Messages

31

Mach4 General Discussion / Re: Spindle Index Setup With Hall Sensor??

« on: April 15, 2020, 04:29:21 AM »

Hey Craig.
Health is good. Personally I think there's much more going on in the back ground than just the flu smoke screen, so not to worried about it.
Are you part of Artsoft or Newfangled. I see you posting in many topics I've researched.

32

Mach4 General Discussion / Re: Spindle Index Setup With Hall Sensor??

« on: March 29, 2020, 02:56:32 AM »

That did it. I'm getting a true spindle speed now, albeit fairly choppy. I wonder if I take out 2 or 3 of the 4 magnets if that would help reduce the choppiness?

I notice your link to your hall sensor was to a NZ Jaycar site....are you Kiwi?

Yip Kiwi, living in the BOP. Unfortunately I still have to go to work. I would much rather spend lock down locked in my shed tinkering.

33

Mach4 General Discussion / Re: Spindle Index Setup With Hall Sensor??

« on: March 29, 2020, 02:11:33 AM »

Ok, so found in my past attempts, if the Hall sensor is flipped over then it will pull the pin LOW (0v) as the magnet passes and rest at about 2.5v without the presents of a magnet. If 2.5v is classed as a HIGH it should work.
I'll go try it out and see what happens.

With the feedback pulses driven by the spindle itself, the pully ratio does not come into it.

Ah yes, I did over look that one. Lol. Thank for pointing that out, It may have left me scratching my head for a while.

34

Mach4 General Discussion / Spindle Index Setup With Hall Sensor??

« on: March 27, 2020, 06:01:39 PM »

Hi All,
I've been working on getting spindle control working through Mach4 for the last couple weeks and I think I have everything hardware wise in place or on order.

I'm running Mach4 and using an ESS connected to a C25 BoB.
These are controlling Clearpath Servos for X, Y, Z movements.
The spindle is belt drive at a 2.2:1 ratio. 1 rotation of motor = 2.2 rotations of spindle.
Motor is a 1.5Kw 3 phase induction motor wired for delta and is run by a Teco VFD.
I have a C41S-PWM Variable Speed Control Board on order to connect the VFD to the ESS.

Now to my problem... I'm not getting and feed back on Mach4.
I have a hall sensor pulsing off 4 magnets mounted equally around the spindle shaft.
This is connected to Port 2 Pin 3 input, +5v and ground.
When tested with multi meter, a LOW on the C25 BoB reads 2.5v and HIGH read 4.8v. And the indicator LED on pin 3 glows accordingly (not so bright to bright) as a magnet passes the hall sensor.

I'm not sure if it should behave like this and if this is the cause of the problem. I would have thought LOW should measure 0v and HIGH (as a magnet passes over) should measure around 5v.

I've gone through various setting in Mach, including pin setup and activating Spindle Encoder Phase A, trying Spindle Index option and more. I'm still not getting any response from Mach to acknowledge the presents of a spindle index or encoder.

 I've been toiling with this for a couple weeks now and am open to any and all suggestions/ideas. I don't know if I've got Mach4 set up right or if the Hall sensor is faulty?

 Initially the hall sensor was setup on an Arduino and reading the RPM of a small lego motor and it worked perfectly, but once it was setup on the mill spindle via the Arduino and display the readout went crazy.

Hall sensor Data sheet.
https://www.jaycar.co.nz/medias/sys_master/images/images/9369043927070/ZD1902-dataSheetMain.pdf

Basically all I want is a real time actual RPM count of the spindle.
If I issue an M3 S1000 command how does Mach know the spindle is geared 2.2:1?

35

Mach4 General Discussion / Re: G-Code Just Cutting Circles

« on: January 19, 2019, 02:36:33 PM »

Lol, Yeah that is the way I learn. Blunder on ahead and learn from my mistakes. I'm still here (well... most of me anyway...) so it must work to some degree. It can be painful or expensive in this case but I can do lots of testing before I even have to tool up the machine. And it's surprising how much value you can get from making mistakes, A lot of time gets invested into learning why something has happened and the knowledge gained along the way is invaluable.
Anyway, that's starting to get a bit deep for a simple circles question...

Thanks again for the help, no doubt I'll be back with more questions at some point.

36

Mach4 General Discussion / Re: G-Code Just Cutting Circles

« on: January 19, 2019, 03:53:51 AM »

It just dawned on me, that I haven't even downloaded the Mach4 post processor. My bad. I think I need to watch a few tutorials before I get to far ahead.

37

Mach4 General Discussion / Re: G-Code Just Cutting Circles

« on: January 19, 2019, 03:28:43 AM »

Yeah sorry about over sized picture in my first post. It was just a screenshot so didn't think it would be so big. I'll see if I can edit it.

So yes, that is what it should look like. I changed the Arc Center Mode = Absolute and got the same results as you. Thank you for that Craig.

It was just a test to make a square block round. There was suppose to be some holes around the top but they didn't come through on my test ether. The program stopped on H0 maybe 10 lines before the end. I'll take a guess that H0 means hold for tool change maybe (I'll search that up after this) but there was not enough g-code left to peck drill 6 holes anyway. Might be the way I generated the file in fusion, ie; maybe I only high lighted the 3d adaptive?

Will keep trying new things now that it's working.

Cheers,
J
 

38

Mach4 General Discussion / Re: G-Code Just Cutting Circles

« on: January 19, 2019, 12:41:43 AM »

Code is attached. Might be to big to put in this post. I'll change the  Arc Center Mode and re-run it now and let you know.

39

Mach4 General Discussion / Re: G-Code Just Cutting Circles

« on: January 18, 2019, 04:21:36 PM »

Thanks Craig. I just checked and Incremental was ticked.
I'm wondering if it was something in fusion 360 as the servos were doing what the g-code was saying. Every line of code that included an "l" command like l23.00 or l39.00 in it, it would cut a circle with that diameter. Lines that had l00.24 would cause the x & y servos to fault but I think that's just tuning or trying to change direction to fast while trying to cut a circle diameter of 0.24mm.
Maybe I'll jump over to Fusion 360 forum and inquire. The tool path simulation didn't show the circles but it shows up in the g-code. This was my first attempt at anything like this so I'm sure it will be something simple that I've missed.
Cheers,
J

40

Mach4 General Discussion / G-Code Just Cutting Circles

« on: January 18, 2019, 03:11:53 AM »

Hey all.
I'm in the process of converting my mill to CNC. I've got clearpath servos x, y, z run by ESS controller using Mach4. Today was the first test using a gcode file produced by Fusion 360. Basically it was meant to do about 6 passes  to make a square block round and drill 6 holes. It kind of made it round but it used circle cuts on the outside to achieve this. And the hole drilling would have shared the drill on the first hole.

Has anyone seen this before? Any suggestions as to where I when wrong?


Cheers,
J