Hello Peter81:
I have not heard of any video for Axisworks, although that would be a great addition for getting through the learning curve. You might drop Rufi at Vital Systems a note, and ask him if he would have time to produce one. I know he is always busy writing better software, but it's worth a try.
Some further thoughts on tuning, after my last message:
The "S" curve you see on the screen is the acceleration of the motor, in graphical format. From the beginning of the S curve, to the end of the curve, just as it becomes a straight horizontal line is, "Time," in the horizontal axis of the graph.
The vertical height of the "S" curve is the motor acceleration from standstill, to full programmed velocity.
It is that acceleration within the "S" curve, that requires the most motor amps. So, the motor can only move so much mass (weight of gantry or table), to a given velocity, in a given amount of time. Remember, horsepower (or Watts) is "work per unit of time."
That "S" curve time period is in fractions of a second, or a few hundred milliseconds. This is far to little time to visually see what is going on. However, with Axisworks, you can now "see" what is taking place. When the velocity is set too high, for a given time, the motor servo "faults out" and never goes to it's programmed distance.
By playing around with the numbers, you can learn the motor maximum acceleration and velocity for a given mass.
Since you are using two motors to move the gantry, the velocity that can be achieved with one motor observed in Axisworks, will be less than what is achievable in real use, when the two motors are working in unison, moving the same mass.
So, if your single motor faults out at 100 i.p.m. (inches per minute), you can probably achieve 130, or 140 i.p.m. when using the machine with the two motors in unison. This limit can only be known by trial and error. The maximum velocity will not be double, since all these relationships are NOT linear, but it will be somewhere above the single motor velocity for sure.
You cannot put the higher velocity factor into the Axisworks test cycle, since the motor will immediately fault out. You could try putting a slightly the higher velocity setting in the Axisworks program, and not giving it the run command. Save the parameters into the dspmc controller, for each motor individually, and then try it out in a simple test program, i.e., go 10.0" at feedrate X, stop, go to 0.000 at feedrate X, stop.
Alternately, you could just program higher and higher velocity feed rates in a program, and see where the motors fault out. The problem with this, is you might damage the gantry if one motor came to a full stop, with the other one going full power. Whatever you do, proceed in incremental steps, making one change at a time, going from the "known" to the "unknown."
Regards,
John