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Author Topic: Nardini Fasttrace 220 goes from Fanuc to Mach3  (Read 14951 times)

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Re: Nardini Fasttrace 220 goes from Fanuc to Mach3
« Reply #10 on: December 02, 2012, 11:29:48 AM »
i will try to attach a pic



the pic makes it look a bit large, it is mostly the cabinet in back

17" dia swing, 40" z travel, weighs about 4000 lbs.   8 hp spindle motor, i am driving it with a 20 hp rotary phase converter.

3 phase 208v to the machine, i needed a buck-boost transformer to bring it down, machine built in brazil i believe to their

electrical standards.

those fanuc red caps supposedly rapid it to 290 ipm, and i never had any stall issues in rapid or in the cut

cuts of say 1/8" plus deep per side in mild steel @ .015 ipr, plenty of torque, as it should be driving through a gearbox.

my max speed with the motor in high range about 1200 rpm, tho the gearbox will go to 3000.  this limitation

due to the mass of the 10" chuck and because my power companys transformer is on the small side, they

promised to change it, that was about 10 years ago.

my reason for avoiding used components is that i want some warranty behind them, i want a simple install, i am no troubleshooter.

i want the install to be as simple as possible, as i learn, i can upgrade later with more confidence if i find a need.

thanks
ken

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Offline Hood

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Re: Nardini Fasttrace 220 goes from Fanuc to Mach3
« Reply #11 on: December 02, 2012, 12:00:09 PM »
Ah ok its a bit smaller than I was thinking, when I thought of  17 x 40 I thought it was not much smaller than my lathe but  quite a difference really.
Looks like a nice lathe and I have heard the Nardinis are good quality.
I can understand your thoughts on new v second hand.
Hood
long time gone, not forgotten
« Reply #12 on: April 01, 2013, 09:34:17 PM »
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long time since ive posted, doesnt mean ive given up.  been reading a lot, have learned a lot, but has also brought up more questions.  looking at Peter Homanns website, he has diagrams showing his breakout boards connected to both gecko stepper and servo drivers.  i have confidence after comparing these that the difference is not that great and i can handle a brush servo install as well as a stepper install and i think thats the way i want to go.  it doesnt appear that Peter's webstore is aimed at a servo kit as large as i will need for this lathe, so i have been looking at Automation Technologies, Motiontek, and CNC4PC for a kit.  i like the plug in approach used by CNC4PC as well as the drivers which seem to be the "CNC Drives from Hungary" that Hood has spoken of.  this kit has held my attention:
 http://www.cnc4pc.com/Store/osc/product_info.php?cPath=64_96&products_id=551,
 id request a 2 axis version.  Hood's comment of my old fanuc motors being about 1.9Nm continuous, these kit motors look about 85% of that, should be close enough.  im hoping to keep identical motors on the x and z, the x motor may be an issue because of space.  maybe a physically smaller motor, or perhaps have my buddy Perley the fab guy over with his tools of destruction for some sheet metal modification.

one of the places ive been reading a lot has been the mach1mach2cnc yahoo board.  lot of interesting topics there, lots of opinions, but has been a lil scary for me.  makes mach3 seem like it can sometimes be an unstable problematic control system.  i guess the discussion there centers around problems and solving them, likely the large majority of successful m3 installs are not discussed there, and i am just paranoid.  just need my lathe to do what it did before, turn, face, bore and thread.  chamfers and radii.

since i have confidence of my understanding of the lathe axis' cnc motion control, i think i want to shift my attention to controlling the other things the lathe must do:  i have a big cable full of 3 phase power coming into the main switch.  somehow all that juice makes the fanuc stuff run, makes the spindle go, the mechanical spindle brake work, the 2 speed spindle motor (this is not a servo motor) switch hi-low, run in 2 directions and stop, the oiler and coolant pump run.  once in jog mode, theres an x and a z mpg that work as crank handles, and are tempered by a feedrate selection switch.  and theres also a joystick thats tempered by the same switch and allowed me to move x or z  or x and z simultaneously.  those mpg handwheels also work independent or together, and having the joystick and the handwheels aid greatly in "manual" operation of the lathe, as does the coolant toggle switch and spindle ccw-off-cw lever, and the feedrate rotary.  i know these can be mach controlled, but if youve been a "manual" engine lathe guy, you prefer to keep them.

as i see it now i need to gain understanding of the stuff in the above paragraph.  ill think it has much to do with my lathe converting the 208 3 ph to smaller voltages and amperages and more, that will drive relays that will activate contactors (there are a whole lot of them in the old control cabinet) that will distribute all this power in graduated doses to proper destinations.

ive learned a lot about the stuff in paragraph 1 from reading and watching vids.  hardly anything about the stuff in paragraph 3.  as i said when i started, small steps.  no screwdrivers or soldering irons in my near future, can you folk point me to reading and vids that will help me understand the stuff in paragraph 3 and how it will interface with with the stuff in paragraph 1?  will the vendors in paragraph 1 be helpful with this?  there must be opinions of these vendors, if so id love to hear them, if posting to this forum is inappropriate, pm me and thanks!

regarding the mach1mach2cnc board, the questions that most come to mind are, just parallel port or smoothstepper/other pulse gen?  lot of questions about difficulty of interface and support documentation.  tough for a noob.  and i find myself wondering about the best build for the lathe that will work well in mach3 but be an easy conversion over to mach4.  it may take me a long while to get this done, thats ok not in a hurry.

the more you folk have to say about any of this the more i learn and the better i like it.  thanks!!






