Messages

941

Promote and discuss your product / Re: New dealer for Taig and Precisebits

« on: January 20, 2009, 09:14:13 AM »

Thanks Dave. Hood picked up on that too 

I guess I confused the heck out of the parsers by enclosing my URL in quotes (like you have to do other places), for some reason it threw in the extra http and converted the quotes to %22?

Anyhow I appreciate the heads up guys, I got the address in my sig corrected.

In case someone has been having problems trying to click on the link, here is the url: www.soigeneris.com

942

Promote and discuss your product / Re: New dealer for Taig and Precisebits

« on: January 19, 2009, 08:54:42 AM »

Thanks guys! It's a lot of work to get started but it is a whole lot of fun at the same time...

Oh, I also have the shopping cart working! And have a 'Grand Opening' special. See the website for more details.

943

Promote and discuss your product / Re: Windows XP shell for Mach3

« on: January 19, 2009, 08:52:26 AM »

Very interesting, thanks for sharing!

944

SmoothStepper USB / Re: SS DISCONNECT SAFETY CONCERNS

« on: January 19, 2009, 08:49:05 AM »

I would like to ask the moderators to remove this thread. Even its title is blatantly false and inflammatory. It accomplishes nothing but besmirching a good product and company. The OP's main issue was that he did not know how to wire up a proper Emergency stop circuit and refused to listen to anyone who tried to help him. He did however have a good point about the SS continuing to run even with a loss of communication, a problem which I believe was swiftly rectified by Greg.

As others have stated the chargepump and com drop shutdown are great features but they should not be confused with proper safety measures.

945

Promote and discuss your product / New dealer for Taig and Precisebits

« on: January 05, 2009, 05:26:24 PM »

Hello all,

I have branched out a bit in my CNC related endeavors and am now a distributor of the full line of Taig machines. I am working on getting all the Taig machines, parts and accessories up on my website right now. If your interested in something before I get the shopping cart turned on just drop me a line and let me know what your interested in and I'll offer you a 'grand opening' special. 

Also, I'm now carrying the precisebits.com line of solid microcarbide bits. I have been a happy customer of theirs for a few years now and was so pleased with their product I decided to offer them as well. These are not up on my website yet, you can see them at precisebits.com though.

www.soigeneris.com

Thanks,

Jeff_Birt

946

Galil / Re: Galil Status

« on: December 23, 2008, 08:24:42 PM »

Can't get what 'to work'? Yu can't get it to download? YOu can't get it to install? It does not show up in Mach? You need to provide much more information?

947

General Mach Discussion / Re: Opinions on use of ancient computers to run Mach3

« on: December 20, 2008, 09:34:45 PM »

Fact is you simply can't beat older, quality, hardware.

Following that logic I think I'll break out my old C-64 and try to run Mach on it

948

SmoothStepper USB / Re: SS DISCONNECT SAFETY CONCERNS

« on: December 12, 2008, 10:56:33 AM »

If I had not set up the limit switches directly in to the servo amp

Which is stupid, but I have seen a few commercial machine set up this way.

The servo fault lines and spindle fault lines all go in to an external e-stop input on the PLC.

While controls should participate in enabling a drive they should should not be relied upon for disabling it in an EStop. The estop chain should disable the drives in the proper manner and as a side effect tell your controls there has been an external EStop. In addition an EStop may be able to initiate an EStop but triggering an external safety relay, but the EStop chain should not be routed through the electronics. With a properly functioning EStop chain anytime you hit an EStop button the machine will stop period, no matter how brain dead your controls are at the moment. The controls should be smart enough to sense the EStop and set their own EStop outputs so the controls have to be reset as well as the EStop switch reset to restore power to the machine. This allows you to, for instance, more a robot arm out of the way before allowing a rotating fixture table to reset and rotate into position. Ensuring the proper order of resetting things is also very important.

It seems as though you have made a good attempt to wire things up properly but are still missing the mark a bit.

so no smartie pants telling me that USB power is the solution to my problem.

Well, if you act like an A$$ all you'll get is sh^t. Most of these folks responding to you have loads more experience actually building machines than you do, it would be wise to swallow your pride and listen to their advise. Greg also said (soon after you post on the Warp forum BTW) that he was looking into the problem on the SS end immediately. Please, check you attitude at the door...

949

General Mach Discussion / Re: GROUNDING - what is the correct way to ground a CNC machine?

« on: November 24, 2008, 10:17:46 AM »

Ian, my primary purpose for the warning is to get folks to stop and consider what they are doing before wiring everything that we typically call 'ground' up to earth ground. Switch type power supplies are a prime example, for instance see: http://www.astrodyne.com/smartcat/pdf/AD155drl.pdf, notice the PS has both ground and DC common terminals. Internally they are most likely bonded with a small resistance to 'pull' the DC common up off the ground plane noise a bit. externally bonding defeats this (and most probably the way the switching regulator was designed to operate.) The 'proper' way of bonding DC common to earth ground is largely dependant upon the design of your system (and the components therein). Most folks will get a bit concerned as with a floating DC common you cannot measure from chassis ground to DC components and they interpret this as a problem; of course the only problem is that they are trying to measure a voltage by using the improper reference point.

Here some good references that briefly cover some of the issues involved in proper grounding:

http://ecmweb.com/mag/electric_resolving_grounding_issues/
http://www.ese.upenn.edu/rca/instruments/misctutorials/Ground/grd.html

While it is common (he, he...electrical joke) to earth ground DC common some thought needs to be put into doing so. Consider how your DC power supplies are wired ( is the DC common bonded internally to earth ground?), and how it might effect isolating your controls from noisy equipment, such as VFDs.

950

General Mach Discussion / Re: GROUNDING - what is the correct way to ground a CNC machine?

« on: November 22, 2008, 08:38:08 AM »

and you connect all 0 volt lines to a star point which is earthed,

This is absolutely wrong (not to step on anybody's toes).

DC common (i.e. OV) is not the same as earth ground. You should NOT connect your DC commons to earth ground. As I have mentioned before many (most) switch type DC power supplies will bond their DC common to ground internally through a small resistor. This pulls the DC common up off the low level noise a 100mV or so. If you run around and bond the DC common to ground you have defeated this and will cause yourself problems.

Anything marked with an earth ground symbol should be bonded to a single point (star ground), you should run a large cable from your star ground to your main ground and an external ground rod (if you have one), any shield braids should be grounded at one end only (usually the controller end).