Machsupport Forum
General CNC Chat => Show"N"Tell ( Your Machines) => Topic started by: Monty on September 20, 2006, 07:40:46 PM
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Here is my newest project. An EmcoTurn140 that I picked up.
Overall I am impressed with the quality of the machine. It seems to be first rate. The machine itself is one of the many trade school orphans that show up from time to time. It seems to have very little use on it at all, in fact it appears to be virtually unused.
There are some peculiarities that are complicating this retrofit. One of them is the spindle motor. It is a Very nice 7.5hp DC shunt motor. Of course the control is very tightly integrated, and "modular" thinking was nowhere in the original designers vocabulary. There is no way I can see to separate the axis controls and the main spindle drive from each other. It is also set up to run on 380V 3p power. I guess that is what they have in Austria. Unfortunately I have 230V 1P to contend with. So I am looking at a controller that will let me run this existing motor at 3.6hp as is, or 5hp with a rewind of the armature. I doubt I will ever need 7.5hp in such a small machine. Anyway I figure that a 5hp DC motor will be better than a 3hp AC sensorless vector. Ever price a 4 pole regenerative 7.5hp DC shunt drive? Guaranteed to give you sticker shock.
The other sticky point is the 5phase Berger Lahr stepper motors. These are truly the red headed stepper child :D of the stepper world. At the time this machine was made they were the cats meow because there was no such thing as microstepping yet. The machine has a published repeatability of .0001. Now whether that is true or not we will see, but I really don't want to fool with changing out the perfectly good motors on there for newer motors. They are also pretty beefy with a 1000oz in rating. So being a cheap skate I managed several bleary eyed 1am searches of old pdf files to find out that Vexta makes a modern version of this along with a nice little driver board. They are unfortunately very pricey if you buy one new. But fortunately since they are so proprietary and nobody knows what goes with what they were available used on ebay for $99. So I bought three as a gamble. We will see if it works out.
I'll keep you guys posted on the progress. I plan on using Mach 3. I picked up an aloris powerdex turret on ebay that might work nicely. Or I may just use a tool post. Or both! I would like to put live tooling on it using a separate stepper and a harmonic drive with an electric clutch. Should keep me busy this winter.
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A guy that lives close to me has a couple of emco lathes and a mill. One lathe is a manual and the other CNC but it is a conventional style lathe, not sure of the model, but they are well built little machines.
Look forward to seeing your progress.
Hood
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Bragger :)
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Just thought I'd post an update.
yneb: not trying to brag.....just proud of my newest baby :)
Have most of the parts for the lathe on hand now. 160/1 harmonic reduction and a stepper to position the main spindle, still looking for a good clutch. Also got a carotron DC drive for the spindle motor. Will post some pics later.
The big news:
Finally moved the lathe into my new shop. Work got in the way this winter. Just finished the wiring and most of the painting inside the shop.
I got tired of waiting on my neighbor with the backhoe and used the hillbilly rigger method, mixed with some advanced Egyptian technique. This would be under the heading "don't try this at home".
And a final pic to prove it did not end in dismemberment, you will note there is no blood on the floor or machine. ;D
Monty
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Rule #1
Everything takes a lot longer than you think it will! :(
Finally getting around to the meat of converting this lathe. What was going to just be a simple hook up mach and go thing got a little more involved.
The machine was hardly used. Which is a good thing, but it sat for almost 30 years. Without any use the way oil never did wash the cosmoline off the ways.
The X and Z were both frozen and the ball screws were covered with fossilized grease. All of the way wipes had to be replaced. To get to the way wipes, you have to
disassemble all the sheet metal. From there the "while I have it apart" mentality took over and now it has new paint as well. Oh well, I never did like the machine tool in drag
look that it had before. I also had to rebuild the powerdex turret I scrounged for it. Whoever had it before did some "maintenance" on it. This person apparently thought that RTV silicone is a miracle substance, good for everything from assembly lube to an overall conformal coating. I'm not joking the whole thing was coated with silicone inside and out!!! :o Some of the internals were corroded pretty good, so I guess they were trying to stop coolant from getting into the turret. They might have tried installing all of the O-rings, most of which were missing ::). Fortunately most of the damage was superficial and easily fixed (except for scraping all of that #$%*&@#$ silicone off so I could re-paint it. So new seals and O-rings plus lube. The other thing I am doing is replacing the 3 phase AC servo that powers the turret with a stepper. I'll sacrifice speed, but It's a lot easier to deal with on this machine as everything else is run by steppers.
