I see why they get plugged up. The design on the new Torus pro stand it way better. Its completely impossible to plug the chip drain.Quote:
Originally Posted by metalmayhem
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I see why they get plugged up. The design on the new Torus pro stand it way better. Its completely impossible to plug the chip drain.Quote:
Originally Posted by metalmayhem
Quote:
Originally Posted by Titaniumboy
We may be talking about different versions of UCCNC? The black and blue screenset has pretty extensive built in probing. I am on version 1.2113 of UCCNC.
ProbeIt is just very intuitive for me. Maybe I was being a wimp with the UCCNC built in probing but I've never worked out how to use it. When I read the help document under the "i" on the probe screens I just get anxious. I've found a few helpful videos via the UCCNC Facebook group, but since ProbeIt is working I haven't felt the need to play with the built in probing. There aren't any probing features that I am currently missing, I can do everything I need.
That drain design is atrocious. Good luck there!
If I had my time back I would have bought with the new stand , I bought when they crossed over . I was on the site one week then the next week when I planned to make the purchase the price had jumped $2000 due to the new stand . I talked with Kai and they still had an old stand and I was able to get it at the original cost . With the currency difference at the time it was a significant amount of change and I figured I could have a nice heavy duty aluminum stand made for lessQuote:
Originally Posted by upnorth
Quote:
Originally Posted by metalmayhem
Quote:
Originally Posted by upnorth
Yeah, my stand has serious prostate issues.
Quote:
Originally Posted by metalmayhem
Sounds like we were in a similar situation. At the time I bought Novakon’s last Torus, the Stepper Pulsar was available with the new stand. The cost increase was around $2000 and I never really get a clear answer as to what the extra money was going to buy me.
Now I know.::withstupi
So I have the cold comfort that all the extra work I am going through with the coolant system is really a case of saving money.(chair)
Quote:
Originally Posted by CL_MotoTech
Wait, what? What the heck is a black and blue screenset?
I’m on the latest stable version 1.2111. You’re using a newer version?
I can’t find any videos of anyone actually using the UCCNC built-in probing. I never checked in with the Facebook group because I’m not on Facebook. Like you, I read the same help document and it just looked like a hot mess.
I’m going to download ProbeIt for UCCNC tonight. The CraftyCNC guy appears really relaxed about people actually buying a license.
Yep!! And it’s all mine! I’m a lucky guy.Quote:
That drain design is atrocious. Good luck there!
Got any pics of how you modified your G0704 for flood coolant? My G0704 wants to grow up and be a CNC someday.
Quote:
Originally Posted by upnorth
I stayed up late last night and got the Vista CNC P1A-S pendant operational. Man, this thing is the greatest thing since sliced bread.
The process was fairly painless. I obtained the appropriate download from the Vista CNC website. One of the items in the extracted zip file was a hardware download for the pendant itself. Launched the exe file, followed the instructions, plugged the pendant into the laptop, and the pendants firmware was successfully updated.
The next step was to place the dll file into the UCCNC Plugin subdirectory on the mill computer motherboard. Then pop into the Configuratins General Setting tab, click on the Configure Plugins button, and click on the appropriate Enable box. I restarted UCCNC and the pendant was up and running.
Well this will make you sick then. I bought my mill when Novakon was moving from Canada to the USA. For some reason there was a delay in them shipping it out. To make up for the delay they threw in the new stand and a vise for free.Quote:
Originally Posted by metalmayhem
I wonder if it would be possible to modify an old stand to be like the new one. Mine has a large cutout under the mill when the chips fall into a removable tray. It also has a wash down pump that blows the chips under the mill into a tray. Doors open on the front and the trays slide out for cleaning. My only issue is the wash down nozzle (actually a garden hose type sprayer) is it clogs with chips that make it past the screens in the chip tray. I will be modifying it soon so there is a filter in the line to prevent that. Its under the mill but I can try to take a photo of where the chips go if you want to see it.
Glad you got it working. I miss it but so far not enough to replace it. The Centroid pendant is expensive but I'm sure when the warm weather ends I will crack and order the wireless one from Centroid.Quote:
Originally Posted by Titaniumboy
Quote:
Originally Posted by Titaniumboy
I had to go look at the forum but it appears as though you have to be on 1.2112 for the black and blue screen set. I recommend making the switch. - forum.cncdrive.com • View topic - UCCNC test releases posted in this thread
I have had no issues running new releases even though they aren't in "stable" release designation.
