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Author Topic: Idea for CNC Mach controlled Quilting Machine (No costly stitch regulator)  (Read 18975 times)

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Offline khalid

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Hi to all great minds:)
I want to make a low-cost Stitch Regulator for a quilting machine for my Wife... I will place the quilting machine on X and Y carriages and this will move the whole quilting machine in X/Y direction.. The X and Y carriages will be controlled by stepper motor by the computer...

Now I have search on the internet and found many cruise controller for sewing machine..The purpose of those controllers is to give the equal length of stitch at different speeds of carriages... they are using encoders at X and Y carriages that sense the motion and send the movement into the cruise controller circuit that then send command to the sewing machine to regulate the stitch..These controllers are normally plugged into the sewing machine Padle controll port..

Now the X/Y carriage can be controlled with the help of Mach3, but the problem is How to control the equal length of stitch?..

How can we control the stitch length with Mach3?..Any ideas and solutions will be highly appreciated...


You can see the professional cruise controller here

http://www.quilterscruisecontrol.com/
BUT I NEED SIMPLE LOW COST controller for this purpose..Is thier anybody who can help me in this...Just give me an idea so that i can start..

(I also have an idea to attach a AC motor to the wheel of sewing machine to get the control of stitch via arduino only...)

Thanks

PS:
Many of us can make a low-cost open source open hardware quilting machine controler an d hardware and can gift it to relatives and especially the womens...

Offline Sage

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Re: Idea for CNC Mach controlled Quilting Machine (No costly stitch regulator)
« Reply #1 on: December 10, 2009, 01:51:33 PM »
I have no idea how Mach turn works but it seems to be able to adjust the spindle speed of a lathe in relation to the X/Y feed rates to regulate cutting surface feet per minute. Could the spindle speed signal from mach turn be used to control the sewing machine motor speed or am I way off base here.

Sage

Re: Idea for CNC Mach controlled Quilting Machine (No costly stitch regulator)
« Reply #2 on: December 10, 2009, 03:51:02 PM »
Hi to all great minds:)
I want to make a low-cost Stitch Regulator for a quilting machine for my Wife... I will place the quilting machine on X and Y carriages and this will move the whole quilting machine in X/Y direction.. The X and Y carriages will be controlled by stepper motor by the computer...

Now I have search on the internet and found many cruise controller for sewing machine..The purpose of those controllers is to give the equal length of stitch at different speeds of carriages... they are using encoders at X and Y carriages that sense the motion and send the movement into the cruise controller circuit that then send command to the sewing machine to regulate the stitch..These controllers are normally plugged into the sewing machine Padle controll port..

Now the X/Y carriage can be controlled with the help of Mach3, but the problem is How to control the equal length of stitch?..

How can we control the stitch length with Mach3?..Any ideas and solutions will be highly appreciated...


You can see the professional cruise controller here

http://www.quilterscruisecontrol.com/
BUT I NEED SIMPLE LOW COST controller for this purpose..Is thier anybody who can help me in this...Just give me an idea so that i can start..

(I also have an idea to attach a AC motor to the wheel of sewing machine to get the control of stitch via arduino only...)

Thanks

PS:
Many of us can make a low-cost open source open hardware quilting machine controler an d hardware and can gift it to relatives and especially the womens...

I'll think some more, but one thing that comes to mind is using an index pulse from the cam that drives the needle up and down, and then using that to regulate the speed of the motor.  You would want to make sure that for every unit of distance traveled that one pulse was generated.  If you have a machine that can feed constantly in X and Y at the speeds you need you should be fine.  I think the problem sounds a whole lot more complex than it is in theory.  Now getting the motors to move the way you want them in practice may be a bit more tricky ;)

Offline khalid

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Re: Idea for CNC Mach controlled Quilting Machine (No costly stitch regulator)
« Reply #3 on: December 10, 2009, 10:47:56 PM »
Dear Sage and Koko:) Thanks for reply..

