Machsupport Forum
General CNC Chat => Show"N"Tell ( Your Machines) => Topic started by: poppabear on July 06, 2007, 08:49:04 AM
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Greetings,
Jere are some pics for a 5 axis, Jog-Learn, Spinning Lathe I am doing for a client. The panel is about 75% complete.
I still also have the pendant to do, it will have a switchable choice between 2 MPG control or 1 Two axis Track ball MPG.
The user can cycle through all 5 axis of control and the X and Z (standard lathe axis), and A and B (ATC for tool selection and attack angle).
the fifth is a Backer wheel for doing support and flanging work. The physical machine was done by Russel metal spinning machine is a custom ground up build, and uses ball screws. The Panel, electrical, install, and Mach screens where done by me.
Spinning Lathes are used to make: Nose cones, Overhead light relectors, cups, out of a metal disk that is pushed over a mandrel
with various "Wheel shaped" tools.
Scott
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That Looks awesome! Nice work.
Chad
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Looking good!!
What is the board that is circled on the picture?
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Dennis: it is one of Aurturos, reversable BOB's
Chad: Thanks
Scott
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Looks good Scott, looks real good ;). I would love to see a video of it running when finished.
Brett
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Yes a full video of the machine would be great.
Upload it to our youtube section and then stream it into this thread.
It looks like a great machine.
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I dont know what you mean by stream it to this page?
The clients "Maintainance" people are currently mounting the Box, and making a "More physically secure" computer Enclosure cabnet.
Hopefully, they will be done by this weekend or at latest next weekend, then I will go up to the site and "Tune" and config Mach
for the Machine.
I don't have a "Movie camera", but my digital camera can take some very short length 10-15 seconds or so of vidio.
Scott
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I don't have a "Movie camera", but my digital camera can take some very short length 10-15 seconds or so of vidio
No pressure, only if you want to, but we are interested to see.
You can take the short movies and stitch them together easily in windows movie maker. (Start/Programs/Accesories/Windows movie maker)
I,m sure you know where our utube video section is? Upload it to there, and send me a PM when you are ready for the streaming setup.
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Well went up to KY, this weekend to install the control system on the machine, got about 80% done, then a Gecko drive blew up (my fault turned the current gain the wrong way), which melted the ps side to my bidirectional break out board. So progress is stopped for now.
It was good to see all the axis moving, I still have to tune the Geckos and the ADC's, not looking forward to eigther one of those, anybody want to help? I could sure use another set of expiereced drive tuning hands on a machine of this size.
Here are some pics to show where we are now. IF anyone is neer to Lexiton, KY and would like to pitch in on some Mach machine help let me know!!!!
Scott
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more pics
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Looking good Scott, Looking real good.
Brett
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sorry it has been so long on this, but, the lathe control is working great!! He actually cut one part and then he did several, the machine will hold about 2/10ths across average parts!!
The down side is the machine is down right now cause the guy that speced the right angle trasfer drives speced them to weak, and the X and Z Drives (1kw ADC's) stripped out the brass gears!!!
So they are gonna spec in a more powerful gear set, (such is the life of R&D).
Many, Many Thanks to Ed Gilbert of "CNCbuildingblocks" (www.cncbuildingblocks.com), I used his super duper awesome encouder count homing boards, he helped them to play nicely with cnc4pc's Bidirectional boards, and also he helped (as a matter of fact solved), the bug of finding the magic way to get two very different drive type to play together as well. He also helped find many other digital bugs. The Man is the Yoda of Digital electronics!!!
The owner of the machine will not let me have a "Movie" of it until he gets it fully working "Right" again......
But that should be soon!!!
Will post a movie when I can,
Scott
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Update:
The Guy I built the 5 axis Jog-learn spinning lathe control, brought vidio of the Lathe actually spinning a part to the Mach3 Convention S. E. He said it was great cause can easily jog learn 4000 lines of code in 2 minutes and have some other guy running the part two minutes after that!!!
I have the Movie disk he brought to the show, so I will see if the band width of Y-Tube will let me upload it. It was cool watching the 8 tool ATC rotating around with the formaing wheels and changing its angle of attack as the piece was formed........
Scott
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Well here is a vidio of the 5 axis jog learn spinning lathe in action!!!
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=A0kf1D49ces
The vidio is called: "5 Axis Jog-Learn Spinning Lathe in action"
This is the Vidio that the client I built the control for the above brought to the Mach3 Convention.
It has the normal X and Z of a lathe, Plus the "A" axis of the ATC turret rotates tools 1-8, and the "B" axis of the ATC tool turret rotates the angle of attack.