Below are a few photos and you can see the drain under my G0704. It's larger than the base of the mill, and the chips just wash into a "chip tray" which is comprised of a plastic tote. I can cut a lot of aluminum before I empty the tray, it works wells. Version 2 with chip auger is inbound. I use a 3000gph water feature pump to move the coolant, it's not high pressure, but I get lots of volume. I currently use 5 nozzles, I can't use 6 because the 6th nozzle crashes the tool changer haha. The coolant is cleaned of chips via a sedimentation labyrinth in the chip tray, then there's a passive 5 micron filter in the secondary tank. The pumps are like $40, and I have had at least two literally fall apart, but that took lots of use.
I have a PS4 pendant, I love the thing. I had one of those wireless XHC units, and it just doesn't compare the Vista unit.
https://i.imgur.com/Bw33o5t.jpg
https://i.imgur.com/RkJXGqx.jpg
https://i.imgur.com/fnQkJ3e.jpg
This photo I think provides a little more perspective. This was before I finished up the ATC and got the coolant ring going.
https://i.imgur.com/15vZpF0.jpg
Sorry for the long absence. I haven't posted since late July but I have made some serious progress during that time.
CL_MotoTech, thanks for all of the pictures of your flood cooling system on your G0704. Very nice. By the way, did you see that Hoss has shown up alive and well?
I have not upgraded to the Black and Blue version of the UCCNC software yet, nor have I downloaded ProbeIt. So no progress on the Drewtronics probe so far. I needed to put the probing on the back burner to work on making chips.
I have been concentrating on the flood coolant system so I can begin milling aluminum. Here is what I started with from the factory, more or less. The Chinesium LocLine has an orange valve and also an internal clear tubing that the real LocLine does not have. The only change from the stock mill is that there was originally a black plastic fitting that the hose attached to on one side and the LocLine attached to on the other side. That black plastic fitting fell apart years ago from just sitting idle, so I changed it out to a plain brass fitting held on with cable ties.
Attachment 448580
Here I have swapped out the crappy LocLine with real 1/2" LocLine. The only downside is that the new LocLine does not have a valve like the old stuff did. The good news is that the stock coolant pump and new LocLine deliver a ton of coolant at a very nice pressure. The bad news is that the pump and LocLine deliver a ton of coolant: so much coolant is pumped that the coolant tank drains and the pump starts sucking air in less than two minutes. The main issue is that the single factory drain is smaller than a quarter.
Attachment 448582
Attachment 448584
So I installed a ball valve. The pic below shows where I tried attaching the whole assembly to the mill head with a conduit clamp, but this left the LocLine with too much play to be usable. I next tried securing the ball valve with cable ties, but that didn't really work either. How the heck are you supposed to hold securely onto LocLine?
Attachment 448586
My solution was to 3D print a LocLine bracket. I was able to find a model of a 1/2" LocLine element on GrabCad. I modified that model in Solidworks so that my bracket has one complete LocLine element plus a fractional element on each end. I ended up having to scale the model up by 102% in order to have a perfect fit.
I'm not gonna lie - it took me about 8 hours total over several days to figure out all the incorrect ways to model the bracket before I finally stumbled across a way that did work. I suck at Solidworks, but doing little projects like this force me to learn new skills in Solidworks.
Attachment 448588
Here is a test fit of the bottom bracket.
Attachment 448590
And here is the final LocLine bracket installation. Clamping the LocLine using the original factory holes places the LocLine fairly high up on the mill head, but it hasn't been a problem so far. The 3D printed LocLine bracket is holding the LocLine rock solid.
Attachment 448592
Attachment 448594
I adjusted the ball valve to throttle down the flood coolant so that the puny factory drain is not overwhelmed. Even throttled down, the flow rate does a great job of clearing away chips. The coolant system is finally ready to cut some aluminum !!
The LocLine bracket and valve installation was completed about 2-1/2 weeks ago.
