Messages

3821

General Mach Discussion / Re: Mach3 2-sided pcb milling. Centering with Y-axis width from G-code pattern.

« on: August 17, 2018, 05:32:39 PM »

Hi,
yeah, drillman 1 is a good bloke. I have bought a bit of Chinese carbide, its cheap but that's about the only thing to recommend it.
The Koycera Tycom stuff is good and reasonably priced, not as cheap as Chinese, but price/performance much better than Chinese.

I got a 1/4inch Raptor by Destiny Tools from drillman 1 and it kicks anus in stainless steel, best I've ever used!

Some of my circuit boards are high current and so I have some very heavy copper board, 12 oz or 420um or 0.42mm thick!
You cant use ordinary engraving bits, the taper defeats you with such a thick copper layer. I use two flute endmills. My board is
surface mount with SIOC outlines, 0.6mm between pins. The endmills I'm using are:

https://www.ebay.com/itm/5-0-50mm-0197-2-FLUTE-MICRO-CARBIDE-ENDMILLS-Kyocera-1600-0197-079/151724697381?hash=item23537f2725:g:jwcAAOxy1VlRFPam

I got them on special at $2.65 each so I bought 30, wish I'd bought more now, I think drillman 1 had 100 at the special price at the time.

These little endmills are very easy to break. Two things which determine whether they work well is how much fiberglass you have to cut. If you use Autoleveller
to best advantage you can get away with cutting very little fiberglass and end up with a better job. I also use flood cooling, its more about washing away the chips
than cooling but it means I can get 8-10 hours out of a single tool whereas I can get about 1/2-1 hour otherwise. Also the cut edge is so much better.
I've now got into the habit of using flood cooling when cutting ordinary board (1 oz) with ordinary engraving bits, they last longer and the cut quality improves
so dramatically its worth the hassle.

On small to medium sized surface mount boards with 1 oz copper and 30 degree engraving bits with Autoleveller I set the cut depth to 0.05 to 0.06 mm, that is
50 to 60 um. Remember the copper is only 35um thick. For that to work the board can have NO FLEX.......NONE WHATEVER.

As I posted earlier I use double sided tape. Its not ideal, it can be hard to get it to release without bending or breaking the board and/or the flood coolant
can stuff up the adhesive. None the less I have had some great results. I've made boards with QuadFlatPacks with only 0.2mm between pins.

3822

General Mach Discussion / Re: switched PC now the motors stutter

« on: August 17, 2018, 04:57:38 PM »

Hi,
that video of the driver test is bad, its no wonder that your machine is playing up.

What sort of PC is it? There used to be a list that did the rounds of adjustments and tweaks that you could do to your PC to make
it run Machs parallel port better. I haven't seen that list for ages. It was very extensive with 50 odd things to do and it took hours to
work your way through them.

It may also be that the PC you have selected is just not good for Machs parallel port. Some old XP clunkers work perfectly well and yet some
high spec unit with muscles on its muscles does not. There is just no telling until you try.

Another alternative is an external motion controller like a SmoothStepper. They offer a number of advantages, the most important one is that
your choice of PC becomes very much wider. You can use laptops and just about any Windows OS, 32 OR 64 bit. Mach is very much less likely
to stutter and stall with other software on and running on the same PC. My experience is that an Ethernet SmoothStepper resulted in considerably
smoother motion on my machine.

I had been using two parallel ports for three years without too many problems. I had resisted the idea of spending money on a controller like a SmoothStepper.
I was starting to write my own macros and VB just pissed me off. I thought I would be better to learn Lua and Mach4 instead....if I was going to make the
effort to learn something new it might as well be up to date. Mach4 is really only at its best with an external controller, so I bought a SmoothStepper.

I had to re-do a lot of settings and things, and learn new ways of thinking to get Mach4 and the SmoothStepper to work, it wasn't easy but its not impossible.
My machine with the new SmoothStepper was that much smoother that I increased the maximum axis speed by 30% without losing steps and the steppers seem
to run a little cooler. Quite frankly I should have gotten a SmoothStepper earlier.

If you do consider buying an external controller don't buy Chinese rubbish......you'll have seen dozens of posts by people who bought cheap and then can't get
them to work. Most of the Chinese manufacturers don't care, they've got your money so you can go to hell as far as they are concerned. Those people turn up
on the forum looking for help, in most cases they get enough to get them going but most of the Chinese controllers don't do all the things Machs capable of.

