Messages

1

Modbus / Re: Uncomannded motion with Homann pendant!! Please HELP!!

« on: January 31, 2009, 10:25:52 AM »

Hi Peter,

Thanks for your help I'll let you know if it crops up again.

I have a thought for your Pendant/ModIO system.. I own a Milltronics 4 axis mill and one of the best features on it is HandWheel Mode (HDW). Just before hitting cycle button, you can select HDW and the program only moves while the handwheel is being turned. Turn it faster and it will move upto the programed feedrate, turn it slower, and it can creep along. Stop turing and the program stops moving the machine. I use it all the time for test running programs. It's better than single stepping since the program can be held during the middle of a move.

You certainly have the hardware in place, just would seem to be some (or a lot of) programming....Thoughts?

Chuck

2

Modbus / Re: Uncomannded motion with Homann pendant!! Please HELP!!

« on: January 30, 2009, 03:39:00 PM »

Hi Peter,

When I can in this morning the oscillations were still occuring as I left the power on overnight. This morning I cycled the power to the ModIO board and the oscialltion stopped. I used the lathe for about 3 hours today with the pendant with no problems. IThis afternoon, I was able to get mbReader working, the mpg counter is stable, counts up and down based on direction. The timer is rolling over at about 64000. Everything else seems normal. I guess all I can do is wait for the problem to crop up again then run mbReader to see what's going on.

Chuck

3

Modbus / Re: Uncomannded motion with Homann pendant!! Please HELP!!

« on: January 30, 2009, 07:34:24 AM »

Peter here's an update,

Looking at the MPG data DRO it's fipping between 2 numbers. What are the correct jumper settings on the MP board? The picture in the manual does not match the version board I have (2.0).

mbReader is tallying continuous TOErr.

Chuck

4

Modbus / Re: Uncomannded motion with Homann pendant!! Please HELP!!

« on: January 29, 2009, 06:40:04 PM »

Hi Peter,

It ran fine for about an hour, then started the oscillations. I upgraded to the latest Mach about 4 weeks ago. Once I get back to work tommorrow. I'll try it, and report back

Chuck

5

Modbus / Uncomannded motion with Homann pendant!! Please HELP!!

« on: January 29, 2009, 05:21:29 PM »

Had a serious probelm crop up today on my lathe..

I was using my Homann pendant with the ModIO interface to indicate in X on my lathe. Clicking along at .001 per click with my gage pin in hand, when suddenly the X axis takes off, smashing into the part and causing some damage. It then reversed direction and began a 3-4 inch oscillation in X at G00 speed. I hit e-stop and motion ceased, released the e-stop and it picked up right where it left off. Hit e-stop again, shut down Mach3, restarted Mach3, and it started oscillating again as soon as the splash screen closed. I then restarted Mach with a profile that does not have the pendant configured. Operation was normal including jogging with the keyboard. I ran the lathe for the rest of the day with keyboard jogging with no problems.

Any one have any idea what's going on? For reference I have G320s and Kelling servo motors.

Thanks for any and all help.

Chuck

6

General Mach Discussion / Re: Progressive Move Error with X and Y

« on: September 30, 2008, 04:02:23 PM »

More experimental data concerning progressive move errors...

I did some more experiments today. The rough running that occurs when steps are lost seems to be related to the ending direction of the other axis. For example..

X will run smooth in both directions if the last move in Z is towards the chuck. X negative will run rough if the last move in Z is away from the chuck. Same type of thing occurs on the Z axis depending which direction the X axis last moved. If I reassign pins on the BOB, the behavior changes where X will run smooth regardless of Z, and then Z won't run smooth at all.

I am all but convinced I have a bad BOB, some kind of cross talk happening.

Chuck

7

General Mach Discussion / Re: Progressive Move Error with X and Y

« on: September 29, 2008, 07:51:57 PM »

More experimental results on this issue...


After 16hrs of experimenting on my 1340 Lathe with G320s...I'm convinced I also have a similar problem to Carl concerning the BOB (CNC4PC 1G). During my initial testing the Z axis was very rough no matter the settings. My lathe has an Anilam DRO so it is easy to see movement errors. The X-axis ran smoothly, so I worked on it. Did the whole tunning process, and was seeing positional errors of less than .001. Tried the Z again just to see what it would do, and amazingly it was smooth, did the tuning, again error of less than .001. Tried to exercise both axes together...bad news...both axes ran very rough..with huge movement error (.25" in a 6" move). Tried them individually, still rough, gently flexed the BOB, back to smooth. Bottom line, I ordered a new BOB...waiting for it to arrive.

Chuck

8

General Mach Discussion / Re: CNC4PC breakout board led operation??

« on: January 22, 2008, 09:05:38 PM »

Well, I did some pin by pin testing this afternoon...setting each of the output pins as a direction output, i can freely turn on and off all the leds except for pins 1,2,3,4. I then hooked the board to my LPT2 port and it had the same behavior. I then did the same test but instead of watching the LEDs I just measuured the voltage at the parallel cable. I was able to manipulate all the output pins (1-4 included)....everything is pointing to a bad CNC4PC C1G board....frustrating!!

9

General Mach Discussion / CNC4PC breakout board led operation??

« on: January 22, 2008, 02:55:20 PM »

Ok, just checking here...

I just installed my new C1G card from CNC4PC, the leds are acting oddly. some are dimly lit, others turn on and off if I touch the board. I have nothing wired to the board other than 5V external power and my pc.

Can someone confirm the correct led behavior? As I recall on my last machine, the step led should be lit when the axis is moving, while the dir led latches between on and off based on the direction....is this correct?

I'm thinking my breakout board is bad.

Chuck

10

Mach4 General Discussion / Re: New people welcome !! Come in here and introduce your self!

« on: January 06, 2008, 08:32:55 PM »

Hi I'm Chuck, living in SE Wisconsin.

I got interested in metalworking about 5 years ago when I started selling some car accessories I had designed, and got tired of paying others to make parts for me. Eventually I bought a mini-mill, first built a Shumatech DRO for it, then did a full CNC conversion using Xylotex, and TurboCNC. A couple of years ago I left GE Healthcare after 20 years as a Senior Product Development Engineer where I designed X-ray tubes for CT scanners, and started my own product development firm. We have a Milltronics 4 axis machining center, which I must say is a really nice machine and a manual Prince 1340 lathe along with a Scotchman cold saw. Although the mill is very easy to progran conversationally, we also use SheetCAM. I use Solidworks and COSMOS FEA for all of my designs. I'm in the process of adding CNC to the lathe. For this upgrade I'm using servos instead of the steppers used on the minimill, and Mach3 turn instead of TurboCNC. I hope to use the lathe for producing components for our soon to be released medical/aerospace pump.

Regards,
Chuck