Messages

181

General Mach Discussion / Re: Mill or Turn?

« on: May 04, 2019, 01:46:27 PM »

Ok, progress is made- I now have a working turn setup using my screenset, spent a few hours and reconfigured my mill X & Z axes so they now work as a lathe should, homing, soft-limits all ok.

I can now run turn code straight from Fusion and it all seems to run ok.

Only air-cutting as i'm still waiting on a part to finish my lathe spindle build.

I have an issue with threading however, still working on this, it will run the first pass of G32 but as soon as it reaches the end of the block it will e-stop with the message "E-Stop button pressed"

Cant figure out what is making it think a button was pressed or what settings are wrong yet.

The motor is still wired for the main mill motor/vfd but it does have an encoder and will happily rigid-tap.

This is with the CS-Labs IP/A controller.

Any ideas?

182

General Mach Discussion / Re: Mill or Turn?

« on: April 24, 2019, 03:26:11 PM »

Thanks Hood,

Will give it a go soon.

Yes, i goofed on the pid loop, you are correct of course, IIRC the drives are in velocity mode.

183

CS-Lab / Re: CSMIO-ENC Spindle Orientation

« on: April 24, 2019, 12:15:28 PM »

So using the encoder signal twice does actually work?

From the vague replies i get from CSL its not to be done at any cost But i guess maybe that would affect sales of ENC modules ??

I will be trying this, my encoder will also be sharing the ENC channel1 input between main spindle and 4th axis spindle, i won't be doing dual spindle stuff so its either one or the other. I'll do the switching with a 74LS257BN quad channel, dual input switch IC, could have used relays but thats messy i think.

184

CS-Lab / Re: CSMIO-ENC Spindle Orientation

« on: April 24, 2019, 09:58:34 AM »

Hi all,

I am at this same point practically = i want to add a 4th axis to my mill, it will be driven at 1:1 with a servo motor.

CSL are pretty adamant i must have two encoders - one on the motor and one on the spindle, if i'm at 1:1 ratio this seems pointless.

Having read this thread, my thoughts regarding paralleling the drive encoder outputs between IP/A and ENC modules seem to indicate that it will actually work ok??

ope i read that right as fitting another encoder will be difficult. I would have thought CSL could have put a tick-box in the setup so that "Use motor encoder if at 1:1 ratio" could be achieved internally.

I have asked them several times why not and they seem unwilling to answer.

185

General Mach Discussion / Re: Mill or Turn?

« on: April 24, 2019, 09:38:16 AM »

Any encoder guru's here ? 

Trying to find out if the "Encoder" output from my AC servo drives would be able to drive two inputs? This output is from a line-driver chip.

I'm using a CS-Labs IP/A controller and trying to avoid fitting a separate encoder to my 4th axis spindle - hoping to use the motor encoder and index pulse in parallel with both the main controller and the 'enc' module which is used for threading/tapping synchronised operations.

The spindle is driven at 1:1 ratio via a non-slip toothed belt.

The pid loop is closed within the motor/drive so i think the CS-Labs input is only used for homing and display actions.

Any thoughts?

186

General Mach Discussion / Re: Mill or Turn?

« on: April 22, 2019, 10:44:36 AM »

Yep, thanks

looks very good now.

187

General Mach Discussion / Re: Mill or Turn?

« on: April 22, 2019, 04:04:49 AM »

Spot on, thanks.

Makes much more sense now, code runs fine on my laptop at least, display looks good, need to alter my tool change macro as that was heavily tweaked to pass length offset to the knee.

188

General Mach Discussion / Re: Mill or Turn?

« on: April 22, 2019, 03:35:44 AM »

Ok, impressed so far, i now have my screen as a lathe, thanks.

Clearly i need to look at IJK stuff as (pictured) it's wanting to turn a circle rather than a radius

189

General Mach Discussion / Re: Mill or Turn?

« on: April 22, 2019, 03:21:26 AM »

Sounds good, i'll play with that thanks.

It did start out as a mill-turn project but on a Bridgeport thats just not going to happen i think as the only Z is the quill so the tools must be mounted on that and not on the head like other mill-turn projects are. I tend to get stuck in a groove and still think mill-turn although now its mill or turn and not both.

That would mean no post processor tweaks needed as well.

190

General Mach Discussion / Re: Mill or Turn?

« on: April 22, 2019, 02:58:31 AM »

Hiya Hood, how's the plasma cutter running?

Here's my thing...

I have my mill converted, i now want to do basic lathe work but my manual lathe is not worth converting and i will never have enough work for a full CNC lathe although I did look long and hard about getting a small one like a Denford Mirac etc.

I need to pass a 1" alu bar through headstock so mill spindle turning will not work.

I looked at the InTurn by Simpson36 and its pretty comprehensive, in fact way too advanced for my mediocre needs, he now uses a hell of a lot of custom electronics to make it sing via Mach3/4.

I cannot use SwapAxis() as i use a CS-Labs IP/A controller and that does not use the ports&pins in Mach so SwapAxis does nothing.

I will need to use another Mach Profile to swap my Z axis for X and my X axis for Z, the tools will be mounted on a quill clamp so no mill-turn work (yet) - its a Bridgeport manual mill (or was) so i'll be using Z as X. The quill clamp uses the BT30 socket for stability.

I have tested G32 threading and that functioned ok in Mach3Mill - i currently have an encoder on the main spindle and will have one on the aux spindle, switching from one to the other can be done electronically then the lathe profile is selected. I can only have one spindle encoder with CS-Labs.

I really want to stick with Mill as i'm used to it, I have my own screen set that I can easily tweak, it all seems to work fine for mill at least.

Not sure yet if it will be gang-tooled or a simple QC tool post setup. I'll probably only need a few tools anyway.

All i need is something like Simpson36' early model, I have now got a 5C spin-index spindle, bearings and a 750W servo and drive plus, aluminium tooling plate are on order.

I really want to stick with Fusion360 for my CAD/CAM so no doubt it will need the post modifying to output mill tool-changes instead of lathe codes.

Sounds simple, probably not, should probably have just bought a mini-lathe but there you go