The other thing to watch out for is that there are dozens of Chinese rip-offs out there. Theres a guy on the forum who believes the controller box he bought
from China has a Canadian made Ethernet SmoothStepper inside it. First the Ethernet SmoothStepper is made by Warp9 Technical Design in the US and has never
been made in Canada. Second the Ethernet SmootStepper is connected to your PC with an Ethernet cable, this guys controller is has a USB cable!!!!!
I wonder if he thinks Canada is a province of China? The crazy thing is this guy bought three 750W Delta (Taiwanese) servos and drives which are seriously
very very good indeed and paid good money for them and yet he bought a cheap s*********ty controller and will never be able to get the best out of his servos.

IF......IF you spend some money on a controller don't waste it on rubbish.....buy good OR don't buy.

Craig

3823

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

« on: August 17, 2018, 04:03:54 PM »

Hi Allan,
kool. I would have thought that the CSMIO and the servo drive would have to share the same earth potential.
I know the output of the drive is differential but to allow an undefined zero point would require the CSMIO be able to tolerate
a common mode voltage outside its own power supply rails and require that it have sufficient common mode rejection ratio that
the common mode voltage does not swamp the signal.

Craig

3824

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

« on: August 17, 2018, 03:46:22 PM »

Hi,
looks like Allan has it right the synthesized encoder outputs are line driver, see pg 156 of:

http://download.schneider-electric.com/files?p_enDocType=User guide&p_File_Name=EIO0000002305.02.pdf&p_Doc_Ref=EIO0000002305&_ga=2.101965250.2111833376.1534533331-1177742663.1534533331


I see that the driver can swing a few volts only. Is that enough for the CSMIO?

Craig

3825

General Mach Discussion / Re: What kind of bit/end mill should I be using?

« on: August 17, 2018, 02:13:14 PM »

Hi,
unless you can be sure that the only cutting that will be done in any pass is the plastic core then keep the speed the same.
If for instance you up the speed but part way through the pass the tool engages with some of the aluminum. either top or
bottom, the tool will break.

If I understand the way you have proposed your question you are doing multiple passes to cut through the composite.
That will mean that only the very tip of the tool will be doing the cutting. When the tip of the tool is blunt it will have
to be replaced but the rest of it is perfect.

May I suggest trying to cut through the entire thing in one pass. The two layers of aluminum constitute a thickness of only 1/16 and
the plastic core is that soft it doesn't really matter. You'll have to cut more slowly, probably very slowly to start until you get a feel for what
can be achieved but even at only 15ipm would still be the same total time as three passes at 45ipm. At least this way you would see that more of the
tool is engaged and cutting.

Craig

3826

General Mach Discussion / Re: Mach3 2-sided pcb milling. Centering with Y-axis width from G-code pattern.

« on: August 17, 2018, 05:30:34 AM »

Hi,
no messing around.....go to this outfit for PCB drills and tools:

https://www.ebay.com/str/carbideplus

Craig

3827

Mach4 General Discussion / Re: is a subprogram or Macro faster in the file itself or read from disk?

« on: August 16, 2018, 10:22:18 PM »

Hi,
I don't know... but in one sense it makes no difference. You have noted that there is a slight pause between
the main Gcode program and macro for instance. I believe that is inevitable as a result of motion control
passing from the main program to the macro. There is no way around that as far as I know.

When a separate chunk of Gcode is required the Gcode interpreter will execute the code by passing P(oint)V(elocity)T(ime)
data to the motion controller, commonly with a buffer of hundreds of milliseconds. Given the buffer who cares
which is fastest, once the buffer is full even a quicker executing piece of code must slow down to the rate
the motion controller consumes PVT data.

Were a chunk of code sooooo.. slow to load say that the motion buffer exhausted BEFORE the interpreter could read and
process the first of the new instruction stream...that would be different.....Mach would pause....and fail. But does
it do that?

Craig

3828

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

« on: August 16, 2018, 09:16:24 PM »

Hi,
I suspect the pairs of outputs, A+ and A- for example, are the collector and emitter of a phototransitor respectively.
Thus the switch current will have to be provided by the CSMIO.

Craig

3829

General Mach Discussion / Re: Mach3 2-sided pcb milling. Centering with Y-axis width from G-code pattern.

« on: August 16, 2018, 09:14:05 PM »

Hi,
whats the bet you have 1/8 inch drill bits which are actually 3.175mm.

I've tried all manner of means to clamp the board down without flexure including the method you have shown.
When yo come to do bigger boards Autoleveller will fail to do the business with such clamping methods.
The best I've tried and currently use is double sided tape.

Apparently vacumm holding is better again but I haven't tried it yet.

Craig

3830

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

« on: August 16, 2018, 03:11:17 PM »

Hi,
that sounds like a serial encoder output. You will not be able to hook that to your CSMIO.

You will instead hook it directly to the drive, it can and will read the encoder signal and as Hood has suggested the drive will synthesize
A+,A-,B+,B-, Z+ and Z- that you can hook to the CSMIO.

Craig