Messages

281

Show"N"Tell ( Your Machines) / Re: 1987 Bridgeport Production Center Interact 412 to Mach3 Conversion

« on: March 05, 2010, 05:23:23 PM »

LOL, the Caption was full the night before…   I guess its time to clean up my mess in the shop.

Yes, the plan is to have a 3 Power Supplies, one for each Axis.  The toroidal transformers that I have are only rated at 800VA, so each system can supply 10Amps at 80VDC (i think this is how it works, I not measured it under a load…)  The monster cap is to help with supplying more current during heavy acceleration and deceleration of the servos. 

During the testing of the X and Y, I only used 1 power supply shared between them.  I could see the output voltage dropping as low as 72VDC.  I didn’t want the voltage drop or back EMF to effect the other axis when running.  At least that’s the theory.

JH

282

Show"N"Tell ( Your Machines) / Re: 1987 Bridgeport Production Center Interact 412 to Mach3 Conversion

« on: March 05, 2010, 11:19:09 AM »

Small update of the Gecko 320 Drivers and Power Supplies...

JH

283

Show"N"Tell ( Your Machines) / Encoders, Servos, Drivers and Power Supplies

« on: March 04, 2010, 06:24:41 PM »

I spent the last couple of weeks evaluating drivers and encoders.  Evaluated Viper200, CNCdrive Whale3, CNCdrive Dugong and the old stand by Gecko 320….  Ended up using Gecko 320s, 100CPR/400PPR HEDS Encoders with an 80Volt DC PS.  (86VDC no load)

The Viper200 was hard to tune, several times it had a runaway condition without generating an error and slamming the table into the mechanical stops.

CNCdrive Whale3 was very promising for the first 3 hours until the driver failed.  Customer support was great and they sent me a new CNCdrive Dugong upgrade for FREE for to test.  

CNCdrive Dugong also was very promising with 35 Amps of drive. I am saving this one for the Mori Seiki CNC Lathe Project….

Gecko 320s were easy to tune, and I also had 3 of these left over from older project, the performance was fine for the X and Y (250IPM with 0.00025/step)  I didn’t prototype the Z axis yet, but the servo motor is the same so my guess is it will work fine.  It looks Gecko has a new driver too, one that you can change the servo error limit.  Bottom line is, I am happy with this configuration as is for now, if I need performance I can swap it out later.

Below is a picture of the Power Supplies with Gecko 320 Drivers being assembled:

I should have the XYZ running soon under this configuration.  I’ll post a movie when its up and running.

JH

284

Show"N"Tell ( Your Machines) / Re: My CNC pressbrake build

« on: February 22, 2010, 03:44:20 PM »

Looks great !!!!

JH

285

Show"N"Tell ( What you have made with your CNC machine.) / Re: Engine Mounts

« on: February 22, 2010, 03:36:11 PM »

Monty,

Thanks for the teaser!  You have your work cut out for sure.  Looks like it will be fun once you get started.

Thanks,
JH

286

Show"N"Tell ( What you have made with your CNC machine.) / Re: Engine Mounts

« on: February 08, 2010, 07:28:54 PM »

Ok.... 5 Axis?  Please tell us more!

287

Show"N"Tell ( What you have made with your CNC machine.) / Re: Engine Mounts

« on: February 08, 2010, 05:20:30 PM »

Nice to see the lathe up and running!  The part looks great.

JH

288

General Mach Discussion / Re: 2nd parallel port card issues

« on: February 02, 2010, 11:11:56 AM »

Hello, I just bought a parallel port card, and although it's seen in the device manager, I can't seem to get Mach to use it.  The address/range is CC00-CC07, and C800-C807.  if I try to input either cc00, or c800, Mach doesn't recognize anything.  I am on Win XP, there are no conflicts.  The card is set to LPT2, the motherboards parallel port is set to LPT1, both work fine.  I saw on the list, that I can try the opposite, using the motherboards parallel port as LPT2, and the PCI card as LPT1, but this didn't do anything either.

The cabling are straight through cables, and they plug into a C23 board from CNC4PC.  I used to be using a smooth stepper, and was reading both ports through it.  I decided to go straight parallel port, but so far no luck.

Anyone have suggestions?  I was hoping to be cutting all weekend;)

Barry

DId you make sure the address was in HEX "0xCC00", not sure if that would make a difference or not.

JH

289

General Mach Discussion / Re: rolling to a new computer

« on: February 02, 2010, 11:05:06 AM »

You will have to tell Mach3 the hardware address of the new ports 1 and 2.  The port numbers are the same, but the PCI address is what Mach needs to interface too.

Hope that helps,
JH

290

Show"N"Tell ( Your Machines) / Re: 1987 Bridgeport Production Center Interact 412 to Mach3 Conversion

« on: January 29, 2010, 06:34:45 PM »

Thanks Monty,

So far, for the core machine I/O, I am using 2 CNC4PC C10 breakout boards with a C4 Charge Pump on 2 Parallel Ports.  This covers the 3 Axis and Home Sensors, Tool Changer Motor, Pneumatic I/O, and Various Sensor Inputs and Coolant Control. 

The Spindle ON, OFF, REV, FWD, SPEED, RPM Monitor and Current Monitoring is all done via Modbus using a simple USB to RS484  converter.

This is working well so far, still playing with the servo encoders, acceleration profiles and tuning the 3 Axes.  I hope to have this finalized soon and start integrating the tool changer to the Spindle. (Need Spinlde orientation for tool changes and taping)

For the User Interface, I am looking at PoKeys or NC Pod, something like that to handle all the inputs.   No sure yet.

Thanks,
JH