Re: Nardini Fasttrace 220 goes from Fanuc to Mach3
« Reply #13 on: April 13, 2013, 01:37:38 PM »
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hope my previous post was not too wordy as to put people off.  the more i think about this, i see it as 2 separate issues.  control of all the non x-z motion items, and control of the x & z with mach3.  i believe i will get my electronics-electric guy over here and see what we can do about getting the spindle to turn, and the brake, coolant & oiler to work without the fanuc stuff in place, and see what i will need to convert the power for all these items and get them properly switched.

once my lathe is working again but without x & z motion, i will attempt (with help if needed) the basic install of a kit and mach3.  if i can accomplish this, i will have functionality again, i can always control the spindle, coolant etc manually, and use mach cnc and jog to move the x & z.

3 issues i guess, i will want the stuff to all work together but i can attack these issues one at a time, likely 1st an index for threading, then the mpgs, etc etc.

i took a few pics inside the cabinet, ill post them in case anyone has comment.  ill try to make them thumbs but im not exactly sure how.  hoping to reuse a lot of this stuff.


from shop 003 by metlcutr55, on Flickr


from shop 004 by metlcutr55, on Flickr


from shop 005 by metlcutr55, on Flickr


from shop 006 by metlcutr55, on Flickr


from shop 007 by metlcutr55, on Flickr

once again, im really interesting in anything anyone has to say, about the kit ive "chosen", about vendors, etc etc


thanks
ken

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Offline Hood

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Re: Nardini Fasttrace 220 goes from Fanuc to Mach3
« Reply #14 on: April 14, 2013, 06:05:14 AM »
I think the DG3S drives are around about the best of the cheaper "Hobby" style drives so thats likely the best choice if going that route, I think however I would look at the CSMIO/IP-S for the controller. Lots of advantages with it being all in one, 24v i/o, analogue spindle control, analogue I/O for things like feed and spindle overrides.
 There is one drawback to it on a lathe at the moment, the pullout at the end of a threading pass is delayed and so you end up with an annular groove at the end. This will almost certainly be fixed in Mach4 as it is Mach3 that is the problem and not actually the CSMIO.

 If this was my machine I would however be looking at AC servos and drives, you can buy new Chinese ones or my personal choice would be second hand ones from the big brands (Allen Bradley, Yaskawa, Samsung/Rockwell, Mitsubishi) These are industrial quality drives and will out perform and probably outlast the cheaper hobby drives. But of course that is just my thinking on the mater and quite likely others will have different views.

If going that route then I would look for ones that are capable of analogue command  input and use the CSMIO/IP-A. I currently have both the IP-S and IP-A on machines and they are the best controllers I have used so far by a long way but the A is the best of the two as it has some distinct advantages with the encoders being used to update Machs DROs.

Anyway thats my thoughts.
Hood

Offline Dan13

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Re: Nardini Fasttrace 220 goes from Fanuc to Mach3
« Reply #15 on: April 14, 2013, 03:17:35 PM »
Hood,

Why do you think the pullout is a Mach3 issue and not a CSMIO one? There is no such an issue with the SS for instance...

Dan

Offline Hood

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Re: Nardini Fasttrace 220 goes from Fanuc to Mach3
« Reply #16 on: April 14, 2013, 03:29:59 PM »
Hood,

Why do you think the pullout is a Mach3 issue and not a CSMIO one? There is no such an issue with the SS for instance...

Dan

Few reasons Dan, first is I got almost instant pullout when I inadvertently had an older version of Mach in, I thought at first it was the new plugin I was testing that had made the difference but then I noticed I had an old version of Mach so I went t a newer version and pullout was back to delayed.
 I talked to Andrew at CS-Lab and he said it was Mach was slow in updating info to the plugin. I also talked with Steve and he said that they had exactly the same issues with the Galil plugin.
Now the reason it works fine with SS/ESS etc is they simply use the Index pulse for threading and do not fully sync Z to spindle encoder. Steve went back to that method in the Galil plugin for now but he will be making sure that Mach4 can allow proper use of a full encoder input to properly sync Z to spindle.

Hood

Offline Dan13

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Re: Nardini Fasttrace 220 goes from Fanuc to Mach3
« Reply #17 on: April 14, 2013, 03:33:07 PM »
Thanks, Hood.

Dan
Re: Nardini Fasttrace 220 goes from Fanuc to Mach3
« Reply #18 on: April 14, 2013, 04:34:39 PM »
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hi Hood!

i am still leaning towards that kit as is, for a couple reasons.  1st being my lack of electronics knowledge, thinking a very plain mach install is within my capabilities, messing with servo drives and controllers with multiple parameter inputs may be too much for me.  i am happy with the dc brush motors on my mill and hope the kit motors would be comparable in quality.  second being cost.  id try stepper but i am not liking the motor noise i hear on various vids.  i see the kit as the next step above steppers, if i can just get this lathe cutting again, i can modify the system to use a motion controller instead of the parallel port, and/or add better motors/drivers later, after ive made a lil $$.

what penalties will i pay going this way, simple brush servos, parallel port control, no external controller, "basic" mach3, vs doing it up as you have described?

i am waiting to hear from my electronics guy about getting the non x-z motion items on my lathe rolling less the fanuc.

i see little input here on this board about vendors and their level of kit support.  i see mostly negative input on cnczone about this question.  i welcome pm's from folk about this question, tho myself, i tend to air such maters publicly, a good job deserves a pat on the back, and vise versa!

thanks all for reading.

ken

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Offline Hood

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Re: Nardini Fasttrace 220 goes from Fanuc to Mach3
« Reply #19 on: April 14, 2013, 05:00:40 PM »
Well its not a route I would take but Machmotion get a good name for support and products but it will be more expensive than that kit from CNC4PC
If you are serious about starting off with low end stuff then upgrading later I would say steppers would likely be the better choice as they are simpler and cheaper. Its not something I would do but everyone to their own.
Hood