Messages

81

General Mach Discussion / Re: Aerotech motion systems

« on: November 09, 2010, 10:47:17 AM »

The Aerotech U500 is the motion control system. It has the same function as Mach3. What are the interface specs for the drives? do they have an option for steop & direction inputs? In its most general form Mach uses a parallel(printer) port to interface with drives having step/direction inputs. This was originally configured to work with Stepper motors/drives. Over time various manufacturers have developed various servo drives witrh step/direction inputs which offer higher performance/speeds than do stepper motors. There are a couple vendors offerring other interface hardware that works with mach to use analog servos, but that adds to the expense and complexity.

Does your aerotech hardware work? Do you have a computer you can install the cards in and have them function? I believe that the Aerotech hardweare will do all the motion control stuff you might want to do, you may have to come up with a user interface (which would mean some programming).

What are yopu wanting to do with CNC? What hardware do you plan on mounting it on?

82

Sieg Machines / Here's how I home my machine.

« on: November 01, 2010, 02:53:42 PM »

Here's a Manual Homing sequence that works and is repeatable.

First - Jog all axis near (less than 1 ") the "Home" position. Tap the <TAB> key to bring up the Jog Pendant, change Jog Mode to Step and distance to 1".
Select an unused offset, On the offset screen type in 239 for the offset and make sure all values are 0 (zero)
I start with the Z axis - I now hit the Jog Z Up  key and wait for the Z axis to hit the limit switch and stop moving and the E-Stop is flashing. Reset teh E-Stop. on the MDI Screen type G92 Z0 and the DRO for Z will read 0.0000. Now zog the Z axis away from the limit and wait for it to finish moving 1".
Now repeat for each of the other axis.

I do this on a KX3 and have very repeatable results.

83

Sieg Machines / Re: Welcome to the Sieg Machines forum

« on: November 01, 2010, 02:45:22 PM »

the mill drives the z axis to the home switch the mill stops movement but the Z axis keeps increasing.

What is sounds like is this - the limit also cionnects to the Axis Drive. The axis Drive is stopping because you hit the limit, but Mach is no longer seeing this as a limit so Mach keeps putting out pulses because it thinks things are still moving.

84

General Mach Discussion / Re: Anyone here tried dual spindles on their machine?

« on: October 28, 2010, 01:10:52 PM »

Milling/routing woul;d still use M03/M04/M05, and laser control would require one of the other M code series - others have mentioned an output controlled by M10/M11. You may also need some signal that Mach can use to sense that the laser is ready, but for engraving that is probably not necesary.

for example -
 to route/mill -

G54 (route spindle offset)
M03 (spindle on forward)
profile code here
M05 (Spindle stop)

Move to some "safe location"

G55
M10 (laser on)
code for engraving here
M11 (laser Off)

 Repeat these block as neceasary for the part you are making.

Machine offsets would work well for this - G54 for the router spindel, and G55 for the laser offset. (and other combinations, depending on whether you have more than 1fixture location on the machine.

You would just have to have sufficient clearence for the other tool to get out of the way when using the offsets.

85

General Mach Discussion / Re: replacing manual valves with electric valves?

« on: October 28, 2010, 12:58:16 PM »

You are looking for a couple air solenoids.

Sources will depend on where you are located. There are a number of comanies who make/sell them and it also depends on what part of the world you are in.

86

General Mach Discussion / Re: Anyone here tried dual spindles on their machine?

« on: October 27, 2010, 03:06:50 PM »

You have 2 options - you can mechanically tie the 2 slides together (the simplest approach as it is easier to control the offset between the to tools if you are running both tools in the same program. Or you can select the slave axis under config and each axis can have its own motor. This is more typically used on a ganrty type machine to keep the 2 ends running together.

If you will never run the 2 tools in the same program you could have 2 configurations that use different pins for the Y axis and one config uses the router carriage and the other config uses the laser config.

All depends on how you want to use the machine.

87

Promote and discuss your product / Re: Mach3 as 3d printer software

« on: October 27, 2010, 10:43:05 AM »

There has been another discussion of this , what you might want to consider is using the spindle speed as the extruder control. Would give you a way to start and stop the extrusion, as well as control the extrusion rate. Might require that you do some translation of output codes, but that should be a faily straight-forward text substitution which could be done using find/replace all, or by writing a small program in basic/C/other language of choice.

88

General Mach Discussion / Re: custom application

« on: October 27, 2010, 10:33:22 AM »

You might need to put what I call a reset circuit between Mach and the stapling machine. As it is flywheel driven and will repeat if the solenoid is held in. It would need 2 relays, with the second 1 wired as a latch. Relay 1 is just on off from Mach, Relay 2 is latched by a switch that is tripped as the staple head starts down. Use a noramlly open contact on the first relay in series with a normally open contact from the second relay.

    signal from MACH             Coil from Relay 1
|------| |----+----------------------------------( )-----|
|             |                                                       |
|             |   Switch on Head         Relay 2           |
|             +---------| |--------------+---( )----------|
|             |                                  |                    |
|             |     N/C on Relay 2        |                    |
|             +----------|/|-------------+                    |
|                                                                    |
|           N/O Rel 1      N/C Rel 2      Solenoid      |    
|---------------| |-------------|/|---------( )-------|

89

Sieg Machines / Re: X axis looses orintation

« on: October 25, 2010, 04:37:28 PM »

Did you use G42 for your first part and G41 for your second part? G41 "sometimes" has issues and the Mach folks are aware of the problem.

You also might want to look at Config/Motor Tuning and look at the step pulse for each axis. This should affect things the same all the time, but ... They say it should be some value between 1 & 5 but my machine seems to like 6. If it is too low you may miss a step or steps.


Di the motors sound different during the time when the motin did not follow the path? that is the first sign that you are either missing steps or overloading the motor.

90

General Mach Discussion / Re: Output voltage problem?

« on: October 14, 2010, 04:27:51 PM »

Problem is that the printer port outputs are not meant to handle much current. You need to have teh output from the computer go to a transistor that is sized correctly for the curent teh relay requires. Normally this is a function provided by a "break out board". It isolates the machine electrically from the computer and priovides the circuits to be able to handle the cuurent requirements of real world components like relays and such.

What is the relay switching? AC or DC and what current? there are a number of solid state realys that are able to switch higher currets, but are meant to take a low current control signal.