Loc line is a good improvement. I never liked the original coolant line and nozzle it never stayed pointed in the right direction. I was going to suggest that you put a t in the line so you could use two nozzles. It vastly improves the chip evacuation. I see though you have one of the old stands so the drain will overflow. You should seriously consider taking a hole saw to the stand and fitting in a sink drain or two. I found while one nozzle works well there are situations (pocketing or slotting) where the chip evacuation would get bogged down because the coolant was coming in from he wrong direction. Two nozzles eliminates this. My nozzle kit came with 3 different sizes. If I remember right I went with the middle size. I will eventually go with the smallest size. It blew out so much coolant it would sometimes splash out of the top of the enclosure. The stock pump moves a lot of coolant.
A hole saw - or a plasma cutter - is definitely in the future for this stand.Quote:
Originally Posted by upnorth
Two nozzles? I have something a little different in mind. Go to 17:00 in the video CNC4RX7 to see what I would like to install down the road.Quote:
I was going to suggest that you put a t in the line so you could use two nozzles. It vastly improves the chip evacuation. I found while one nozzle works well there are situations (pocketing or slotting) where the chip evacuation would get bogged down because the coolant was coming in from the wrong direction. Two nozzles eliminates this.
https://youtu.be/fxq4Mf6OPBg?t=1020
I am using the smallest nozzle and it puts out an impressive coolant stream even with being throttled down by the ball valve. On a recent part the nozzle got displaced by running into the part and so the cutter didn't have coolant being sprayed on it. It took less than 5 or 10 seconds for the HSS 1/4" endmill to have a serious aluminum chip weld occur and I had to hit the emergency stop on your old jog pendant.Quote:
My nozzle kit came with 3 different sizes. If I remember right I went with the middle size. I will eventually go with the smallest size. It blew out so much coolant it would sometimes splash out of the top of the enclosure. The stock pump moves a lot of coolant.
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So while making the aluminum part alluded to above I managed to break the drawbar. I mean, I literally broke the SOB into two pieces.
Attachment 448682
This is what the drawbar used to look like.
Attachment 448684
It turns out that some idiot about 6 years ago decided to machine a hex shape out of the four-sided top of the drawbar.
Quote:
Originally Posted by Titaniumboy
Evidently I had machined off the welds holding the two pieces of the drawbar together. In my defense, I had thought that the drawbar was a single piece.
It just never ends...
This is what I use on my G0704. I run 5 out of 6 nozzles because my ATC likes to interfere with 1 of the 6. That said, it works very well and it saved me a bunch of messing around. I had the model made for making one myself, but the price point was too cheap. They sell them in different sizes, so it may or may not work for the Novakon. Five nozzles is pretty good, I can evacuate chips for most operations with this. My coolant is very high flow but not necessarily high pressure. Of course that drain issue will really be problem if you are running 2000gph.
https://www.aliexpress.com/item/4000...4d9e4c4d3Sx49X
Ok, we have a milling machine and a lathe and welders. What could possibly go wrong?
The drawbar top has been cleaned up with a chamfer in the G0602 lathe.
Attachment 448692
The drawbar rod has similarly been cleaned up with a chamfer.
Attachment 448694
All cleaned and prepped and ready for welding.
Attachment 448696
TIG weld repair. Not my most photogenic weld. In fact that weld is just downright ugly.
Attachment 448698
Facing in the G0602 lathe.
Attachment 448700
Starting to mill away the excess weld material from the hex faces. Luckily I have the manual G0704 mill to make this job easier. Kinda hard to repair a drawbar when the cnc mill drawbar is busted.
Attachment 448706
Chamfering in the lathe.
Attachment 448702
After being deburred with the 3M EXL wheel. Just like it never happened.
Attachment 448704
Thanks for that link. I didn't realize you could buy the coolant rings commercially. I may still machine my own just because I need the practice. I spend a stupid amount of time in CAD and CAM because I just haven't used them enough to get efficient.Quote:
Originally Posted by CL_MotoTech
The drain is an issue, but I'm getting surprisingly good results in clearing away chips even with my neutered flood coolant.
Are you getting 2000gph? I'm going to call a party foul on you because that would be a crazy 33 gallons per minute. Seriously though, I really should measure my throttled down flow rate. I'm guessing I am somewhere between 2 and 4 gpm.
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So in my last post I recounted my tale of woe surrounding my broken drawbar and then my subsequent redemption when I was able, against all odds, to repair that same drawbar. This sordid drama all occurred about a week ago.