Hooking up the turret is going to be a project. I need more inputs than I can get from the serial port. Maybe the new smooth stepper board will be the way to go!! The turret needs 9 inputs. and 1 outputs in addition to the stepper motor. The input hog is the 7 bit encoder. Does anybody have any suggestions for hooking up the turret? Whats the best way to do it? let a subroutine in mach control it or use a stand alone plc?
Anyway my current focus is getting the turret re-assembled and mounted. By the time I get around to that the smooth stepper board should hopefully be available and I will have made some wiring decisions.
Monty
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That is looking good Monty. Good I tell you.
Here is a link to the Smooth Stepper forum.
http://www.warp9td.com/index.php
Brett
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Thanks Brett,
I think I've finally got all the electrical bits ordered. They should be here the end of this week if the weather holds. I decided to go with a PCI parallel port card, and another breakout board in order to run the turret. Also finally got the O-rings from Dorian. What a pain!! and they are proud of them too!! >:(. I'm currently working on the adaptor plate for the turret. The plan is to put the turret back together this weekend and start the wiring next week. That is if I can finish another work project this week. :P
I used the KISS method this time. I plan to have an on/off switch and an E-stop hard wired. Everything else will be software configurable on a USB or modbus pendant. My mill has all kind of interlocks hard wired for safety and it is a pain to start up and shut down. That is mostly due to the nature of what was available when I first did the retrofit. No mach3, charge pump etc. On the lathe the on/off switch will power up the computer and the charge pump powers up the main spindle and axis drives through a contactor. It should be just like booting up a computer. I think the controls are getting to the point that the only thing that makes sense is software configurable user interface. Otherwise you just wind up being way behind as things get better. I see that Art has started on lazy turn! I can't wait to try that out. This stuff is getting really cool!
I can remember putting together my first dual celleron 300 box and loading up Rhino. I thought things couldn't get any better. This was back when an SGi box cost a bloody fortune and the software to run on it was in the $25-50K range.....that was 10 short years ago. Then I bought an old Bridgeport Boss and put an Ah-Ha control on it. I thought that was pretty neat....that was only 8 years ago...Now I have full parametric solid modeling with assemblies, FEA, and mechanisms on a box so fast I can't believe it for a cost at least a factor of 50 less than the bad old days, and my Bridgeport runs Mach3 with conversational programming ;D
Give it about 10 years and the fab at home stuff should be coming along nicely. Then molecular assembly. Pretty soon I'll have my very own replicator on my desk, and then I won't know what to do with all this heavy iron I worked so hard to accumulate ;D.
I don't know where this is heading....but I think it will be on the same order of magnitude as the steam engine and the industrial revolution.
You guys keep up the good work!!!
Monty
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Does anybody out there in cyberland know anything about this EMCO part? I am trying to hook up the spindle encoder and I don't have any documentation on it.
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Some additional info
The disk is brass. It has 1 long index slot, and numerous shorter timing slots. There are two sensors, one taller one for the index slot, and a shorter one for the timing slots. There are two wires to each sensor, some resistors, a POT and a capacitor on the board.
Part number on the sensor HGA2003 B525 (made in mexico) (googling this doesn't find anything)
The board is an EMCO part and they are less than helpful.
Thanks,
Monty
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Hey Monty, That is an encoder. I haven't set one up yet but I think the simplest way to get to do some threadign would be to set up an optical switch and make another disk for it to sense. If your running a Smooth Stepper, you may be able to use the encoder. If you could find the pin out for the encoder that would be great. I'm sure it will use 5 volts DC. All encoders I have ever seen do. Can you get any numbers off of the chips on the board? Might be able to find their pin out and go from there.
