Messages

471

Show"N"Tell ( Your Machines) / Re: 9x20 Chinese Lathe Conversion

« on: June 20, 2012, 06:03:36 AM »

Be aware that the Ultra 5000 don't accept any external signals (step/direction or other). They were not meant to be used with an external controller. They do have an option for electronic gear follower, however, and this is the mode I am planning to use mine in.

cut the power to the drive(like I do) but if the friction of the slides wasnt enough to brake things instantly (or very close) I was  going to use the spare contact on the contactor to  apply the overtravel inputs thus allowing the drive to instantly halt the motor.

And that is while the drive is not powered already? Not sure I would trust this. I have followed the recommendation in the Ultra manual for switching in braking resistors and it's been working great and I think I will stick with this approach.

Dan

472

Show"N"Tell ( Your Machines) / Re: 9x20 Chinese Lathe Conversion

« on: June 20, 2012, 03:43:47 AM »

Thanks guys.

Hood, the Ultra 5000 has an embedded controller and is intended for stand alone applications. It doesn't have any inputs/outputs tied to any hardware feature and it has a microcontroller which you can program in C to do whatever you want, so I believe you could program it for limit inputs. Are you suggesting this in place of disconnecting the motor from the drive on an Estop? Doesn't look safe to me...?

Dan

473

Show"N"Tell ( Your Machines) / Re: 9x20 Chinese Lathe Conversion

« on: June 19, 2012, 01:02:19 PM »

Have been working on the wiring for the past few days. Interesting how many wires there are for machine which merely has 3 motors. Here is the component plate, a moment before I mounted it inside the cabinet, with all the components wired:


And all this to eventually control 3 motors

I decided that cutting power to the spindle drive on an Estop event was not what I wanted, since I didn't want the spindle to freewheel to a stop, but rather stop instantly, so I am using a contactor (bottom right) to cut the motor phases from the drive and switch in resistors between them instead, to dynamically brake the motor. I feel more comfortable with this.

Dan

474

Show"N"Tell ( Your Machines) / Re: 9x20 Chinese Lathe Conversion

« on: June 19, 2012, 12:41:54 PM »

Made a PCB last week for all the buttons on the front panel:


Soldering was a pain with all the jumpers that were needed. It took a few hours spread across a couple of days, and this is after all the components have been soldered to it:


The buttons are tactile buttons and they will have caps with different colours. For the overrides I used mechanical encoders.

Dan

475

Show"N"Tell ( Your Machines) / Re: 9x20 Chinese Lathe Conversion

« on: June 15, 2012, 01:20:46 AM »

Thanks JH. I am getting close.

Dan

476

Show"N"Tell ( Your Machines) / Re: 9x20 Chinese Lathe Conversion

« on: June 08, 2012, 02:28:22 PM »

A small update. Ball screw guards mounted:



Dan

477

Show"N"Tell ( Your Machines) / Re: 9x20 Chinese Lathe Conversion

« on: June 07, 2012, 11:44:07 AM »

Ah...  so a fault signal from a drive won't cut off power to the drives on your machines. That explains it. Hmm... The little lathe only has a servo on the spindle. The axes are steppers. So I think I will do the same then. A fault signal from the servo will cut power to the steppers and send a signal to Mach3. Somehow I overlooked this and wanted the servo cut power to itself on a fault

Dan

478

Show"N"Tell ( Your Machines) / Re: 9x20 Chinese Lathe Conversion

« on: June 07, 2012, 10:48:01 AM »

So after hitting the Estop button you hold that override button while releasing the Estop?

Dan

479

Show"N"Tell ( Your Machines) / Re: 9x20 Chinese Lathe Conversion

« on: June 07, 2012, 04:09:21 AM »

Hood,

It was in your wee lathe topic, I think, that I asked you about how you implement Estop in your control. You said that Estop was cutting power to your drives. This is how I want to do this on this one, but I am a bit confused. If the servo drive outputs a fault signal I want it to trigger the Estop sequence which in turn will shut the drive off and depending on the wiring (fault line active low or high) this will either mean that I won't be able to get out of this state or it will get powered up right after it powers off. Question is how do you do this?

Dan

480

Show"N"Tell ( Your Machines) / Re: 9x20 Chinese Lathe Conversion

« on: June 07, 2012, 03:50:49 AM »

The shape is too odd to try and bend the edge. And even if I wanted to I had to order new ones cut anyway (significantly wider to allow for the bend) so getting them cut from a thicker material in the first place is cheaper, faster and easier

Dan