to move my x axis 100" to the right to get to zero....wouldn't be a problem if I had a limit/home switch over there.....

Your routed groove is a great idea. What I have done is tack two 1/8" strips of pine to the table to use as my home....only problem is, the machine doesn't know this.....

I agree, centering a 1/4" round bit is difficult...the problem with using the edge is the software I design stuff with, and generate g codes with, uses the centre of the bit as home, and I could program it to use an offset of half the diameter of my first bit, but that would mean I'd have to manually do it for every drawing....considering I do about 500 a year, errr doesn't sound like fun to me haha then it would also depend on what first bit I used. Could be 1/4" could be 1/8" could be a 3/16"....3 mm or 6 mm....

14

General Mach Discussion / Re: Limit switch issues

« on: December 27, 2015, 12:58:25 PM »

ok, I've got a bunch of notes....

As they say in the movies:

COVER ME, I"M GOING IN! lol

15

General Mach Discussion / Re: Limit switch issues

« on: December 27, 2015, 12:57:16 PM »

It might be wiser to bite the bullet and get rid of it, start afresh with a more robust and modern machine, there seems to be more and more problems getting uncovered that are going to bite your ass the more you try to improve things.

well, the electronics all seem to be of reasonable quality and the steppers etc are powerful enough...so since I can't afford to lay out $5000 (or more) for another machine, I'm just going to replace all the flexible crap with aluminum.....from looking at the linear bearing prices and 80/20, I should be able to do it under $500.00.....

Get this: I couldnt' figure out why my signs were "growing" as they got longer....I eventually found the problem: the steel frame that everything mounts too was 1/8" wider at the 48" end than the 0 end lol......I tried to move it into position so the 2 x rails were parallel but couldn't because it is made of 1 1/4" square steel tubing...so I put a pipe clamp on it and cranked it down so the 2 rails are back to being parallel.....that was literally a WHAT THE HELL moment.......

16

General Mach Discussion / Re: Limit switch issues

« on: December 27, 2015, 12:41:59 PM »

just one more thing: my pins should be set to active high.....by doing this will I cause any "magic smoke" lol to come out of my electronics?

Because I can't see the switches being normally open, that would defeat the purpose wouldn't it? meaning they would SUPPLY power to the axis when triggered instead of cutting power to the axis......

17

General Mach Discussion / Re: Limit switch issues

« on: December 27, 2015, 12:37:51 PM »

Now, here is another design flaw in my CNC....the builder, in his infinite wisdom, designed it so that under NO circumstances would you break a tool. He has built into the machine flexibility so that the machine will kick off axis etc instead of damaging a tool

A more flexible machine can break tools easier than a rigid machine, by allowing a tool to pull itself into the workpiece until it snaps.

exactly...and it also causes massive amounts of chatter which puts stress on the tool......see, what I've learned is: the company I bought the machine off of is really just a guy in a garage who builds and sells these machines NOT a real  builder....I mean, who would even consider using plastic racks and pinion gears? I think I broke teeth on my first week of using it.....

18

General Mach Discussion / Re: Limit switch issues

« on: December 27, 2015, 12:35:39 PM »

ok see, that's what confuses me...to me, home and origin are one and the same.....

Ok, saving my offsets, instead of making me search through the manual, how would I do that? (btw, this is another piece of terminology that I can't get my head around, why are they called "offsets" when what I am doing is saving my origin....? To me, an offset is the distance from a particular location not THE actual location....

btw: I'm making notes of everything being posted then I'll go to the shop and try again....my CNC computer in my shop doesn't have net access....(just wanted you to know)

19

General Mach Discussion / Re: Limit switch issues

« on: December 27, 2015, 12:18:52 PM »

If I snap a tool during a run, I simply stop the program, note what line Gcode the break happened, press ref home all, fit a new tool, re zero the tool height, set Gcode to the line of Gcode needed and press run from here, takes about 5 minutes and am back up and running with no problem. As long as Mach3 has all the info it will do want you want it to.

yeah, that is exactly what I want to be able to do, and it is only logical to be able to do that...

Now, here is another design flaw in my CNC....the builder, in his infinite wisdom, designed it so that under NO circumstances would you break a tool. He has built into the machine flexibility so that the machine will kick off axis etc instead of damaging a tool...even though I pay $2.00 for my ball ends and $3.00 for my straight cutters...it is so bad that when cutting pine, with an 1/8" straight bit, with 1/8" DOC the z axis is thrown off 90 degrees and results in patterning in the piece.....ludicrous (which is why I'm going to be replacing all these parts with something, I dunno, that stays straight plumb and true.....I mean, he even used an aluminum rod to transfer the x axis power to the other side of the table. It flexes under load and causes both sides to be out of alignment slightly....took me quite a while to figure out why I can't cut perfect circles....it's because it is mis-shapened dramatically as the axis rotate around the circle....DOH

edit: and the kicker is, I still break tools.....and the bigger kicker is: the use of plastic isn't that big of a cost saver....aluminum would cost maybe $50 more for the entire machine. Hell, I've recently learned how to make aluminum castings and I could cast all the parts for under $20.00....

20

General Mach Discussion / Re: Limit switch issues

« on: December 27, 2015, 12:11:28 PM »

You can have home werever you want it, if you want it mid travel, that's fine, you just need to tell Mach3 were your zero is, not Mach3 telling you were it should be. You define your parameters how you want them, how you want your machine to behave, you just need to give Mach3 all the details and it will work how you want it.
Have you thought about a little generator set to power the workshop if your supply is as fragile as that, for a few hundred $ it should pay for itself very quickly....................just a thought.

I had one when I lived off the beaten path out of town but since I had to move into town, I'd get noise complaints in about 10 minutes....plus gennie produced electricity isn't the best for computers etc....you'd need an inverter gennie and those are quite pricey....(this is another area I'm not 100% clear on but from what I've read, and gathered from "pros" that gennie electricity is quite noisy and can cause major issues with electronics)....

You're not the first person to say this...in fact, many residents continually ask our politicians about why doesn't the town get our own source of electricity since being on the grid is VERY expensive and HIGHLY unstable.....we're constantly poo pooed. You see, where we are, we get a "delivery charge" tacked on our bill which is equal to, or often higher than the electricity we use.....