There is a "Y" Axis that is a "Backer Wheel" that moves up behind the chuck to put "Flanges" on the spun work. This vid shows a recessed light shield being spun.
It has dual function MPG control, it has TWO standard MPG wheels one of them selects the X, Y and A, the other Selects and operates the Z, and B axis, ALSO there is a selector switch that moves the two hand wheel MPG's to a 2 axis Jog-Ball type for Organic/dynamic curves while programming the machine.
Scott
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Scott,
That is one very impressive machine!
Ian
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Nice, good video of a very neat machine.
Brett
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Wow, after going to Easter service today, and being reminded of what Jesus did for me on the cross. It made me realise how stupid it was, for being mad at a guy who is trying to take credit for my control.
So, I erased what was here. Truth will find a way to him, we all need the Lord.
Scott
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Scott,
Glad to see that You are calming down. It is obvious to all here that You are the brains behind that project. There are always people trying to gain advantage through the efforts of others. Good luck on future projects!
Kenny
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This is an exceptional project, I'm loving every aspect of your contributions, Scott.
:)
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Amen, Scott:
I wounder who he will be calling when lightning kills something.
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Thanks for the Support and kind words,
I do appologize for losing my temper over a stupid thing, it just hit me wrong.
scott
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Mr. Russel of Russels metal spinning sent me a new vidio to post, it shows some better higher quality action shots, and he throws some cudos my way.......hehehehe.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3loBOieUrjA
Scott
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Way to go Scott,
But.........where is it ?
RC
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Interesting how things work out.
Here is a link:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3loBOieUrjA
Scott, what does a machine like that cost at the store?
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The control system was about 15k total, most of that taken up by the 5 ADC drives/servos (around 1500 per axis).
Russle said, at the Mach3 Convention SE that when all was said and done he had about 60k, since he spend ALOT on Labor, and since it was an R & D project there was alot of bug chasing both mechanically, electrically, and Motor tuning. He had bad power issues up there, I built the system for single phaze 200v power, but when I got to the site, it had Tripple Phaze and the 3rd leg was a Phantom leg, and the biggest issue was his power was NOT stable it would range from 190-243V. This played hell on the Geckos (3 or them for the minor axis, and thus they had to be upgraded to 3 ADC's since they can handle a much wider range, plus 3 phaze).
Now that he knows what he wants in a Machine, he is building a second one that has all the Mechanical changes and Upgrades, he thinks he could build another for around 30-40K.
scott
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can't get a better endorsement I would say
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Russel of Russels metal spinning contacted me to make a Six Axis jog learn spinning lathe, so I upgraded the Plug in to 6 Axis Jog-Learn then put a way to add in Custom Macros into
the Jog learn system. These Two Macros for this machine Apply/Release an Axis Brake one on each the A and B axis.
The 6th axis will be for a Part Trimmer or a Powered Tail Stock, he hasnt decided yet. But he now has 2 of the 5 axis Jog-learn machine making him some cash.
He will get to the physical build of the machine, in a few months, I will post of pics of the machine/control when he gets it done.
Screen shots of the screen set below:
This screen and plug in will be controlling his THIRD Jog Learn spinning machine!!
Scott
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Scott,
Impressive to say the least. Glad you got some PR out it. Just shows what can be done if you know what your doing.
RICH
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This is fantastic work. Spinning is not an easy thing to do and it's far less obvious how it works than milling or turning.
We make parabolic antenna reflectors using a variety of lathes, including this one:
(http://qpreflectors.com/uploads/images/Boko_lathe_600w.JPG)
it actually used to be a hydraulic copy lathe but it was stripped out and used for hand spinning. it'll swing a 2.4 metre tool weighing 3 tons. We have a bigger one that will swing nearly 4 metres.
My thinking is that retrofitting hand-spinning lathes or scratchbuilding new ones may work well in terms of economy and results, considering that a new one from Leifeld would cost around £800,000. Perhaps a large, surplus lathe bed would make a good cross slide?
Any news on how this project is progressing?