After building a shower curtain enclosure, repairing a leaky coolant tank, replacing LocLine, adding a ball valve, and repairing a broken drawbar, I was finally ready to mill some aluminum. Rather than just milling away on a block of aluminum I decided that I would try and make a useful object. The pic below shows my version of a speed vise handle.
Attachment 448782
And here is the finished version.
Attachment 448786 Attachment 448784
And a closeup shot.
Attachment 448788
I completed the final operations on the back side of the part last Wednesday. I'm not going pretend that this part is perfect or that I didn't run into some problems along the way, because it isn't and I did. I'll go into more detail on those problems later and hopefully you guys can point out the error of my ways for me.
It only took over six years of issues and missteps and procrastination to get to this point.:stickpoke
It sure feels great to witness the power of this fully-armed and operational battle station.
The stock pump from novakon puts out plenty of coolant. The supplied with the mill nozzle is so small it chokes off most of the flow.
One of the issues I ran into was that I was using endmills and drills and chamfer bits in the regular R8 collets, which are non-repeatable for tool length. And so whenever I changed tools I had to change the Z zero. What a pain in the rear.
This set of Novakon-labeled TTS clone holders came with my mill. As you can see, this set only came with two endmill holders, a drill chuck, and only one ER20 collet chuck. And only 4 ER20 collets.
Attachment 448790
And here is a pic of the 3/4" R8 TTS collet. That collet did not come looking like that from Novakon. I finally discovered in October 2019 that the R8 TTS collet from Novakon had too long of a nose that prevented the TTS tool holder from seating onto the spindle face.
Attachment 448792
First I did some rough grinding on the bench grinder. And then I used an air powered mini die grinder to do a seriously poor imitation of a cylindrical surface grinder.
Attachment 448794
This worked. Sort of. The mini die grinder was very underpowered, and so it took a LOT of tiny passes to remove enough material for cleanup. I was taking a thou or less per pass and even that was close to stalling the die grinder. And you can see that the surface finish left by the mini die grinder was less than stellar.
Attachment 448796
I used a set of micromesh sanding cloths on the kitchen counter top to eventually reach a mirror finish. The polishing of the collet was overkill since all that was needed was for the collet to have clearance.
Attachment 448798Attachment 448800
I need more TTS ER20 collet chucks so that I can build up a collection of preset tools. Since the inexpensive eBay TTS collets chucks all seem to be out of stock, I was forced to buy the expensive ones from Tormach at $45 each. Three Tormach collet chucks should arrive from Little Machine Shop by Thursday, plus a set of ER20 collets are also on their way.
So my next challenge is figuring out how to measure tool length offsets and setup the tool table in UCCNC.
"I am using the smallest nozzle and it puts out an impressive coolant stream even with being throttled down by the ball valve. On a recent part the nozzle got displaced by running into the part and so the cutter didn't have coolant being sprayed on it. It took less than 5 or 10 seconds for the HSS 1/4" endmill to have a serious aluminum chip weld occur and I had to hit the emergency stop on your old jog pendant."
I did not know how to only quote part of your reply so I did a cut and paste.
That is another reason why I use two nozzles. I use the middle size nozzle from the kit. My enclosure has no top on it. When I used the small one there was so much pressure it would blow coolant over the top. One should always be directing at least some coolant to the part. As for cheap collets you can find them on Amazon too. That is where I bought mine from. A whole set on amazon was about the same price as one name brand collet.Attachment 448806
The photo is my current flood coolant setup.
Have you ever seen a photo of the drain on the new type of novakon stand? you could dump coolant straight out of a 5 gallon bucket and not overwhelm it.
So my pump is a water feature pump (i think I am repeating myself but am too lazy to look), so it does volume well, pressure not so much. That said, you made me curious and instead of guessing I measured it. I didn't measure at the outlets, instead I measured from line that feeds coolant ring. So... I measured the volume I can feed the coolant ring, who knows what actually comes out.Quote:
Originally Posted by Titaniumboy
To do the test I used a gallon jug and timed how long it took to fill. I did this a few times, but all the results came in at right around 6 seconds. So that's 10 gallons per minute, and (60*10) 600gph. For the record, the pump I run claims 2650gph, but being a Chinese no-name thing that I paid almost nothing for I wouldn't be surprised if that number is vastly inflated.
All of that said, it looks like you are getting great results. That wrench looks awesome! So keep on doing what you are doing!