Brett
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Brett,
There are four wires. two to each of the sensors. I imagine one is power and the other is signal. I am using the combo board from Bob Campbell. There are two sensors, one for the index pulse (one per rev) and the other (lots per rev) They are separate. If it is 5V I can just use the 1/rev signal. I was just hoping there was a way to use the finer resolution as well. I don't have a pin out or any documentation other than what I posted. The documentation with my lathe shows an entirely different setup. :(
Monty
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After taking the board off the encoder, it appears to use a couple of photo detectors of some sort. Both pulse streams use exactly the same detector, one is just spaced up a bit to read the elongated one per rev slot.
If it is just five volts no problem, but do I need the finer resolution or will the one per rev pulse be enough?
Monty
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One pulse per rev is exactly what you need but afraid I think that will be too short a pulse if you are using the parallel port, if you have a SmoothStepper then it will be fine. You can lengthen the signal with some electronics but the easiest thing to do would be as Brett said and get an OPB 917B opto switch and a 220 Ohm resistor, in the UK that would cost about £6 (under $10). You could then fit a single slotted disc (around 10mm width slot) and threading will be no problem at all :) I use that on both my mill and lathe and the lathe threads perfectly, see below, in the first pic two were done with parallel port and the other 2 were with SmoothStepper. Have also attached a pic of the sensor on my Bridgeport.
Hood
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Moran taing Hood.
I ran the math on the slot width per the user guide and I got .0631" for the slot width, about twice the width of the current slot. I am using the parallel port. Do you think If I were to widen the slot to around .12" the pulse will be long enough?
I am going to try to get the existing sensor to work. If I can't I'll try the OPB 917B. It can't hurt and I have it here in my hot little hands.
Monty
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seems a bit low on width but I have never calc'd it myself so could be right. It will probably work ok as long as the rest of the slots aren't picked up as well, if they are then you will need to use the timing and then I am not sure if it will work as they will be so quick they will be intermittent over the PP so no way to tell Mach how many to look for. No harm in trying though :) If just the index is picked up then you use the Index input.
Hood
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The ones Emco use is functionally the same as OPB 917. Use the existing PCB as it has the parts you will need anyway.
Don't modify the code disc, make a new one with a wider slot. The existing one will come to use in the future when this PP is obsolete and new (faster) hardware will be in common use. Then I'm sure Mach will use a finer resolution than one reading per revolution, and your Emco coding disc will come in handy again.
There are also easy solutions to widen the pulse from the index slot on your disc. Look for 74LS121. If you're handy with a breadboard that may be easier for you than making a new disc. Then just leave the other sensor there for the future.
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Hi, Monty
Making a new disk is the way to go as suggested above.
On my Emco Comp. 5 lathe, I used the existing OPTO sensor/pickup, Only needed to add a current limiting resistor to power the OPTO sensor properly.
Original Disk was about 5 inch in dia., With the single slot width being about a 1/4 inch, Increased it to 7/8 inch and It's good to 4000 rpm.
Mach3 just need's additional time/width to see the change of State of the OPTO sensor at your max spindle speed.
Nice looking Lathe, You haft'a do what you haft'a do to u-load these machine's.
Hope this Helps, Chip
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Alas the dremel is faster than the internet. I have irreversibly altered the disk. It's OK. I can always make another one with my mill if need be.
Mach 3 is installed on the machine and it is talking to the breakout board. I have calibrated the spindle speed output and configured the spindle run and direction relays. The index input is working using the existing EMCO sensor. I just supplied it with 5V, ground and used the index pulse. The timing pulse and sensor is unused. I Just have to hook up the E-stop circuit and deal with a few little wiring snafus that arise when converting from EU to US power.
Thanks for the feedback. :)
Monty
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:) You'll get there Monty.............. Your on your way.
Brett
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After fighting with some noise issues and a bad connection in the crimp type parallel port connector, the axis drives are finally working 8). Unfortunately the best I can get for rapids is about 180 in/min. The 5 phase steppers are quiet and smooth, but 24 volts just doesn't pack that much punch. I will probably update to newer steppers and gecko drives so I can get the voltage up. I still haven't gotten the bugs worked out of the main spindle drive. I just don't have the voltage available to get the RPM high enough. The motor is rated 2500-6500 rpm :o. So far I have gotten the spindle up to about 1700 rpm. The motor is turning about 3200 rpm or so. Not much more I can do there. The spindle is also not very linear in response, so tuning is a bit tough. I'm going to keep fiddling with it for a while, but I have a feeling that there is a new AC spindle motor in my future, or perhaps I will try a DC motor set up for our voltage. Most DC motors have too low an RPM rating to be useful.
