Messages

7261

General Mach Discussion / Re: Power supply in parallel

« on: July 01, 2008, 11:32:06 PM »

Hmm....
Should the parrallel supplies feed a common capacitor before feeding the board?
RICH

7262

Show"N"Tell ( Your Machines) / RICH'S ATLAS CNC CONVERSION

« on: July 01, 2008, 10:04:26 PM »

This is a 38 year old Atlas Clausing Vertical Mill which I rebuilt and converted to CNC 4 years ago.
Six speed ranges / 24"x 6" table / 15" x 5.25"  cross travel / MT 2 taper in spindle.
The guard is removed to show stepper mounting. A handle extension was made for the quick feed
( in-out to engage fine feed) and a 85 in oz stepper was mounted directly to the fine feed, thus total manual
operation is still available. Motor side of the x and y axis have double contact bearings in the bearing blocks
with a single contact bearing in the other bearing block. Nuts at handle ends provide for preloading adjustment of the bearings.
200 in oz Superior Electric steppers on the X and y axis. Three axis digital display along with an indicator for quill movement. Not much room for the ball nut as shown by the picture. Ball screws 16mm -5mm lead with adjustable ball nut by Techno Inc. A 1 HP DC motor with variable speed controller still waites for me to installation.
Overall dim of 36"x 40" x 70" provide for a nice homeshop mill.

7263

Show"N"Tell ( What you have made with your CNC machine.) / Re: Some new toys for my Taig

« on: July 01, 2008, 06:48:43 PM »

Thanks Budman,
The mirrors and the reaper plate were done on an old / small Atlas knee mill which I converted to CNC. Should probably post on it. The inlayed plate was done on the engraving machine. The pain on the engraving machine is holding down a real thin piece, very flat and being able to remove it without distorting it. So ground vacuum plate would probably do the trick. Some of the anticipated engraving work will be very light say 2 or 3 thou. I'm just goofy on some of things we try to make, but it's fun.
RICH

7264

Show"N"Tell ( What you have made with your CNC machine.) / Re: Some new toys for my Taig

« on: June 30, 2008, 09:36:31 PM »

Dave,
Small and sits on a movable bench. I have it posted under SHOW AND Tell. The link is below.
No speed demon, it was built for accuracy. Additionaly to do probing, just not ready to go thru another
learning experience on the probing.

http://www.machsupport.com/forum/index.php/topic,6904.0.html
RICH

7265

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

« on: June 30, 2008, 06:33:55 PM »

Hi all,
Just like Cmnewcomer I have never been able to get the pulse setting to stay changed. This is true for three different computers which Mach is loaded on and also with or without using the SS plugin. My three machines run fine and there is no problem in DRO reading. So gave up on trying things to change the pulse setting.

I find this thread particularily interesting, because after doing some testing, I could not fault the Mach DRO value.
Would believe it over my digital display on the mill. One particaular test was a friends Sherline and did what Overloaded
ran, the only difference was we put a pause in at the beginning and end for one second so I could read a scale. Ran it
about 100 times and ended up with a value under .001 when comparing MACH dro to optical scale.

At work ..... got to go,
RICH


 

7266

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

« on: June 29, 2008, 10:10:00 PM »

What is telling you your off? The MACH readout, measurement, or an independent display?

RICH

MODIFIED POSTING:
Was the program you ran generated from a CAD file? If it was can you post a DXF, dwg, of dgn of it?

7267

General Mach Discussion / Re: Motor Tuning - Mach3

« on: June 29, 2008, 07:43:10 PM »

Satbeam,
Can you post a picture of your machine?
Do you have board and driver information on what you bought?

You said you "don't understand it", like steps, acceleration, velocity, etc.?
Depending on your understanding we may be able to tailor how we respond back.

RICH

7268

General Mach Discussion / Re: Stepper motor size

« on: June 28, 2008, 08:49:33 PM »

Ray,
Just remember that garbage in garbage out in any computer program.

If you gave some more info on your router like basic dimensions, desired travel velocity, and what your going to route thru, etc there are folks in here that could probably relate to your machine and give you good recomendations based on their experience.

When you fool around in the program, model your first router and then the second and compare results.
Try differerent accelerations and velocities and compare a few of the recomended motors. Check out the
motor curves for a few and relate the info from the program to the motors. You will quickly learn a lot.

Additionaly go in and do some things based on what Overloaded gave in method 1. Mariss (Gecko Drives)
is one the most expert persons  when it comes to drives and motors so don't discount his recomendations.
Sometimes a computer program can't replace tried and true experience.

Have Some Fun,
RICH

7269

Show"N"Tell ( What you have made with your CNC machine.) / Re: Some new toys for my Taig

« on: June 28, 2008, 06:17:32 PM »

Got it Dave,
Please continue posting as it progresses. It will be of value on my end when building one for the engraving machine.
RICH

7270

General Mach Discussion / Re: Stepper motor size

« on: June 28, 2008, 05:55:43 PM »

Ray,
There are a few nice engineering software programs out there  ( free ) which allow you to define your system.
The software does all the calculations and then provides for motor selection. Nice thing is you can play with the program
and see the different results. They are rather easy to use ( back in the old days all this stuff was done manually).
RICH
Here's a link to the one of them :

http://www.danahermotion.com/website/usa/eng/support/design_tools/114867.php