mflanders,

One more question for you.

You replaced the original PC with a different one.
On the original pc was there a board attached to the back of that PC and are you using it on the new PC?

If yes take a picture of it and post.

RICH

Mike,
So what's up?

RICH

Xyil provides an external controller with their X5 combo  machine and is currently listed on their site
as  a "HiCon 4 axis control board". They also provide other "optional" controllers.

Is that what you have?
I need the board number / information about whatever  controller board you are using.

Take a picture of your spindle and post it.
Take some pictures of the drives and boards inside the control box. Mack sure one can read any  labels of the drives and boards.

Till then,
RICH
 

Rich I highly doubt it has an external motion controller.  The standard seems to still be parallel with other stuff as options.  Jeff at Syil America adds an ESS now as a standard, and COA adds one on request.  If he swapped computers he would have needed to setup any external motion controller and should "know" what it is if there is one.  Yes, they do "offer" other controls.  They even offer a Seimens control, but I don't think any of us looking at Syil are doing so for anything other than the economy. 

I only need the 4th axis to rotate roughly 120rpm. The spindle should be a servo because it can operate at over 4000 rpm.

I highly doubt its a servo.  I have two X5 Combos.  Mine are Speedmasters, but they both use VFDs, and I am sure the standard X4 and X5 also use VFDs.  (I also have an X4).  Its pretty easy to check though.  Just open the cabinet on the back and look.  My X5s have Delta VFDs.

We have a Syil X5combo with the 4th axis add-on. We purchased one of these little guys as a test bed to see if couldn't handle our environment . It sat in one of our facilities in Farmington MI for almost a year and was never used. We had it delivered up to our facility in Northern MI and it sat here for another 6 months before I got sick of looking at it not running. I took it upon myself to utilize this machine. When I initially hooked it up the PC was bad. kept freezing up the machine. I replaced that and it seems to be working. Then the thing wasn't moving correctly in odd spots of programs. Come to find out the tuning was wrong on it. I since tuned it and it seems to be holding its coordinates. I'm not sure on the stepper or the servo motor. Cant seem to find it in the manual.

I strongly suggest you go thru the machine.  The ones I have are not as good as they claim.  I had a spacer missing on the Y axis ballscrew on one and the oil passage that feeds the Z axis ball screw was not drilled thru in the head.  I bypassed it with an oil line to make sure it got oil.  (The line was dry before.)  I suspect some used components were used on my other X5.  There was excessive backlash in the Z axis ball screw, and with less than 50 hours on the machine the gas spring that supports the Z failed.  My X4 had an out of square saddle and there was no oil line at all to the X axis ball nut.  Syil air freighted a replacement saddle from China to replace the bad saddle. 

Sorry, I do not have 4th axis setups on any of my X(x) machines, so I can't help there.  Mine all have Ethernet Smoothsteppers, but they were added by the reseller.

The standard on these machines is stepper drive on all axis, but they do offer some servo based versions.  They cost more and are a more expensive option.  I do not believe either Syil America or Charter Oak Automation stocks them that way.  There is a third Syil Importer now, but he is recent and he doesn't sell raw machines.  He juices them up and goes thru them selling them under his own name. 

So that tells me the machine right from the start is not quite accurate to do what you want it to do.

No, it probably is not.  In fact I don't think any of mine is as accurate as they claim.  I use them for making molds, but none of my main stream of mold work is critical dimension work anyway.  I mean who cares if a rubber worm comes out 5 ten thousandths off.  My 1981 Hurco is as accurate (or better) than my Syils.  That being said, like with all but the crappiest mill drills I can use good machining techniques to creep up on critical dimensions. 

Bob,
Thanks for your experience and reply.

BUT

Mike needs to provide the information requested to get the proper responses associated  to what he is seeking to do.
Not much more one can say.

RICH

Rich,  I thought there was a way to make an axis spin continuously.  I seem to recall that in the past, or does it only work with the spindle?  

Bob,
For ABC you can index or have it rotate degrees for some time using gcode . Mach3 dose not provide for continuous ABC rotation as there can only be one spindle. Spindles are configurable. Swap axis can be used but what your swapping needs to be the same in configuration since the swap only changes configured pin outs and then  one or the other is not being used. I guess one could manually turn the 4th axis motor on / off and  have it run continuously, but, it's not automated or controlled.

InTurn 4th Axis can do it but suggest you go to the site and see what is required and how it's done.

Now as you mentioned, there are other external motion devices  available that can provide the feature and more, BUT, not cheap and may require purchased software to program the motion device.

Mach4 has additional features but requires an external motion control device, and frankly I have not been following the development of it.

That's the story in a nut shell if I got  it right.

FWIW,
Folks see some video and think they should be able to do what they are seeing not realizing what is required to do it.


RICH

Mach 4 has the ability to control Out of Band axissss(plural) (sp?)
Not sure how exactly it is done but it is in there!


Mike

Seems to me ...
If you want to grind a highly accurate cam on a shaft, you must have tight coordination between A and Z. Probably tighter than that machine can offer in fact, but that's another matter.
But a spindle does NOT offer such coordination. You can get enough coordination with a single encoder pulse and a heavy chuck to do threading, but that's all. That is a deep assumption behind Mach (and many other CNC machines): that spindles SPIN.

All that said, I would confidentally expect that you could come moderately close to getting a cam if you treat the A axis as an A axis, and program accordingly. You would need Constant Velocity to be on, and you would need to do the trig yourself - in 1 degree steps or smaller. That would be how commercial cam-grinding machines work. They are not going to spin the chuck and hope to waggle the Z axis in and out at the required speed. They rotate the A axis chuck slowly and machine the cam.

My 2c.
Cheers
Roger