Messages

51

dspMC/IP Motion Controller / Re: Welcome to the dspMC/IP board

« on: July 29, 2008, 07:59:42 PM »

My dspmc/ip and breakout boards have arrived.  I'm sidelining the install until i have the new ac installed in the shop in 3-5 days.  It's at the top of the list after that.

52

Show"N"Tell ( Your Machines) / Re: Ex-Cell-O Spindle Wizard to retrofit

« on: July 29, 2008, 07:59:02 PM »

My dspmc/ip and breakout boards have arrived.  I'm sidelining the install until i have the new ac installed in the shop in 3-5 days.  It's at the top of the list after that.

53

dspMC/IP Motion Controller / Re: Welcome to the dspMC/IP board

« on: July 18, 2008, 02:18:50 PM »

I was told if I ordered one he'd get right on setting up a choice of homing routines for each axis so that we can choose to home to only the home switch, home to the home switch then to the index, or home to the index only.  That's how galil does it.  As it turns out I'll be using the home to the home switch then the index on all my axes so that's the one I'm concerned about and since it is promised right away with my order......

I ordered the DSPMC/IP, three 7711 break out boards, and a 7535 digital IO board today.

My machine is top of the line comercial quality and sitting ready to go except for the control so I'll be able to give good feedback on the control soon.

It sounds like he's also willing to jump into getting probing going with the dspmc/ip and Art's probe.  ( http://www.cadcamcadcam.com/index.asp?PageAction=VIEWCATS&Category=14 )  Assuming it performs and I hope and these features are added in I think this control will stand out as the obvious choice for servo systems and mach.  I'll provide them with some video of my machine they can use to help prove themselves in the  market place.

54

Show"N"Tell ( Your Machines) / Re: Ex-Cell-O Spindle Wizard to retrofit

« on: July 18, 2008, 01:57:31 PM »

I ordered the DSPMC/IP, three 7711 break out boards, and a 7535 digital IO board today.

55

Show"N"Tell ( Your Machines) / Re: Archie's first cnc machine Bridgeport R2E4 Boss 9 to Mach 3

« on: July 12, 2008, 12:51:26 PM »

That's a clean looking machine.  24V relays?  I'm going to do the dspmc/ip very soon.  Since it can handle up to something like 40V I think I can hook it up to my 24V and skip my M logic and power boards and go straight from it to the terminal strips to send 24v signals to the relays instead of oupputting 8 bits to logic board.  That would probably be convenient for you too if the dspmc/ip turns out to be a good control.

56

Show"N"Tell ( Your Machines) / Re: Ex-Cell-O Spindle Wizard to retrofit

« on: July 10, 2008, 07:13:27 PM »

I'm not following you.  This mill wasn't converted.  It is a spindle wizard.

The Belt size should be the standard one for the converted mill They would not have changed it for the conversion. Trust me they are a hard job to put back in Did it twice on the mill I used.

57

dspMC/IP Motion Controller / Re: Welcome to the dspMC/IP board

« on: June 29, 2008, 08:47:02 PM »

Homing to the index will allow two important things for me:

I'm going to have stations set up on my table.  A rotary table mounted horizontally, a self centering chuck mounted face up, and a vice.  With the acuracy of homing to the index I can put stock into any of those stations and run the program to machine the piece without going through edge finding or anything to get my start point.  It eliminates set up time for me making it reasonable to do much smaller batches (with the price of materials these days that is of huge importance to me).

The second thing homing to index will allow (assuming homing to only the index without a home switch is also enabled) is I can home the rotary table to a great degree of acuracy without using any home switch at all. 

I know lots of people don't even have indexes but it's a huge benefit to me.  I'm seriously only waiting for that feature to be added to go ahead with my purchase.

so far, the existing customers have not flaged that as an issue, so thats why we have not added index pulse homing. If a customer asks for it, we will add this feature asap, otherwise it is sitting in the things to do list backlog. not sure when its turn will come.

for probing, pls email me directly some info about its operation and requirements so we can start work on it. I have to learn myself on how the probing works.

thank you
Rufi
www.vitalsystem.com/dspmc

58

dspMC/IP Motion Controller / Re: Welcome to the dspMC/IP board

« on: June 29, 2008, 06:26:39 PM »

Hey Rufi,

How's it going?  Are you still working on homing to index and probing?  I'm itching to pull the trigger on one of these but really want it to have those features. 

