Messages

51

General Mach Discussion / Re: Spindle doesn't stop when emergency button is pushed

« on: August 06, 2008, 12:41:58 AM »

Just an FYI- Dual Contact Emergency Stop buttons should ALWAYS be used.  1 of the contacts can be used to stop your controller (Mach) the other set of contacts should be used to power your spindle (either by interrupting the hot lead to the spindle motor).

HTH,
Sid

52

General Mach Discussion / Re: milling text

« on: July 21, 2008, 11:32:03 PM »

The latest version of Lazy Cam has text generation capability.  It takes a minute to get used to but it's easy to do multi line text with it.

Good Luck.
Sid

53

General Mach Discussion / Re: New 6 Axis dual closed loop Motion board "CNC Brain""

« on: June 29, 2008, 11:55:21 AM »

Hey Scott,

Did you see this unit in operation? It seems pretty awesome!

Sid

54

General Mach Discussion / Re: Mach3 Release questions and the usual CV question

« on: June 24, 2008, 12:52:15 PM »

In that Onsrud catalog, they list a Honeycomb cutter 30-300 series- Have you tried that?

Sid

55

General Mach Discussion / Re: Strange Mach3 proplem please help

« on: June 20, 2008, 03:02:38 PM »

Seems like an easy way to test if it's the sleep thing is to remove the wire going into 6 on one of the drives and see if that disables the sleep feature?

Sid

56

General Mach Discussion / Re: synchronize flow rates and motor speed

« on: June 20, 2008, 02:34:15 PM »

If he's running a plural component urethane system I don't think a PV will work as it will throw mix ratio off.

Sid

57

General Mach Discussion / Re: Strange Mach3 proplem please help

« on: June 20, 2008, 02:01:08 PM »

Yo,

As Hood suggested previously- Try the SHERLINE 1/2 Pulse mode!!!!  It seems from the video that your drives are either not seeing the pulses OR you have a motor wiring problem somewhere.

Your motors say they can run in 2 Dif modes- Bi Polar or Uni Polar.  The way you wire them determines this.  Currently you have 6 wires coming out of your motors but if you look at the connectors there are only 4 pins.  That means that somehwere inside there wires are tied together.  Are the correct wires tied together in order to run correctly with your drives???  Hmmmmmm this is a BIG question. 

As Jim asked you previously- You really need to find out more info regarding the type of motor drives you are running. 
Who makes them? 
What are the specs? 
Can you see how many output terminals there are on them? 
How about a pic of the motor drives? 

HTH,
Sid

58

General Mach Discussion / Re: synchronize flow rates and motor speed

« on: June 20, 2008, 12:32:15 PM »

So this is my question.
Is this thing possible??

Sure!  Given enough time & money virtually anything is possible but, let's be practical....

1.  Are you using a plural component Urethane Formula?
2.  What do you mean by "I have those pumps"?  The .pdf that you reference is a general brochure and lists MANY different models/systems-which one do you currently have and What kind of motor is currently turning your pumps now (i.e. Inverter duty? Variable speed? Voltage?  HP?)
3. IMO-I don't think that it is practical to use a stepper to turn a pump.  As mentioned previously a stepper needs pulses to move- those pulses need to be generated by something but from where?  There are a couple of possibilities but, again, I question their practicality (admitadly due to my inexperience with these methods....
       A.  I suppose you could use a 'Brain' to use the Blended Vel DRO signal to somehow generate pulses (I think that Scott/Poppabear would
            be the specialist in this area)
       B. Slaved Axis won't work because X & Y move in + & - and you want your pump motor to only move in the +
       C.  You could use some database software (like access or excel) to modify your G-code file and add lines to your existing G-code that create     
            additional commands to generate pulses for another axis.

4.  Like I said before- you need to 'tie-in' to the Blended Vel DRO and use that signal to drive something  (or generate pulses).  I really think that best way is to use Modbus to use this signal to drive the analog input on a VFD

HTH,
Sid

59

General Mach Discussion / Re: Flash Screens.....Please repost your screen work and stuff......

« on: June 19, 2008, 09:54:12 PM »

Scott,

I'm glad you posted this message.  I was looking at the Flash section a while ago as well as some of the other 'normal' screen threads and I noticed a lot of the files were missing.  I was begining to wonder if the whole Flash screen development thing has turned into the 'Area 51' of this site.

I know that You, Jason, Benny and others (to whom I apologize in advance for forgetting them) have done a lot of great work in this area and it would be nice for it to be posted for the rest of us to see and learn!

Thanks,
Sid

60

General Mach Discussion / Re: synchronize flow rates and motor speed

« on: June 19, 2008, 09:47:55 PM »

George,

I'm not I totally understand you- a 4th Stepper motor?  You mean to drive the pump?

We did something very similar to this a while ago but it was all done with VFD's on the 2 seperate Pump Motors (not Steppers).  Steppers need pulses to keep runing and that didn't work for us since our pumps, when not dispensing, were recirculating.  In other words our pumps needed to stay on all day so steppers were not the answer. 

If it were me... I would try and rob some kind of analog output signal from Mach (like Brett suggested Blended Velocity DRO = 813) output that via Modbus and use that analog signal to drive a VFD.

HTH,
Sid