Messages

11

General Mach Discussion / Re: homing accuracy

« on: September 05, 2008, 12:02:26 PM »

Hood,

I set up to do the repeatability test again on the Y-axis. It ran 6 minutes with a variation of about .0006 inches. I was cycling .350 inches. Just past the 6 minute mark the stepper motor did its twiching and pushed the dial indicator out of the way. I ran a drive test right away all the displays looked normal but there was no line on the graph. 23731 to 23733, 547 and, 4192. The motor tuning settings are 23.94 in/min. 2.98 in/sec2. FRO is at 6. I have G17, G61, G90 and , G94 on the first line of the program. I am using G01 to go to the dimensions.

I stopped it when it hit the dial indicator. When I hit the start again all that would run is the elapsed time.

I will hook up a millivolt meter on the drive and run the experiment again.

B.E.N.

12

General Mach Discussion / Re: homing accuracy

« on: September 05, 2008, 09:36:18 AM »

Hood,

I did restart Mach. Axis still would not run. Restarted computer and the axis is working again. Nothing else was checked, moved, adjusted. It is hard to believe it is hardware if it will run for hours sometimes weeks and then just quit. I have other things that come at work so sometimes the lathe sits for a couple days and the drives will work. Then I go to use it and it stops. A couple weeks back I ran it 2 or 3 days in a row no problem. Since then I have plugged in an ethernet network connection would that cause intermittent problems?

I did see a reply asking about if I run Mach Mill to run the lathe. No, I run a program that the lathe supplier provided (XML file).

B.E.N.

13

General Mach Discussion / Re: homing accuracy

« on: September 04, 2008, 05:11:34 PM »

Hood,

I have stepper motors with Gecko drives and a Sound Logic control. I will look into the Input 1 setup.

B.E.N.

14

General Mach Discussion / Re: VFD and noise questions

« on: September 04, 2008, 04:46:15 PM »

Thanks for info about REF ALL HOME. I still can't seem to get back to making parts. I had the machine running today to tweak it in and after about 20 cycles the Y axis just quit. The DRO continued to run for Y but no movement. Can't even get it to go with the jog function. I have shut the drive down still nothing. Is there some kind of error log that might indicate what happened? I will restart Mach 3 and see what happens. I don't have the Sola on the drive supply yet.

B.E.N.

15

General Mach Discussion / Re: VFD and noise questions

« on: September 04, 2008, 10:30:09 AM »

Hello,

I have done the repeatability test. I wrote a simple program to cycle between two points on y-axis 0.120 apart. The dial indicator always came to the same spot. I did this with G01 about 50 times repeat every time. Then I went to G00 and I ran about 15 cycles and the axis quit. The program kept going. I will try this again with a slower velocity on the motor tuning.

Sounds like I have a homing issue. The manual I have talks about pressing "Set Home" is that a keyboard input or a screen icon or a drop down menu or the REF ALL HOME? Or, would I use the gauge pin zero points as the G28 settings?

Obviously, I am a little confused about the homing issue. Do you still need my XML file?

B.E.N.

16

General Mach Discussion / Re: VFD and noise questions

« on: September 03, 2008, 04:16:42 PM »

Two more pictures.

17

General Mach Discussion / Re: VFD and noise questions

« on: September 03, 2008, 04:14:13 PM »

I am not using home switches. I zero on gauge pins then tell the drivers to go a dimension as a home. Find attach some photos.

18

General Mach Discussion / homing accuracy

« on: September 03, 2008, 02:13:20 PM »

Hello,

I am back to the frustration level. I thought everything was going well. I have been spending the past several weeks trying to get a lathe (2-axis) ready for production use. I was able to make about 200 parts ( I need to make about 2500/week) during which time the both the spindle motor and the servo motors had "seizures". Re-zeroing the servos seemed to take care of the control part but the spindle motor, I have no idea. I have put a surge protector on the computer power. The lathe power is 220V single phase I will put a sola there as well.

I went back at trying to run the lathe again this week after the holiday and I can't make a single good part. I loaded the same program I was using, I zeroed everything the way I have been I checked calibration and motor tuning settings. No luck.

Is there a way to write the program in encoder counts rather than inches or millimeters? I assume zero on the encoder is at same location all the time? Maybe I am really not getting everthing back to the correct offsets? It seems everytime I use the machine I have to tweak the program to get good parts. What am I missing?

We have an Applied Motion system that is about 5 or 6 years old now and the program is bullet proof. You can shut it off in the middle, pull the plug anything and when it powers up it is back and ready to go. Since it is getting old we are setting the Mach up as a back up/ replacement if the Applied Motion does quit.

B.E.N.

19

General Mach Discussion / Re: Limit/Homin switches

« on: June 02, 2008, 09:34:08 AM »

Hood,

Thanks for the reply. I did find the xls sheet of all the OEM codes. Looking thru them I see start is code 1000. So would have to assume I load 1000 in the OEM code table under hotkeys and wire in an input to the parallel port and the program will start when I push the machine start.

Appreciate the info.

Kerry

20

General Mach Discussion / Re: Limit/Homin switches

« on: May 30, 2008, 10:59:27 AM »

Hello Again,

I have a general questions about interface between machine and Mach3. Is it possible to start a Mach3 program using the start switch on the machine I am controlling? Maybe I am missing something very obvious??? Currently I have to click the " Cycle Start" or Alt R to start Mach3, then when Mach3 hits the M3 or M4 command I am allowed to hit the power switch on machine. I am using this equipment in production and the operator has to do this this 300 to 800 times a day depending on our production requirements. Pressing one button sure would make things much easier. It has to be stopped and started to load another part.

Thanks.

B.E.N.