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Messages - vincent

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Mach4 General Discussion / Z axis dropping
« on: December 28, 2016, 02:43:31 AM »
I have noticed a few threads around the internet with people having issues with their Z axis adding steps and incrementally lowering. Many of them assume that the inertia of lowering the Z plate and spindle is causing the incremental drop. I am having a similar situation, but running some calculations, my stepper motor should be plenty powerful to handle the inertial force.

While running a project with numerous z movements, it would get incrementally lower and I would have to stop the program, re-zero the z to the top of the work surface and then continue from the next line of code. However, I noticed this happening even with shorter v bit runs. A recent sign project I was doing ran a simple flourish on the left side of the date "2016" and then ran the mirrored flourish on the right. But the mirrored flourish was deeper into the project wood. somewhere moving from left to right pattern it had added some steps.

I ran some simple math on my Z plate weight with spindle, linear blocks, and spindle mount. The combined weight is around 25Lbs. I am running a NEMA 24 3.1Nm stepper parallel to a 1605 ballscrew with a 1:1 belt at the top. one of the online calculators I used said it should only take around .120 Nm to lift that amount.

Here's a link to a video running my router bed. In the middle of the bed you may notice i started tracing my tool path as my initial .2" clearance had dwindled down to below the top of my work piece.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=A280CtS-_4c

my setup:
Mach4 on Windows 7 pro 64bit
ESS connected to generic BoB
NEMA24 3.1Nm Stepper motor
M542T Stepper Driver powered by 36VDC
Z Driver set to 4 Microstep for 800 steps per revolution
Mach4 motor tuning set to counts/unit: 4064  velocity/unit: 100  accel: 5.00

any help would be much appreciated.

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Mach4 General Discussion / Re: Where did "Home Slave with Master Axis" Go?
« on: December 09, 2016, 03:32:27 AM »
I have two Y motors turning ballscrews on each side of my gantry, labeled Yl (for left) and Yr. In Mach4 they are set up as motor1 and motor2. Under the axis mapping I have motor2 set as slave to motor1

For my prox switches I have 4mm NC PNP induction switches. Each motor on the x and y has a prox on each end of the travel which are wired together in series with the signal of the first powering the second and the sig from the second going to my BoB. If either end is tripped, the BoB sees the same signal. Because Mach4 doesn't fixate on XYZ and instead uses Motor0,1,2,3,etc I set up my two Y prox/switches in the mach config>inputs as Motor1++/--/home = Yl prox, Motor2++/--/home = Yr prox where Yl prox and Yr prox were the names setup under my ess config for those input pins.

I had been looking to figure out the same issue as you, how to home each separately to auto square. Turns out, mach4 does it automatically. When I go reference my Y, both motors turn in sync, but if one side is leading, it will stop first, and the other side will continue until it reaches its home switch. I have manually put it out of square by say a half inch and it corrects it when I reference the Y.

What I did discover is that I need to have a slow enough speed referencing so that Mach4 has time to react and stop before physically running into my switches. I could have gone with the 8mm prox switches, but then if the referencing over runs the switch by 4mm instead of 2mm, it would take twice as long backing out.

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Hey Everyone.

First off, a big thank you to everyone who has contributed posts to this forum. While I am a new member to the forum, I have been reading a lot of the posts for the past few months as I have been building my own machine and they have proved to be a valuable collection of knowledge and tech advice. I just purchased my Mach 4 license as I just got my system set up and decided it would be a good idea to join the forum. I have learned so much and would love to be able to help other newbies out as I was helped out.

I live in the NW corner of the continental US and work part time as a general contractor building/remodeling homes, and part/full time in the State Legislature. This design/build has been a great learning experience as well as a good mental break from politics. I have an Associates degree in Electronic Technologies, but it had been years since I had done anything largely related so it was good to stretch those muscles again and dust out the mental cobwebs.

Part of the project was to challenge myself and see if I could build one, the second part was to have a tool to design potential products or experiments or concepts. My original design specs were to be able to handle a 4x8 sheet with 6" clearance. After reading many of the "I wish I had knowns" I decided to jump in with both feet and go big or go home. I'm a perfectionist so it also had to look professional, or at least as professional as a home-build can look with nothing more than a drill press, chopsaw, table saw and skilsaw. That and a borrowed Harbor Freight wire feed welder, Amazon, Ebay, Craigslist and AliExpress. I set the budget for around $5-6,000 and am right around there though I lost count with all the random screws and other misc parts.

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