Topics

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General Mach Discussion / stepper motor direction/s

« on: April 23, 2014, 09:37:20 AM »

i got my "buildyourownCNCrouter" back up and running. After finding the bad solder connections and re soldered them the 3 stepper motors run. BUT, I was experiencing when I set my speeds for each axis it worked great. When i pressed Return all home, I would have to play with each axis and finally get them to go to the home position. Once I did that and then try to jog, one or 2 of the axis would go in the oppisite direction. Now I have done something wrong (as usual) When I jog the Y axis to the Green Positive directiion it goes in that direction, when I jog the Red Negative direction it jogs in the Green positive direction. I can reverse 2 motor leads and all that does is make the Green go in a negative direction and the Red go in a negative direction. Why is this happening?? The brain for Mach 3 is out of wack, so is mine!!

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General Mach Discussion / optical interupter switchs

« on: April 14, 2014, 09:23:25 AM »

i am presently revamping my "BuildyourownCNC machine". Plans from a book sold on the net. I want to use optical interupter switchs and need to know, how do you get the 5V to operate the IR transmitter and reciever. It works fine on a test board. when operating on the board I feed 5V in and get 5V out. When it is flagged the Votlage drops to 0V. Will I be using the 5V signal from the paralle port or do I have to set up a sperate 5V supply? My BOB is really basic BOB and my controllers are run with 12V. No actual power to the BOB other than the 5V (or nearly 5V) from the computer parallel port.

3

General Mach Discussion / Laptop with parallel Port

« on: October 10, 2012, 11:42:06 AM »

To Tweakie. Thanks for your feed back. I was hoping a laptop would work but I don't have a clue what a external  motion controller is.
Anyways about the question on the limit switches. I finally figured out what was wrong last night. I plug my router cable and printer cable into a A/B switch and I started to get out my multimeter and do some checking on my router cable and noticed the plug didn't look like it was seated all the way. Sure enough, it was not. It started working OK, well sort of OK. I could jog but it kept tripping out "limit switch made". No, it was not so I started checking and found that one micro witch connector is loose inside. I went to the diagnostic tab and could see by wiggling the connector I could trigger the LED very easily So now I will have to replace that switch. Like I said, I only had normally open micro switches so I made a plate, mounted the 2 micro switches backwards and put in push rods with small tabs on the one end and spring loaded the push rods so the tabs will compress the micro switch button. Not that I am cheap but like to do with what I have on hand and not run to the store. I do a lot of McGiver stuff.
No clue to what I will do with the router table, probably just make lots of wood dust and chips. I am just enjoying building the table. It is pretty small, like 12" on the Y and 20" on the X travel. Just something to play around with and occupy my time and brain. Being retired can get to you if you don't do something other than sit around.

4

Mach Screens / Configuring stepper motor speeds.

« on: June 19, 2012, 03:58:27 PM »

I am totally new at CNC so not sure how to ask. This is the free software I got from a kit online on Ebay. So am limited to how many steps I can do. That is OK until I learn what I am doing. I built my own CNC Wooden router from a book I bought. It is a lot smaller than the one the book model but it works just the same, just a small table. No room in the garage for any larger unit.
When I change my Y stepper motor pulse step from 4 to 5 to run smoother then my z pulse also changes and it is way to fast for it and locks up. Why does my change on y effect z? Also with the free trial software I noticed that if I edit a program to run the Z motion from a positive to a negative movement it always goes the same direction. The Z motor is direct drive (el cheapo rubber hose coupling for now) to a 1/2" 13 stainless threaded rod and the Y motor I have added a nylon gear set. (My own design). A larger gear on the motor and a smaller gear on the 1/2 Shaft which gives me a 1 revolution on the motor to a little over 2 on the 1/2" shaft. The Y axis growls quite a bit no matter what speed I set it for and have messed with the driver attenuators and it helps some. My X motor set up has a 3 gear drive (my own design) (from scrap paper shredders). It runs pretty smooth, not sure of the ratio but a lot faster than the Y or Z. The Z travels pretty nice and smooth but just can't get the directions to reverse thru program change. There is no friction on the Y direction, the shaft turns freely and the gears do not bind so that is not a problem there.