Sage thats a great idea, but unfortunatly we are making straight designs..Just think that we have a vector and we generated a PROFILE toolpath and made a Gcode File....This Gcode file can't work in MachTurn..We have to use MachMill..:(

Just think of that, If it is possible to get the real time FRO readings for each X and Y movement then It is possible to regulate the stitch... Consider we dry run (Simulate) the programm in Mach3 and we somehow collect the real FRO (compensating acceleration/velocity) and we some how put the real FRO between each X/Y carriage..

Simply think like that we are generating another Gcode file out of Mach3 that will include Real FRO reading in between each X/Y gcode..just like that

G01 X0 Y0
F20
G01 X1 Y2
F23

...
...
..
 etc

If I get the above code from the simulation run of Mach3 in a text file..I then can formulate and make a sketch for ARDUINO programmer to seperatly control the spindle of sewing machine ( Wheel) to get the equal length of stitch.

This FRO reading can then be Parse and calculated for regulating the length of stitch...

Regards
Re: Idea for CNC Mach controlled Quilting Machine (No costly stitch regulator)
« Reply #4 on: December 11, 2009, 08:34:01 AM »
IMHO you are getting confused and over complicating the situation.  Nothing needs to be taken out of Mach3, and FRO is feed rate override, which is not a useful quantity in this case.
Mach3 has facilities to sync one thing to another such as syncing carriage motion to the spindle when threading on a lathe. 
Mach3 is a trajectory planner/motion controller, not a generator for G code.  You feed it toolpaths and it syncs the relevant axis, no need to reinvent the wheel here.

Offline khalid

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Re: Idea for CNC Mach controlled Quilting Machine (No costly stitch regulator)
« Reply #5 on: December 11, 2009, 08:42:01 AM »
Thanks KoKo..You are right i am using Mach3 for last 7 years... I know its a great powerful controller..but can you explain please How can we Sync the sewing machine needle with the carriage..Kindly give me a hint with respect to Mach3:)

Thanks for posting and enlighten us..

Offline khalid

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Re: Idea for CNC Mach controlled Quilting Machine (No costly stitch regulator)
« Reply #6 on: December 11, 2009, 08:45:48 AM »
KoKo... To make the imagination more simple, suppose we install a stepper motor with timing belt on sewing machine hand wheel... Now suppose that One complete turn of Machine wheel gives you One Stitch... Now as the two stepper motors X/Y moves (Keeping the acceleration/deceleration in mind)How can we sync the machine wheel motor..so that the stitch length remains same..

Thanks
Re: Idea for CNC Mach controlled Quilting Machine (No costly stitch regulator)
« Reply #7 on: December 11, 2009, 09:13:54 AM »
As  I already pointed out, the operation is similar to a lathe while threading.  You count your index pulses from the "spindle"  and sync the feed of the two axis to that, just like cutting threads.  Alternately you could set up the sewing machine spindle as an A axis, and code accordingly, but that sounds like a programming nightmare to me. 
If I were to do this, I would opt for the first one, as it's going to be more practical.  If you want me to tell you how to set up Mach3 specifically I'm sorry I can't help you there, you'll have to do some reading on your own, the Mach3 Manual is excellent.  First determine your axis of motion and work backward from there. 

Offline khalid

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Re: Idea for CNC Mach controlled Quilting Machine (No costly stitch regulator)
« Reply #8 on: December 11, 2009, 09:15:27 AM »
KoKo..Thanks for your effective feedback..I will look into the matter in  more detail..:)
Re: Idea for CNC Mach controlled Quilting Machine (No costly stitch regulator)
« Reply #9 on: December 11, 2009, 11:48:03 AM »
If I'm understanding the problem correctly, you want to be able to program a path for Mach3 to follow, but the stitch rate has to track the velocity along that path, so you get a consistent stitch length, right?  If so, with encoders on both axes, it's a simple matter to combine the encoders to generate a single overal velocity signal.  You can use that to feed an "index" signal into the Mach3 spindle speed sensor input, and use the spindle output to drive the stiching motor.  Then you have the spindle PID to do the tracking for you.

Regards,
Ray L.
Regards,
Ray L.