Messages

1211

General Mach Discussion / Re: Bridgeport Knee Mill Conversion?

« on: September 09, 2016, 03:50:32 AM »

USB Issues?

I need USB in the control pendant, USB keyboard/trackball and USB socket for code loading.
Currently i have a cheap 4-way hub and extension but windows is not happy and i get multiple "new device found" chimes every time i start up or plug in a USB stick

Is it best to try a powered hub or run separate extensions to the PC??

The length needs to be 5m to reach.

1212

General Mach Discussion / Re: Axis calibration precise but inconsistent

« on: September 08, 2016, 03:14:10 PM »

Good point, try a rule i have used for a while and thats 1/10 for speed and accel.

So if your speed is 850 then set acceleration to 85 and so-on.

Even if its not a perfect target, it does seem a very good setting to start on.

1213

General Mach Discussion / Re: Axis calibration precise but inconsistent

« on: September 08, 2016, 10:56:49 AM »

One tip - when tuning go for a long travel - as much as you can measure, get this right and then the small steps should be good too.
1mm is not a good distance to tune on.
i used a 1000mm rule on my plasma and the mini-mill was calculated and checked over 400mm.

1214

General Mach Discussion / Re: Bridgeport Knee Mill Conversion?

« on: September 07, 2016, 02:21:33 PM »

Ok, so i did a home-all tonight and noticed the X axis was wobbling when doing the back-off part of the home sequence so it seems my inept attempt at servo tuning was lacking somewhat. In the graph i could make it do the wobble-thingy at about 13% speed and it looked bad.

Reading the CSMIO manual, the tuning section is a bit vague but it seemed i needed to reach oscillation first then back off. Having seen what that does, i thought it safer to tune for the lowest following error and fastest dead-band arrival as i had read on various other papers, there does not seem to be any "scientific" method to tuning, just get it smooth, fast and oscillation free.

Tweaking the values in PID order, i have now got far better following errors and as yet no wobble;)
Values are now...
X P=20,000 I=50, D=0, ff=65 Following error 135 at max speed
Y P=20,000 I=50, D=0, ff=65 Following error 105 at max speed
Z P=12,000 I=65, D=0, ff=60 Following error 253 at max speed

These errors are much lower than before and it seems happy at all speeds now so will leave it there for now.

The spindle started ok as well tonight - this seems to be a random problem.

1215

General Mach Discussion / Re: Bridgeport Knee Mill Conversion?

« on: September 07, 2016, 06:34:47 AM »

All i can do is go into screen4 designer and look at the button - this is on the 2010 set, it just has Oem Code Function 110 in the box, there is no vb code etc.

1216

General Mach Discussion / Re: Bridgeport Knee Mill Conversion?

« on: September 07, 2016, 05:29:15 AM »

Ok, the panel button has a hotkey associated to an input, the screen button has the "run macro" feature assigned to it, the M03 i couldn't remember the exact contents then so i was trying to infer that it had the bog-standard contents, i have just looked and it contains exactly "DoSpinCW()" nothing more.

1217

General Mach Discussion / Re: Bridgeport Knee Mill Conversion?

« on: September 06, 2016, 02:11:02 PM »

Well that was a blast

I upped my speed and acceleration a bit, tested the motions again, checked the macro issue and all was good so went for the finish on  my part-done job. All went perfectly, tool-paths were good, CAM was good, CAD was good - this was my 1st part from Fusion360 too

Dimensions were spot-on as well, tool-changes were fast and easy as well. Short video of one of the cuts...

https://youtu.be/dzorJYUJpBk

Picture of finished part below.

BUT,

even though all went well the first check-run failed because mach started running the code without starting the spindle!
It would work from the panel button as well as the screen button but NOT from MDI or G-Code.

I have seen this before on the engraver and a Mach restart fixes it as it did this time, but of course you have to re-home. The only message you sometimes get is "Scripter compile error in M3.m1s" but as usual that file only contains DoSpin...

Any ideas??

1218

General Mach Discussion / Re: MPG PENDANTS

« on: September 06, 2016, 09:34:26 AM »

What  controller?

1219

General Mach Discussion / Re: Bridgeport Knee Mill Conversion?

« on: September 06, 2016, 02:14:39 AM »

Thats pretty much what i was led to believe from my reading, seems permanent oscillation is bad even if it is tiny, slow settling is also bad from a contour point of view, and as you will see in the vids, it certainly looks better than the auto-tune version i think.

1220

General Mach Discussion / Re: Just about to throw in throw in the towel now :(

« on: September 06, 2016, 02:12:31 AM »

Yes, full differential on all inputs now.

It does seem to be working smoothly again now.