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Topics - allyd

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1
SmoothStepper USB / Thumbs up
« on: May 25, 2009, 08:28:11 AM »
Fitted my Smoothstepper last weekend, fluffed about for a little this past week trying to get other things sorted but tonight I tried some a small engraving job in aluminum. Oh WOW what a difference, the corners are now corners not a rounded representation of one. My machine now cuts a circle, not an oval. Very happy.

The only thing I borked on was getting the 26 pin header back to front and wondering why it was not working. DOH!

2
General Mach Discussion / Problem cutting circles
« on: April 27, 2009, 05:13:41 AM »
Hey all, I think I have a strange one here, when I cut a circular pocket or circle it cuts an oval. Now normally I would think ahhh, X and Y need recalibrating but my oval is skewed at 45 deg. I cut a square pocket and it measures ok which suggests that my calibration is correct. To make it worse the circle measures correct at the X and Y (Dia. 42mm). I confused to whether I have a software or hardware issue. I have tried cutting several pockets using NFW, V-carve and the simple pocket wizard in Mach but they are all out. Any ideas are very welcome.

3
Show"N"Tell ( Your Machines) / My soon to be CNC router
« on: December 30, 2008, 07:56:25 AM »
Hi all, I'm not sure where to start because my journey so far has been one of luck and perseverance. I guess the number one thing to admit is that I did NOT build this machine, I was fortunate enough to be at the right place at the right time and to say the right things. I have a trade back ground in tooling and my knowledge of the "CNC black art" is there but limited. The machine was delivered to my home address on the 12th of Dec 2007 and sat in front of my workshop for a few weeks under a tarp. It fitted in to the workshop by the slimmest of margins, 1 inch, and as the video shows I have fairly good clearance down the sides. 

I spent countless hours over the last 12 months researching the web trying to work out how I was going to gain G code control of this machine, Mach was always going to be the interface but the hardware side was a challenge. I tossed up going down the Galil path but the budget controller (wife) was having none of it. I gained control over the machine in limited fashion quite early this year, the Kollmorgan Servostar amps have testing software down-loadable from their site so with the serial cable plugged in I was able to move the motors one at a time. This was a great step, proof that the drives, motors and my wiring skills worked. 

The machine was originally designed as a pick and place robot for the assembly of solar panels, not fast enough they said so the machine was put out to pasture and thats where I entered the picture. Mid year, via CNC zone, I stumbled onto a CNC user group (A-CNC-G) here in Adelaide, Australia. With a heart full of hope I went to their next meeting to plead my case, luck, as mentioned earlier has played its role in this adventure and having a group like of like minded souls in my home town was pure gold. With the genius help of Peter W and Peter R, together they pieced together that this machine could be controlled via pulse and direction and with a little interface board designed by Peter W my big blue baby is alive and kicking. The machine is powered by brushless linear motors (Kollmorgan DDL) on the X and Y axis and a traditional ball screw with servo on the Z. Work area is approx 1.2 meters x 2.6 meters x 450 high.

So enough of the history, here's the video taken last night.


http://au.youtube.com/watch?v=OsdNIb2u_6c

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