Messages

5191

General Mach Discussion / Re: Rotary axis help

« on: January 04, 2010, 11:12:01 AM »

CNCEER,
Simplistic explaination:
You have, say 4 Gecko drives in the controller box. So when you turn the controller on the drives provide power to the stepper motors  that are hooked up. The motors see power and an electric field is created in the motor windings. Any power going to that motor is only trying to mantain the rotor in position. That power  / energy is doing some work so it creates heat ( the stepper gets warm).  The more current ... the more heat that will be generated. The current is limited by the drive via a resistor. So if you don't have a lot of current, the  motor can be on and sit there all day and be perfectly happy.  If you look at the Gecko information on your particular drive, it probably has a jumper that will allow for "auto current reduction" when the motor is stopped / not turning / no pulses being sent to the motor. So when running it gets a high current and when stopped the current is reduced.

So if you just move the indexer out of the way, leave it on, the motor may be perfecty happy with the reduced
current to it.

Look your  Gecko drive info  about disabling the drive. For example, if you provide a switch on terminal 7 ( Gecko 201's ) you can disable the drive ( which will take the motor / winding current way down / almost zero ).
So you can just use the switch to disable a drive.

No matter what though,  don't remove the cable from the motor when the controller is on. Don't short the wires going to the motors. Simply put ...........Just leave the darn cable from the drive to the motor connected when there is power to the controller. Don't screw around wih the cable going to the motors unless you know what you are doing. Let me reinforce again ............you may blow the drive and then you have to spend money to replace it.

There is plenty of info on the Gecko site that you should read and will give a better / more specific info than my reply.

RICH
BTW......DON'T DISCONNECT THE CABLE TO THE MOTORS WHEN THE CONTROLLER HAS POWER TO IT 

5192

General Mach Discussion / Re: Rotary axis help

« on: January 03, 2010, 10:12:21 PM »

NEVER .....NEVER  disconnect the cable from the dirve to the axis / motor when the drive is powered.



Turn off the power to the controller  ( the box which has the drives in it ) waite a few moments and then
you can disconnect the cable.

RICH

5193

LazyTurn / Re: LazyTurn

« on: January 03, 2010, 04:36:30 PM »

ART,
Is it  working or back to thinking?
RICH

5194

Show"N"Tell ( What you have made with your CNC machine.) / Re: Experimenting with my rotary axis

« on: January 03, 2010, 12:17:39 PM »

Thanks for the link....lot of options out there if you look in the right place.
RICH

5195

Show"N"Tell ( What you have made with your CNC machine.) / Re: Experimenting with my rotary axis

« on: January 03, 2010, 11:40:46 AM »

Thanks Gerry,
I can probably live within the constraints of Wrapper and some hand coding. Like many, i have a problem justifying
an expensive CAM program. So whoever sponsors you, maybe, they can add me to the list. 

Think what I'm after is just adding some  "decrative" cuts to lathe turnings without having to do additional
setup / keeping it on the same machine.

"There is available Rich's "Indexer Wizards" which will automate these."
Have a link to where they are located?  If you mean me, well maybe in the future, but don't hold you breathe waiting for them.
 
RICH

5196

General Mach Discussion / Re: ROTARY INDEX ON LATHE - GCODE

« on: January 02, 2010, 09:59:36 AM »

Chip,
Still have a few pieces of tubing with no scribe lines on them, then it's time to reclaim the scribed ones, heck then good for another year. Too bad as someone won't be getting a copper chime set.   

Thanks for the code. I went back and started reading all the posts for a  rotary table.
Note too much on practical application there, but there are some good comments that were made.
Typical journey as you need to go thru all the configuration stuff and sort out what applies to the rotary table and
the trade offs on use.
RICH

5197

LazyCam (Beta) / Re: Sanity check please - LC not posting

« on: January 02, 2010, 09:22:48 AM »

Mattw,
I have made a note to myself to add some more info on posting. Whenever that may be!

Good going on watching the project info as it gives you a glue as what LC is doing.

There are times that LC will not give you a gcode file but said  the gcode was created. That is usualy a clue to me that something is wrong with my tool parameters as they apply to a command.
In that light, that would not have helped if a bad installation was done, so at least you have it working.

If you have a problem, just post, and yes include the DXF.
Known problems / bugs are listed in the back of the manual. There may be more, but that's what i found when writing the manual and reading all the replies ever made about LC.

RICH

5198

General Mach Discussion / ROTARY INDEX ON LATHE - GCODE

« on: January 01, 2010, 08:38:18 PM »

I decided to try a few things with the rotary indexer on the lathe.
The axis is set up as linear ( 12.6449"=360 degrees) since I can
relate to a 90 deg turn of the A in 1" of Z and also confirm rotations
using the index band around the chuck.
The picture shows four simple scroll cuts and one band cut on the cylinder. My coding is below.

This is a new journey for me. Indexing for drilling is easy since the
table can be set up as rotary. And text will be done using Wrapper.

SO.....all you rotary table folks......

Is there an easier way to code the spirals?

What are good options to consider?

Could you use the Function Cfgs > Formula such that the A moves can be coded in degrees?


N10 (1TEST OF 90 DEGREE WRAP)
N20 G00 Z.035
N30 G00 X-0.01
N35 G91
N40 G01 A3.1612 Z-1.0 F5
N50 G00 X0.020 F60
N60 G00 Z1.0
N70 G00 X-.020
N80 G01 A3.1612 Z-1.0 F5
N90 G00 X0.020 F60
N100 G00 Z1.0
N110 G00 X-.020
N120 G01 A3.1612 Z-1.0 F5
N130 G00 X0.020 F60
N140 G00 Z1.0
N150 G00 X-.020
N160 G01 A3.1612 Z-1.0 F5
N170 G00 X0.020 F60
N180 G00 Z-.1
N190 G01 A12.6449 X-.019 F5
N190 G01 A13.6449 X-.001 F60
N200 G00 A-1.0 X.020
N210 G00 Z1.1
N220 M30

Thanks for anything that will shorten the learning curve,

RICH

5199

LazyCam (Beta) / Re: Need help

« on: January 01, 2010, 08:27:01 PM »

Drools,
I believe you need a  a Pro license to get offsets, pockets and turn.There is manual for LazyCam in Members Doc's and suggest you take a look. Don't hack your way thru the program.
Your  on the right track in assigning different machine operations to layers as you can more easily relate to what was imported ( thats what i recomended to dobut you don't need to). If you look at the tutorials offsets are cover a number of timesas are tool slection etc.
Repost if you get stuck, there are a number of knowlegable folks that use it in here.
RICH

5200

General Mach Discussion / Re: Table Squaring Compensation....

« on: January 01, 2010, 03:13:02 PM »

Russ,
Quit being nice to me   as I may be "goofy" on this one.   

I have seen where a sharp corner as shown in the pic will cause the head assembly to skew  the Z axis  / quill out of allignment with the column. As you tighten the gibbs the head will start lifting away and rotate by riding up the radius. Just knock off the sharp corner and all is well. So you thought the column wasn't right / perpendicular to the X and Y and the Z is scewed when actualy all is ok. I have seen this also on joiner tables where you couldn't get the two tables alligned ( hey , Rockwell actualy gave me $500 bucks for that one and a nice thank you letter ). So that was step #1 since if that was happening you could be there alll day and would never get the Z right.
RICH