Monty
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A C Servos are the dogs danglers for spindles, just fitted a 12.5Kw one to my lathe, it will spin the 10 inch chuck up to 2000RPM in under 2 seconds if I want and has constant torque from 0rpm right up to 2000rpm :)
Hood
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12.5KW :o that's a lot o' bananas!
I would settle for a tad less. But that would solve my spindle positioning dilemma too. Hmmmmmmm. Sure would solve a lot of problems....... I'm also thinking about going with DC servos on the axis drives. The spindle drive and the axis drives were a gamble. I didn't have much invested in the drives and it was worth a shot to try to use the existing motors, but.......Looks like a job for EBay!
Monty
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Hood,
What are you using to power that servo motor?
Regards
Fernando
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Monty
Not sure where you are but I presume the USA, so dont know what the Emco stuff sells like there but here in the UK I know a couple of people who have sold their Emco parts on eBay and they all sold in no time for decent prices :)
Fernando
I am using an Allen Bradley 2098-DSD-HV220-SE Its a 22Kw servo drive with Sercos but I have the sercos software disabled which turns the drive into a standard drive with Indexing capabilities.
Hood
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I just bought a 7.5 hp yaskawa spindle motor and drive on eBay. 0-8000rpm constant torque with positioning. Anybody know what rpm the spindle bearings in this lathe might be good for?? It would be nice for smaller parts to be able to go higher than 2500rpm quoted in the book. I'm not sure if the limitation was the spindle or the drive. I do know the thing is smooth as silk at 1700rpm with the current motor.
I also decided to stick with steppers rather than DC servos. If I upgrade to servos, I'll go with AC units.
I misquoted my rapids in a previous post. In one of my typical episodes of mental flatulence, I had not calibrated steps/in yet :P. Rapids with the 5 phase motors are more like about 40 in/min which low and behold matches the original speck in the manual :(. I found an original data sheet on the steppers on the machine. They are only 430 oz-in motors not 1280 like the later version. I guess you really don't want super fast rapids on a training lathe anyway ;). They really are marginal and have trouble compressing the counterbalance spring on the cross slide without missing steps. Its sad, but the little nema23 stepper I put in the turret would run circles around the axis motors :(. So off to eBay with them and the drives. I have a PacSci K33 that's been wanting to make itself useful for 5 years or so. I'll have to wire it bipolar-series to keep from frying the gecko drives, but it should be more than adequate. I'll put it on the cross slide. I ordered an 1800 oz in motor from Keling to put on the carriage, and I'll up the voltage to 50V. If that isn't good enough, I'll order a new power board and go up to 80V, but I don't think that will be necessary. I'm going to use gecko 203Vs.
On a positive note. I got the turret powered up and moving around. I had a terrible time with the encoder on the turret shaft. The position strobe has a 1deg window. Something that lends itself to bench adjustment, rather than on the machine. I took all day Sunday to get it adjusted. Tightening the set screw would disturb it, then finding it witout a scope was a real pain because of the time delay on the meter >:(. All of the proximity switches and other stuff on the turret work fine. Programming is going to be a challenge for me.........Fortran, COBOL and basic are the last programming experience I had a loooooooong time ago. AHH well another adventure.
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That sounds a lot of speed for a 7.5Hp servo, also better watch you dont crash the turret into the spindle or you will do some serious damage with that much pwer LOL
Would imagine the bearings could stand much more than the 2500 but dont go too high as your chuck may be a limiting factor, what size is the chuck and is it iron or steel?
Hood
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Hood,
The chuck that came with the machine is a nice 6 in Maier forged steel unit. The pulleys are about a 2:1 ratio so I would be able to get about 4000 spindle rpm. I did find that EMCO made a 240 which looks exactly like the 140 except it has a powered tailstock and the machine is totally enclosed. It appears to have the same spindle as mine and was rated at 4000 rpm. Most likely the only time I would use more than 2500 rpm would be with small parts and a collet.
There is a reason I put a 1/2 in polycarbonate sheet in the door window, but I hope it is never needed :o.
