Messages

21

General Mach Discussion / Re: Has anyone replaced an Anilam M control with Mach 3 ???

« on: December 30, 2010, 03:50:23 PM »

Don't forget how dangerous those wildly spinning handles can be on a G0 move!

I'm going to follow this post closely as I have an old Anilam Crusader in my shop that is ripe for conversion...  if a 100 line limit means ripe....

22

General Mach Discussion / Re: best supported controller?

« on: December 30, 2010, 03:07:25 PM »

Another vote for smoothstepper here.  Works just like 2 LPT's, except with only 1 usb connection and cleaner and faster pulse rates.

I've had excellent results with the Kflop board as well.  It has an insanely fast pulse rate and is very powerful and flexible, but the setup can be quite daunting at first as it requires you to tune your motors through their proprietary software before using mach.  

23

General Mach Discussion / Re: Let's talk about brushless drives!

« on: November 22, 2010, 03:23:28 PM »

The auto tune function always seems to get you in the ballpark but to get true precision further tweaking is always necessary.  That was the real shortcoming I found in the Copley systems; there are tons and tons of settings, tweaks and check boxes but very little documentation or support on what functions they perform.

How do you feel about the AB software and setup?  I still have nightmares about tuning the Copleys.

24

General Mach Discussion / Re: Let's talk about brushless drives!

« on: November 22, 2010, 03:03:12 PM »

theres really no cheap option for this level of automation I guess, but the prices on the used allen bradleys seem quite reasonable.  $200 to $500 canadian dollars is definitely justifiable for AB drives.  The Omrons are looking pretty nice too, especially if tuning is as easy as it seems.  I spent the last 2 months tuning the copley xenus drive with a linear motor lol.

25

General Mach Discussion / Let's talk about brushless drives!

« on: November 22, 2010, 01:36:16 PM »

I'm in the market for a new supplier and am wondering what everyone else is using to drive their servos.  My last few machines have exclusively used Copley Controls drives, mainly Xenus and Accelus.

http://www.copleycontrols.com/Motion/Products/Drives/Digital/index.html

These guys are nice to work with and very flexible, and the tuning software includes a function generator to get the motors tuned to hell and back.  The trade off is that they are very expensive, always over $1000 per unit, susceptible to external noise, and I have recently found their support department to be lacking.  With that in mind, I'm wondering what everyone else is using to drive their motors.

If you have a moment, please share what you are using, and the pro's and con's you've encountered with different manufacturers.

Much obliged!

26

General Mach Discussion / Re: Unwanted Router Starts...Kinda scary!

« on: November 22, 2010, 01:27:22 PM »

Agreeing with what the other guys said, powering up the machine before mach is running is asking for trouble.  The port flips and flops all over the place on startup.  A stepper motor pulsing a few steps or a spindle starting up at random is one thing, but imagine a linear motor capable of travelling 5 meters per second with 500 pounds of thrust backing it up randomly deciding to blow through your limit switches, hard stops, workshop wall, etc...

The charge pump can protect against this, as well as requiring an external "enable" signal to motor and spindle drivers, but the safest bet is to always have mach running first!

27

General Mach Discussion / Re: controller board with encoder feedback?

« on: November 22, 2010, 01:21:44 PM »

The Kflop only accepts single ended encoders, that is to say, only encoders with 2 signal wires, channels A and B.  There might be a way to trick it into seeing differential signals but I have yet to figure that one out.

28

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

« on: October 29, 2010, 11:04:16 AM »

I'll try and do a little photo/video shoot in the next few days.  Yag isn't on the tooling plate yet, but basically its controlled as a spindle, so you can use the spindle override to increase or decrease the pulse rate on the fly.  Same goes for the dispenser and the spindle itself.

The machine itself is designed for 3d circuit board manufacturing.  5 axes so we can do contoured pcb milling and laser engraving and direct circuit writing using conductive inks via the dispenser.  The offset buttons on the screen allow you to mill a track, then move the dispenser to the zero point, start up mach in dispenser mode, and dispense into the track you just milled.

Theres a whole lot of r&d still going into this but I will share some photos and videos when the time is right!

29

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

« on: October 28, 2010, 02:00:13 PM »

I'm finishing up a machine with 3 seperate spindles; High speed servo spindle, linear dispenser and yag laser, as well as a camera.  We went the route of using a seperate Mach XML file for each function.  My pc simply has a shortcut to start the machine in each separate mode, and the screen set has offset buttons to move each head to the work zero point.

30

General Mach Discussion / Re: Post Processor

« on: October 27, 2010, 02:48:53 PM »

If you're using a standard XYZ router table you should be fine with the fanuc post, or any standard mill post processor, theres lots to choose from.  Its when you get into 6 axis and rotational axes with odd machine kinematics that the post becomes critical, ie) tooling offset, rotational radius in relation to the other axes etc.  Again, if you dont have the rotational axes you have a wide variety of post processors to choose from that will all get you consistent results.