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Last I heard from him, he has Two five axis spinners, and one 6 axis spinner, all 3 machines are custom ground up builds. His main products are the large AL light reflectorss you see hanging in the Walmarts, Home Depots, Lowes, etc. that have those huge a$$ed halogen bulbs in them. He does some smaller light reflectors for smaller stuff also.
the best I can tell most if not all of his biz, is making reflectors. He like the jog learn, since it records his moves (he is a master manual spinner), and then he gets some monkey to stand in his place and load the blank and push the button over and over again for replay all day........ hehehee
He has one medium-large sized standard Mazak Lathe he was considering retrofitting to spinning, but, his own custom build stuff work so much better.
here is the Youtube of his 5 axis spinner: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3loBOieUrjA&feature=channel
scott
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Amazing! How can one jog that accurate on a CNC machine...? More so when you don't feel the reaction forces (or does this system have servos on the MPGs to simulate the load?)
Daniel
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no, what he does is form a part slowly with the Jog controls, and watches the part. Since as the part is formed, it is under the load it needs to be at to make the part as he wants it. I.e. if it needs more or less he turns the jog wheel more or less for that axis (upto 2 at once). He doesnt have to calculate deflection etc. since he is making the part then. So when the machine makes it, it moves to the same points he pushed it to, and thus will be under the same load for the same part. He claims that from part to part, the tolorance between them is +/- 0.0002".
To me that is amazing, I personally dont know sqaut about spinning or the science/skill behind it, I just did the control for the machine.
scott
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Hi Scott,
Yes, I figured that was what he was doing, and that was why I was amazed by his ability to jog the machine such as to reproduce the form tool shape. The shape is not trivial at all... the curvature is parabolic or circular or something...
As to the accuracy he claims to achieve, I don't know how one can measure to such accuracy on a curved surface. May be he uses a kind of light reflecting measuring system to measure the part (since they reflect light very well), but I wouldn't think so... Also in 10 degrees difference there would be about 4 times more thermal expansion than the claimed accuracy.
Daniel
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Good work, lighting - lots of work for the right spinner. We do all microwave stuff, generally C-band to Ku band with the odd one at nearly 40GHz. All ours are hand spun though.
If it helps, large PNC machines usually have a roller of a known shape which is moved across the static tool, and the path recorded, then the gap set according to the stock material thickness and the path recreated based on this - Thus arbitary shapes can be reproduced easily. There's more to it than that of course, it's very much a learned skill rather than a fixed process.
Errors on parabolic reflectors are usually measured using photogrammetric modelling: lots of dots and a couple of coded targets are photographed from various angles using a very decent digital camera; all the shots are then fed into a laptop and the target dots' position calculated relative to each other and relative to a 3D model of the dish. the software is called Photomodeler ... it's very very clever.
We can hold 0.6mm RMS surface error on a 3 metre dish ;)
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Still don't understand it... :-\ When spinning manually you feel the material and you know when it's already touching the form tool, but when jogging a CNC you don't have any feedback whether you reached the form tool. As I see it, you can easily stall the axis by pushing the tool too hard against the form.
The measuring technology is interesting. Thanks for the info.
0.6mm over 3 metre - WOW! Very impressive.
Daniel
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My best guess would be to spring load the tool or use a load cell or other indicator.
Large CNC spinning lathes use hydraulic rams with (I think) linear encoders. very expensive, especially if someone plays with it and drives the ram into a rotating tool that weighs as much as a fully loaded pickup truck. It has happened.
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Yes, also figured that spring loading the tool could help...
Daniel
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Dan and Blue,
It is my understanding that Russels users his Jedi Powers, and becomes one with the machine, the universe and everything........ his answer to all questions is 42......... go figure.....
" Master Russel, Spinning..., Much skill he has" ** Yoda Circa 20199, at the Yenabe spinning conferance.
or as Russel says: "Hey, I dont need no stinking load cell"
scott
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^^ Yeah, that's the other way to do it :D
I've come to the conclusion with my two spinners - Who have clocked up around 40 years experience between them - that it's not quite as simple as it looks, never quite obvious in its mechanism, and flexible enough that it is either surprisingly adaptable when required or utterly treacherous. I think they may be Jedi on the quiet.
incidentally I've just worked out that the contact speed of the edge of a big dish blank, when it is trimmed off with a lathe tool, is over 4,200 surface feet per minute, so it's hardly surprising the swarf flies about like it does.
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I was wounder if you can use a pendant like the x-box one that has 2 little joystick.
and install it on a lathe and then if there is a way mach can record every move you make with the two
little joystick than you can save it.
then you can run the next part just like the one you recorded;
is this possible.
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This is the way some of the big Leifeld lathes do it, other "playback" lathes use encoders on the cross slide and record a route as the roller is moved across the face of the tool. The "gap" can then be set for a basic material thickness and edited to allow for thinning or compression.
I think Mach3 has a tracking facility but I've never used it. Suggestions from the audience?