Monty
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You should be fine, most steel chucks of 6 in dia are rated about 4500RPM.
Hood
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Sometimes I question my sanity.
This past Saturday I got up at 0500 made breakfast for the BOSS. Slammed my coffee, grabbed the chocolate covered espresso beans and departed north into the freezing mist. 7 hrs, many frozen salted icy miles, and one fill up later I arrived in East Alton IL; a thoroughly depressing place, at least this time of year ;). I then loaded up my prize and headed back South. About 1500 hrs I finally got a chance to drain the morning's coffee and get a bite to eat. Then back on the road. Hurtling along at 80+ mph listening to anything to keep me awake, I suffer through a Christian demonic possesion program >:D, and some song about driving a tractor that hasn't left my head two days hence >:(. Finally I get back into the mountains well after dark and the folk sampler is on....bluegrass....much better than the contemporary stuff AHHHHHH.
Somehow I survived.
This afternoon after my work was done for the day I decided to pull the original spindle motor. Then the scary thing happened. The new motor fit the machine, no adaptor plate, no bushing for the spindle pulley, Same length shaft the whole bit. Looks like it grew there. The new spindle motor is brand spanking new, still had the connector and crimp terminals for the encoder in a little plastic baggie in the terminal box. I am quite terrified, as nothing EVER goes this smooth. Something must be wrong. It did have a little shelf rash, and I had to dust it off. Other than that it worked out better than I could have hoped for.
The Spindle drive needs an add on card to do positioning, that will have to wait.
Next I have to modify the axis motor brackets and mount the new motors. Then rewire the control cabinet.
Right now freezing rain is coming down at a pretty good clip outside. The forcast calls for around 1 inch of ice. Somebody needs to phone Al Gore and tell him to turn up the thermostat! :D
I hope I have power in the morning. The oil lamps are filled up and there is a good pile of wood by the stove, so I'll survive as long as the cognac lasts.... ;D
I'd rather be lucky than good any day ;).
Monty
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Paid for my luck with the spindle drive with 1.5 inches of ice and no power for 10 days. Stranded at home for 4 because the driveway was blocked with downed trees and power lines.
The dog is worried he is going to run out of food ;).
I tried to save this tree when we cleared some land. It was about 20 inches in diameter and straight as an arrow. Peeled like a banana. >:(
What a mess. I'll be cleaning up for months.
Monty
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I did make some progress in spite of it all.
carriage motor mounted.
Old 5 phase vs. new.
Cross slide motor.
New spindle motor mounted.
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More pics....
Temporary screen and keyboard while debugging. You can see the old DC drive in the cabinet. It is gone now.
Pics of the turret. I got it mounted a while back, but haven't had a chance to post any pics. I did get it moving around and all the switches and encoder work. Haven't tested the positioning solenoid yet.
Probably going to get slow again, because I have to try to make up for two weeks of lost work plus clear out all the limbs and trees. It's thundering now. I hope we don't get too much in the way of severe storms, because what is left of the power lines is held together with spit and bailing wire right now.
Monty
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I don't know if you have the turret running under Mach control yet, but you might want to consider a Cubloc PLC. The turret on my converted Hardinge CHNC takes 8 inputs and 2 outputs. The Cubloc gets the tool number from Mach, then rotates and indexes the turret to the correct tool number. I believe the Cubloc processor and board cost about $140. You can see it starting in my thread here:
http://www.cnczone.com/forums/showthread.php?t=50685&page=13
Vince
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Vince,
Thanks for the link. I'll check it out. Right now I am planning to use mach to control the turret with a macro or brains. I am rethinking the whole thing now that I have it all torn apart and the DC drive is no longer taking up so much space in the cabinet.
Monty
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Back from the dead!.....
Started working on the lathe again. I had some noise issues with the turret wiring. I tried to use an all in one cable. Which was a bad idea, and I knew it but I tried it anyway. So I wound up running separate shielded cables for the stepper and the IO on the turret, tracing down all the shielding and making sure there were no ground loops. I managed to kill all the noise gremlins. Then work intruded.
So now I'm trying to get back in the swing of things.
I used Scott Shafer's diagnostics screen to make sure that all of my inputs are working properly. THANKS SCOTT!!!! You saved me from being committed because I thought for sure I was going insane.
