Topics

41

Tangent Corner / Making of a spindle

« on: November 22, 2006, 12:37:09 AM »

Hello group.
I have my router fitted with a 3.5Hp makita router (9,000-22,000rpm) it works great with wood and plastics. I was trying to mill aluminum last week, and i found it to be a little unsuitable. I couldnt take depths of cut and feed speeds as formulas stated (not even 0.050" depth of cut, cutter fully engaged 0.25" diameter at 30ipm). I think a homebuilt milling spindle would be appropiate. maybe 2,500 to 5,000 rpm would be better with less runout, and more rigidity. What would be needed to make a spindle?

Can I just buy bearings, an R8 arbor, drawbar, collets and R8 collet shank, machine a housing for this and put an AC motor coupled with a timing belt?
Anything else im missing?
I have a travers tool catalog, and I just cant find the arbor and drawbar, do these have to be machined too? any drawings?
Any help would be greatly appreciated.

42

Tangent Corner / CAM software with programable 100% cutter engagement feedrate?

« on: November 17, 2006, 02:40:48 PM »

DOes anyone know of any software that has the ability to program slower feedrates when the cutter is fully engaged?
I hate to program feed of 10ipm in aluminum because the cutter cant handle 50ipm cuts when it is fully engaged, but when only 20, 25, 50% of the cutter engaged it can cut at 50ipm, but since the programmed feed rate is 10ipm it takes tooo long to cut.

Regards
Fernando

43

General Mach Discussion / Mach 3 OS?

« on: November 08, 2006, 07:50:19 PM »

Hi Group.
Today my control PC rebooted itself while cutting a 5 hour long program, piece was not scraped, but it broke my cutter. When I got back to the mill, there was a dialog box that staid, Windows has recovered from a serious error No big deal.
But it kinda got me thinking, How hard would if be to have a Mach 3 Operating System, A stand alone installation of only Mach 3 running by itself, no Windows, no Linux, just plain old reliable Mach 3.

Regards
Fernando

44

Tangent Corner / PC Based Automation

« on: October 11, 2006, 07:36:53 PM »

Hi group,
has anyone worked with pc based automation for controlling processes or plants?
Does anyone recomend any good software for this purpose?

Thanks in advance.
Fernando

45

Tangent Corner / max torque or continuous torque for design

« on: September 26, 2006, 09:49:42 PM »

Hello,
When designing for servos, do you take in consideration the max torque
or the continuous torque available from the servo.
For example if you have a setup that would give you 100lbs continuous
force, and say 200lbs peak or max torque, what would you use for
calculations? If the gantry you are moving weighs 100lbs, then the
acceleration you could get using the continuous torque is 1G, if you
use the max or peak torque you would get 2G's.
Any insight?
Thanks in advance
Fernando

46

General Mach Discussion / OEM Mach 3

« on: September 12, 2006, 01:56:21 PM »

Hey, this one goes to brian and art,

I dont know if this is possible, or even convenient for you guys. But is it possible to compile a version of Mach 3 for OEM use? one that shows the OEM´s logo in the splash screen, title bar, menus and helps and abouts?
I guess this will generate an extra cost, maybe an OEM licence?

Regards
Fernando

47

LazyCam (Beta) / LAzycam and THC300

« on: September 08, 2006, 12:58:55 PM »

Hello all,
I have been talking with Bob Campbell, My main concern of the THC300 he sells is that if it needed to touch off the material every time it needed to make a peirce, it would be very time consuming. He told be that with Sheetcam you can post the gcode, so that it only touches off the material every  time it needs to peirce as long is away from the last time you peirced a set distance you tell it to.
So if you set that distance to say, 12 inches, then if there are 17 peirces within that 12 inches, then it only needs to touch off once. instead of every time.
Can Lazycam do that?
Best Regards
Fernando

48

General Mach Discussion / DynaTorch THC

« on: August 25, 2006, 01:30:27 AM »

Hello,
Has anyone heard or used the DynaTorch torch height control with Mach 3? Does it work? How does it compare to campbells TCH 300?
here is the link:
http://www.dynatorch.com/avhtctrl.htm

Regards
Fernando

49

General Mach Discussion / parallel port pinout

« on: June 23, 2006, 05:02:45 PM »

Hello,
I just received some stepper drivers,  and they have step + and step - as well as dir + dir - terminals,
I bought a paralel cable, and cut off one terminal as to get the 25 wires and be able to wirle a couple of ground terminals (pins 18 to 25) to the negative step and dir terminals, to my surprise the cable only had signal wires and the cables for pins 18 to 25 are missing, could I wire the - step and dir terminals to the shield of the cable?
Any ideas?
Regards
Fernando

50

General Mach Discussion / robot input with encoders

« on: June 06, 2006, 06:03:28 PM »

I might be getting ahead of myself, but bear with me for a while.
Imagine you build a 3, 4, 5 or 6 axis robot (abb and fanuc like) i know the difficulty here lies in telling the robot what to do (generate the toolpath). Ok now imagine making another robot, with the same dimensions (or scaled down) and instead of fitting the robot with servos, you just put the encoders. Now here is what I am getting at:
Is it possible to move the motorless version of the robot and have the motored robot make the same moves? Better yet, can those moves on the motorless robot be recorded, and then played back by the motored robot?

Come fly with me!
Regards
Fernando