Messages

41

General Mach Discussion / Re: Alright fellow campers...a frankenstein moment!!

« on: November 16, 2017, 06:50:29 PM »

Craig Hi,  Ceramic capacitors??  Nope, will have to go to the electronics house and see what they have... what capacity capacitor do I need?  I assume that these input wires are that ones labeled V+ and COM from the power supply.  Would I put the capacitor "inline" to the driver connectors?  Thank you for your half-current explanation.

bob

42

General Mach Discussion / Re: Alright fellow campers...a frankenstein moment!!

« on: November 16, 2017, 05:51:00 PM »

Also on all the drivers there is a note about switch 4 being on = half current and switch 4 being off, equals full current.  What does this mean???  bob

43

General Mach Discussion / Re: Alright fellow campers...a frankenstein moment!!

« on: November 16, 2017, 05:36:13 PM »

Question:

the info on the stepper motor for the lathe says 3.0 amps,  the stepper driver which causes the lathe to move when the spindle is turned on is set for 3.0 amps.
The other drivers are all selected for 3.2 amps.   Now as I said and I tried it again this morning.  When the wiring for a-axis is set on another driver beside the one that has problems, then the problem of interference stops.  So could it be that my selection of 3.0 amps on my mal-functioning driver should be set higher... its next choice is 3.5 amps... it does not have the choice of a 3.2 amp setting.

Also the ST-M5042 driver (the malfunctioning one) cost about $35 bucks.  and the best price on the dm556D driver is like $50 off of ebay.  So maybe there is a real quality difference???

44

General Mach Discussion / Re: Alright fellow campers...a frankenstein moment!!

« on: November 16, 2017, 04:13:22 PM »

Rich the stepper drivers are DM556D.

45

General Mach Discussion / Re: Alright fellow campers...a frankenstein moment!!

« on: November 16, 2017, 03:11:45 PM »

Rich HI,  ok I get the picture... will start on this.  Thanks bob

46

General Mach Discussion / Re: Alright fellow campers...a frankenstein moment!!

« on: November 16, 2017, 05:59:25 AM »

To Rich, Chaoticone, Gary, 

I did an experiment which got a different result.  I took my x-axis stepper driver and switched it out so that it is now the A-axis stepper driver.   I left the X-axis simply unconnected for this test.

I took the wiring from a-axis and wired it to the new stepper driver.  The problem ceased.  The spindle when activated did not active the lathe.  So could I have purchased simply a defective stepper driver???  The stepper driver that I bought for the A-axis and seems to have the problem is a Microstep brand driver STM5045.  I am ordering a new stepper that is the same as all the original steppers as x-y-z axis use.  I redid this test 4 times and got the same results, so it appears to be duplicating either the malfunction if I use the Microstep driver, or no malfunction when using the original x-axis driver.  I am afraid to put the Microstep driver on the x-axis as it might do something weird...  what are your thoughts on this?  Do you think this may be the problem?

To BluePinnacle--thank you for your advice on the wiring.  Bob

47

General Mach Discussion / Re: Alright fellow campers...a frankenstein moment!!

« on: November 15, 2017, 10:46:50 PM »

Hi Gary,  nice to hear from you again.  I am going to replace everything with shielded wiring...so I will take your advice.  Now can I have 4 wires in a shielded cable etc., or do I need to have each individual wire in a shielded cable all by itself?

another question as someone said I might have mis-configured the a-axis.  For instance if I put in a360 f10, the stepper motor just clicks turns a partial mm.  Mach 3 is set for inches.  To get the lathe to do one rotation in say 7 seconds, it has to be set at f 5000.  So I am thinking I have  mis-configured something.  Also, could mis-configuring a-axis cause it to be super sensitive to interference, so that if it is reset properly, the interference may not be a problem?bob

48

General Mach Discussion / Re: Alright fellow campers...a frankenstein moment!!

« on: November 15, 2017, 07:30:03 PM »

I have a variable speed wood lathe... a small one... at last resort I can simply use that and have the Cnc spindle do the millings in conjunction with that... but I would like to be able to do indexing... so I will take the time to figure this out.

49

General Mach Discussion / Re: Alright fellow campers...a frankenstein moment!!

« on: November 15, 2017, 07:27:54 PM »

Rich,  thanks, good points... step by step, record all experiments.  bob

50

General Mach Discussion / Re: Alright fellow campers...a frankenstein moment!!

« on: November 15, 2017, 03:17:13 PM »

I now follow your thinking. I will let you know how the experiment works out... I don't think a 1.5kw spindle can compete with big industrial machinery.

bob