I am going to have to write a macro or a brain to control the turret. So in keeping with the baby steps before running philosophy I thought I would start out by getting an LED to correspond to each input state for the turret.
I'm using OEM triggers 2-13. (I would have started with 1 but that causes a notepad screen to maddeningly appear. This is very disconcerting to be rotating the turret and have a bazillion notepad windows open up.
I've set them up in ports and pins, and confirmed they are working.
In screen designer what is the mysterious process used to interface the oem trigger to the LED? I have tried the OEM trigger number. I have tried the corresponding signal number from the wiki. What gives???? Nothing works.
After I get that to work I want to make a button that activates the locking solenoid on the turret. Then assuming I haven't run screaming from a cliff, I will attempt the brain or macro.
Monty
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Anybody out there running a cnc lathe have any good advise on tooling?
Most of what I have done lathe wise was on manual machines.
Right now I just want to have a fairly versatile set up. In the future I'm sure my tooling list will grow as jobs come up.
I have 8 positions to play with on the turret.
What I have in mind is the following:
1. Turning Facing chamfering LH
2. Turning Facing chamfering RH
3. Contouring LH
4. Contouring RH
5. .5 drill
6 Center Drill
7 . Combo boring bar LH RH
8. Parting turning combo
Keep in mind this is just off the top of my head. I'm a Noob with a CNC lathe.
Monty
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The lathe is finally all systems go. I have begun to tool it up and have a project already lined up for it.
I had some problems chasing down noise on the machine before I finally discovered it was on the ground line from the geckos. I was getting nuisance trips on the E-stop. I didn't find it until I had re-routed half the wiring. Now it is as stable as a rock. I have the debounce set to 100. I also had a problem with the spindle drive faulting out under deceleration. At first I thought that it was a problem with the phase converter or the spindle drive. Turns out I needed an external braking resistor.
It has been a long road, complicated by the fact that I essentially retrofitted the lathe twice!!! In the future I think I will just spring for the bucks and get things going faster rather than try to scrimp and save. There is just too much time involved to justify saving a couple hundred dollars. Especially if you have to rip it all out and do it right in the end anyway.
The next project is going to be a big one. I have a 5 axis Artran mill to retrofit. I've slowly been collecting parts. It's going to require a big chunk of change to buy the axis motors and drives. I'll start another thread to follow it.
Thanks to everybody who helped me get this lathe up and running....special thanks to Brett and Art!!!!!
Monty
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Wow Monty, that is one clean machine. It looks great!!!
Brett
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Post some video when you can, its looks great !
JH
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Monty:
Thats one sweet unit, you should be very proud..
Art
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That just looks way too good to use :D
Graham
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Very nice indeed!
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Thanks for the kind words guys. I'm not sure if "proud" is the right description.......perhaps "relieved" is more like it. There were times that I was unsure of the wisdom of this undertaking. But it turned out eventually. Now if I can just keep from crashing it! The thought of ramming a 3/4 boring bar or worse yet the turret into that chuck at 4000 rpm scares the you know what right out of me. :o
I was going to post some pics of the inside of the control cabinet and some more of the outside of the machine, but my camera broke. I'll post some more when I get a new one.
As to videos, I'll try to take some when its cutting metal for my next project. I just promised my first born to Travers for tooling. I think it's safe to say I'll have more in tooling than I have in the whole machine before too long.
Have a Happy New Year everybody!!!!
Monty
P.S. Hey Brett do you have a good usb camera driver? Mine is crashing mach when I try to use it.
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I have the one I got from Arnie.
Brett
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What a good looking machine you made there Monty! Waiting forward to some more photos AND videos ;)
Daniel
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Monty,
Seems like the adventure was worth the experience. Nice lathe!
Look forward to here is what i made pics,
RICH
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Rich,
I have a few parts off the mill that I will post over in the projects section after I get a working camera. I haven't built anything with the lathe yet. I'm still learning to use it. As soon as I have some parts to show off the lathe, I will.
Most of the stuff I have built so far is rather unimpressive compared to some of the great things I've seen you guys building. There have been a couple of assembly jigs, and machining fixtures. Nothing to brag about.