59

Show"N"Tell ( Your Machines) / Re: Ex-Cell-O Spindle Wizard to retrofit

« on: June 24, 2008, 09:57:39 AM »

Thanks Archie,

I'm very happy with the 30A8 servo amplifiers.  I would definitely recomend Advanced Motion and Control amplifiers to anyone wanting to run big DC servo motors.   The 30a8's are actually bigger than necessary for my motors but they fit where I was installing them and that's what I found in the quantity I needed.  a-m-c has both larger and smaller amps.

The setup is extremely easy and they let you test the system without having a control.  In the 30a8 doc there was a note to check the engineering notes for additional installation pointers which I did.  I'm using them in current mode so all I had to look at was page 13 of the engineering notes where there is a step by step for hooking them up and testing the system.  http://www.a-m-c.com/download/document/support/general/instnotes.pdf  The two things I would point out is that with these drives you are setting them to run your motors at the current the motor wants to run which makes them perform extremely well and that you can test the motion of the axis with the amplifier before you have a control.

The current adjustment is described on page 5 of the 30a8 doc  http://www.a-m-c.com/download/datasheet/30a8.pdf  The 30A8 amps are 30 amps peak 15 amps continuous.  My motors are 5.8 amps continuous.  The current adjustment potentiometer is 12 turns + 1 inactive turn on each side and linear.  So all I had to do was take 5.8 amps divide by 15 amps multiply by 12 turns +add one turn for the inactive turn = turn the potentiometer 5.64 turns from the ccw click to perfectly tune each amp for my motors.

I'm still holding off on the control but the motion from turning the test pot on the amps is very nice.

Usfwalden,
 I am working on a similar machine a bridgeport boss machine. (just look at my thread) I am interested in the 30A8 advance Motion control amplifiers..... are those servo drives? My tool changer is manually operated by air (pushbutton) the speed control (vari drive) was controlled by air motor with electrical relays. I plan to use a stock manual crank in place of it and control the speed with a vfd within limits. if I need slower or faster speed window I can then crank it up and down manually. the head has backgear as well. It looks like the Smooth Stepper and cnc4pc dedicated breakout board are the trick system as of now. there seems to be a couple of bugs still but that is the way I am going. it also has a tac feed so we may be able to comfortably tap with a floating tap holder. as it stands right now I intend to use the larkin Viper servo drives with outboard mounted heatsinks and fans blowing on the inside components. I am not sure that is necessary but that is the way I am going with it.

 I have enjoyed your thread. I am surprised I had not stumbled upon it before.

Happy Hunting
archie =) =) =)

60

Show"N"Tell ( Your Machines) / Re: Ex-Cell-O Spindle Wizard to retrofit

« on: June 08, 2008, 12:17:29 AM »

I got four 30A8 Advanced Motion Controls amplifiers.  Comparing these to the Galil amp-19540 amplifier I returned I have the impression that Galil documentation is intentially vague and confused to keep their customers from realizing that they have limited options under software control for the same settings other company's products have been setting much more accurately and easily with potentiometers for the last 30 years.   The 30 year old bandit control I'm replacing was easily tunable with 3 or 4 potentiometers.  The Advanced Motion Controls amplifiers are easily tunable with the same few potentiometers.  Since I'll be using the amplifiers in current mode and closeing the loop in the control I'll have the pid parameters to configure there--I suspect I won't find them that mystical to configure.

After my experience with Galil I'm being much more cautious about giving my money out.  I seem to be in this kind of limbo period where there are about to be products that do everything I want but they just aren't there yet.  I really want to get my machine up already but then I'm not about to do business with companies I consider as unscrupulous as I consider Galil and I'm not going to jump into any of these other products that have a lack of response or slow response about what features work and don't work and what's being done to make them work.  Right now I'm holding out a lot of hope for the dspmc/ip though.  The feature set/capabilities seel bang on for running a machine like mine--they just need to finish it up.  I'm hoping to see the index pulse added to homing for the dspmc/ip control very soon and expect to go ahead and pull the trigger on that control then.