Monty
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Here are the last of the pics for the lathe project.
This is the inside of the cabinet. I have to admit that I did not go overboard with neatness on this wiring job. I had a severe case of git er done syndrome.
Monty
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Some more pics of the lathe, and my favorite corner of the shop in a rare state of cleanliness.
Monty
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I think the wiring looks really nice, imo. Mine kinda fell apart once I added the limit switches. I need to go back in there and make them all neat again.
Barry
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Wow. That is indeed a clean shop. Mine looks like the city trash dump. I don't see how you get around without the proper obstacles to trip over.
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Sam,
You just haven't seen the other half of the shop. I took that picture so I can shame myself into trying to keep it that clean. I've been trying to clean and organize since before Christmas. Half the shop looks pretty good. The other half......not so good. ;)
Barry,
thanks. It just depends on how high you set the bar. I used to work for Lockheed building rocket engine test stands. The guys who did the wiring there would have laughed me out of the building ;D. Those guys set the bar REALLY high. I still don't know how they could keep such a big bundle of wires neat. I didn't use any panduit on this machine. I didn't really have the best setup since the cabinet was sort of thrown together twice out of leftover parts I had setting around. I had to just try my best to keep the AC on one side of the cabinet and keep the control and signal lines separated. Anyway, it works.
Is anybody else freezing their A$$ off? I'm burning wood like a locomotive climbing over the Sierra Nevada Mountains with Casey Jones on Crack at the helm. It is unseasonably, and unreasonably cold here. >:(
Monty
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Yup, 14 deg. F here tonight I think.
Brett
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Temp shows 18 here in TN, as of now (11:00 PM). I wish those canucks would keep their cold fronts from crossing the border. Anything below 55 and I'm ready to get the hot cocoa out. I absolutely hate the cold.
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This is the inside of the cabinet. I have to admit that I did not go overboard with neatness on this wiring job. I had a severe case of git er done syndrome.
Monty
You have to see mine Monty... yours will seem then like there ain't no wiring at all :D
Daniel
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I have yet to make a single chip in anger with the lathe. First the video card went south. Got that fixed. Then I discovered that the turret wasn't square to the headstock. Then I found out the turret was moving around about 4 thou. I have mostly resolved the turret problem.
Found out that a USB hub causes problems with things. Mostly the shuttle Pro pendant. I had had the same kind of problem on my Mill and just live with it. I had thought it was due to the Grex. When I moved the Shuttle pro plug from the back of the computer to the HUB mounted in the control panel, I started getting the same kind of latency problems.
I also fought with the video camera drivers. Got the official ones from Arnie and it works much better. There is a problem however when the video window is open. It interferes with the tool change macro. It's really strange. When the home command is given one of the axis will fault out about half way home. It sounds like the motors are skipping steps. At first I though the added weight of tooling on the turret was causing the problem. After a lot of testing I discovered that it was actually the video window causing the problem. The Gecko drives actually fault out when this happens. Really strange. The work around is to just close the video window before giving any tool change commands.
Monty
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I finally got to make some chips today.
Here is a video of the first cut:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pYYkp1wkSBY
Attached is a picture of the finished cut. My finish pass was too big. Should have been 5 thou not 10, but not too bad for a first try.
now to make some real parts!
Monty
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Nice test cut. Can't wait to see more parts being cut. Great looking Lathe.
JH
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I knew you would get it dirty eventually. :) Looks good Monty.
Brett
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Thanks Brett, JH,
Spent the day working on the flood coolant system. It's sort of a temporary thing, but it will get me started. Had to track down all the leaks and made a big mess all over the floor. The bottom of the chip tray was not sealed because the original sump was a huge thing that fit under the whole lathe. Unfortunately it was missing when I bought the machine. So I spent the day caulking up the leaks with this stuff called tripolymer sealant. Works great but stinks to high heaven and drove me out of the shop. Too cold to keep the windows open and now I've got to wait for it to dry >:(
I had hoped to cut some "real" parts today, but Oh-well.
JH- I checked out your web site. Nice looking shop and cool bikes. Looking at the stuff a lot of you guys are doing keeps me very humble.
Monty
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Thanks for the compliments Monty!
I am watching your build to learn as much as I can about lathe conversions, as I plan to convert this SL1 to Mach3 someday…
JH
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JH,
Nice looking lathe. I'd definitely get familiar with modbus and PLC's for that one. I'm starting to wish I had used a PLC and modbus with a galil card and AC servos. I keep having a flaky random problem with some kind of noise or cold solder joint somewhere. It's driving me crazy. Impossible to track down random problems. Just about the time I get ready to make some real parts or get comfortable with it WHAM!! flaky problem returns.
Anyway, during one of it's lucid moments it managed to demonstrate the tool changer, tool table, and flood coolant today:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7AQGT7AnlD4&feature=player_embedded
Monty
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I feel your pain about flaky problems, the PC I had running my smaller BP CNC Mill went down. Not big deal, just save off the data and replace the PC, right? It took a month to get it working again, the parallel port had different impedance, so some of the inputs would trip randomly. After a rewire with a new breakout board, shielded cables and only grounding one side of the cables to a common ground, things are better than before!
Try breaking it down into small pieces and function test each one, then integrate them together slowly and methodically while testing each system along the way.
On my big VMC that I working on in my spare time, I am using Modbus to the control the spindle and monitor the spindle load. Modbus is great!
http://www.machsupport.com/forum/index.php/topic,13365.0.html (http://www.machsupport.com/forum/index.php/topic,13365.0.html)
Keep posting...
JH
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Thanks JH,
Basically what happens is the thing is rock solid. Then it will randomly have either an e-stop or limit switch trip. Once this starts up It usually doesn't calm down until I turn the machine off for a while. This doesn't always work and sometimes it's still flaky when I start it back up dead cold. Once the problem starts, I push the reset and it immediately trips. The DRO for spindle RPM starts jumping around also. So basically all the inputs start going haywire. If I then disconnect the spindle speed sensor from the board the BOB really starts going haywire with LED's and relays clicking away like Morse Code.
I've been through the whole machine. I've basically got it isolated to the breakout board. I can disconnect all the external wiring from the BOB to my machine except the power, and replace the E-stop and Limit SW with a jumper but the problem is still there. Even with all the 3 phase stuff completely disconnected from the wall. So it's not noisy wiring or a ground loop.
If I disconnect the printer cable at the BOB the problem goes away. I have also made a new printer cable and still have the problem. I really think it is a problem in the BOB.
I ALWAYS shield things and ground at one end. Also use a single point ground. Put snubbers on all the AC coils and diodes on the DC ones. Also run all AC lines separate from DC. I also try to separate all signal lines from stepper motor lines, but I couldn't do that to the turret. They are both shielded and routed in a shielded conduit. I've learned all that the hard way.
I have wondered if the Parallel port might be bad or something, but the PC and Mach are rock solid with BOB disconnected. Problem also occurs when the machine is hot or cold. So cooling isn't the issue. The hardest thing is that it is random, so if you make a change and the problem disappears, I think HEY I GOT IT!!!. Only to have it start acting up when I'm loading stock for a project.
Ah well.....keeps me off the streets.
Monty
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You may have already tried it Monty, but since you didn't mention it - did you try setting a bigger debounce in Mach?
Daniel
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Daniel,
Yep tried it. It doesn't help and I can't set it very high without mach missing some of the position strobes on the turret encoder.
I think I have found the problem. I have to do some more testing to make sure.
Monty
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Solved the problem on the lathe. It was a combination of not one, but TWO bad printer cables. I thought I had eliminated that variable by making up a new cable.
There was also a cold solder joint on the BOB.
All is well now:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9B2d5HABSJk
Trouble shooting can be a real pain sometimes.
Monty
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Well done Monty! Was not easy tracing it down. Glad you got it solved in the end.
Very good video also. What are you using for coolant?
Daniel
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What a fantastic machine, Monty, thanks for sharing-
Dave
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Daniel,
I'm using Astro-Cut Synthetic in distilled water.
Tracking down bugs can really be a bear sometimes. Even if you think you have eliminated a possible problem sometimes you just have to start over from square one and go down the list. That is the only way I found out I had two bad cables. So sometimes trying the same thing over and over and expecting a different result is not insanity ;D. That's my story and I'm sticking to it.
Thanks,
Monty