[Mad Welder]

…and also I’ll hold my hand up here too and admit it’s it's probably something I'm doing wrong....

yup me again, my fault..... I had set my CNC PC on/off power to hibernate when I pressed the button basically because it came on faster than waiting for a proper reboot or windows start……but apparently for those who didn’t know (including me) when a windows based PC comes out of hibernation it can cause conflicting issues with how it ‘talk’s’ to the Eithernet port…….and guy’s don’t ask me to explain how as simply put the IT explanations for this to me is like looking at Egyptian hieroglyphics…….
but by powering down windows as opposed to going into hibernation this is the correct sequence for the Eithernet Smooth Stepper…..

[Mad Welder]

Beautiful piece of work! I'm curious - how long did it take to mill that, and how long to polish it?

Regards,
Ray L.

thanks for the kind words........and the actual machining time was 2hrs and 46mins (at 1000mm/min).....the wet and dry sanding took about 1 3/4 hours and the final polishing with my buffer and wax bar took only about 5 mins, so just over 4 and a half hours to complete from start to finish......when generating the toolpaths in my CAM software I inputted a 2.6% tool overlap and with the 12mm Ballnose this left me with no machined ridges on the curved surfaces, and the sanding process was as follows; grit 240,360,400,600,1200....

if I had a larger Ballnose Endmill and increased my speed that would also have reduced machining time, and I'm still experimenting with feeds and speeds and I’m not using any S&F’s calculator either yet as I want to get a feel as to what my mill can and cannot machine.

for that particular creation I ran it at 1000mm/min (39inches p/m) with a spindle RPM of only 1600 as I don’t have my belt drive made yet…..and I’m also still playing around with the acceleration settings too…. as an experiment during the machining I increased the rapids to 1400mm/min (55inches p/m) and maintained that for a few minutes of machining but at a guess with a profiling toolpath and much smaller radii my max spindle RPM realistically probably wouldn’t cope.

[Mad Welder]

Looks like you did a lot of polishing on that plate. Is it natural Aluminum or plated?......

thanks for the kind words.......when you ask plated, do you mean anodized?? and as far as I can remember when I bought this stock about 10 years ago it was from the 5,000 series family too….sorry I can’t be more specific..!

and as I said to Ray in my last post the wet and dry sanding part of the polishing sequence took about one and a half hrs to do and the buffing only took about 5 mins.

[Mad Welder]

Just put in my latest order to Arturo CNC4PC;

A66 4Pin Connector set, C36 Quad Relay Board, A35 – 7FT Network Cable, A26 – 1FT Network Cable

and looking at the C36 this should sort out all my relay requirements, for coolant and automatic oiler and still have two additional relays for expansion.......

[FannBlade]

Have you hooked anything up to the onboard relays yet? I'm hoping to run my coolant pump off it also.

[Mad Welder]

Have you hooked anything up to the onboard relays yet? I'm hoping to run my coolant pump off it also.

Yeah I've got the coolant pump running from mach with the M8 cmd and off again with the M9 comand so all's working correctly. The relays on the C36 quad board are quite easy to link up all you really do is wire the relay on the live AC or positive DC supply to your pump supply 5V DC PSU to power the board and connect the eithernet cable to (in my case) the C32 BOB and configure the Ports and Pins within Mach...with your pump on the live (AC)/Positive (DC) wire, just cut the wire at a suitable connection point to your relay and wether you connect to NC or NO on the relay will also affect your ports and pins active high or active low setting so if for some reason you pump doesn't work initially change the check box of the active High/Low........

Sorry not to have any pics or much in the way of recent updates, kinda busy with family commitments lately......will post pics and replies to other threads as soon as I can...........and I'm sending this reply from my wife's laptop as my I cannot seem to be able to log on from my PC...

[FannBlade]

Thanks
I will give it a try.

[RTTIM]

Eoin,

Glad to hear you got your problems resolved - as my wife is known to repeatedly say "computers are evil"......I think Windows needs to be in there somewhere too...

Glad the ethernet smooth stepper is working for you - I'm probably going to upgrade to that eventually. My G0704 is finally up and working. Even though I bought it as a basic turnkey conversion to save time, it took longer than planned, as real world projects (work) kept getting the way.... I hate it when that happens! There are some things I want to add, and I think the ESS & CNC4PC interface boards are going to be the way to go.

I finally got it on the leveling base I built for it yesterday, and the pendant hooked up. Ran a couple small, simple parts as a test and everything checks out like it should so far - going to try a more complex part later today.

Tim

[Mad Welder]

Ah ha..... I'm back with my trusty old PC again...turn's out I upgraded my anti-virus to 2012 AVG from 2011 during the week, and some how it was a hit and miss accessing the internet, but the PC doctors were passing today and stayed for coffee and now I press a button and hey presto I got internet yippee.......


Thanks for the kind words of encouragement Tim, and yeah I'm pretty happy with CNC4PC's products and after sales service (when I need it), and in fact your US postal service is darn good, reliable and fast too..... takes approx 4-5 working days from order to receiving the parts

and FannBlade how's the coolant pump progress going?

[Mad Welder]

Have you hooked anything up to the onboard relays yet? I'm hoping to run my coolant pump off it also.

have a look here at a one page extract from the C36 manual, the diagram is good and clear, and the complete manual can be downloaded here http://cnc4pc.com/Tech_Docs/C36_USER_MANUAL_REV1.pdf

[FannBlade]

Thanks Mad
Got some power run to shop today so may give it a try very soon.

[FannBlade]

Any updates? Kinda quite in here.

[Mad Welder]

Any updates? Kinda quite in here.

Sorry, Nope....no updates..........as a matter of fact no progress at all on the CNC front......and my trusty old PC had to go to the IT wizards shop for repair too!

It's not really an update.... but.... I bought an 80Ltr (17 US Gallons) tank from my local Army/Navy surplus store to use as my coolant tank.

I know it's kinda large but I figured that as my cabinet base is kinda large too and at flood coolant......well.....better to look at it rather than look for it....!!

[FannBlade]

Nice. What coolant did you decide on?
I haven't done much either been playing the lazy side! I was going to order ball screws today then realized Roton doesn't seem to have bearing ends.
Not sure what it's like in Gods country but it's HOT here.

[Mad Welder]

The coolant I'm using is from a local supplier and it's called Cooledge...they supply it in 1 Gallon bottles or else 45 Gallon drums.....and to be honest I haven't used it yet as I've not gone near my mill for several weeks now.....and I was told by the supplier that this 'Cooledge' product is mixed with water at a ratio of 20:1

[Mad Welder]

Hi all, resurrecting a dormant thread here.(nuts)

The kids are all off school so I haven't done anything till today. And apologies too for not replying in any of the other threads that I was active in too.

Picked up a second hand coolant pump today, so I'll wire it tomorrow and hopefully add a pic or two. Using a new phone to type this as my pc is nearing it's sell by date. And hopefully by tomorrow I'll also figure how to upload pics from it too.

[Mad Welder]

Well no hope for me with new fandangled phones, darn Samsung thingy may have more CPU power than my PC…… and this post should have been posted yesterday too.

So today a little update, wired the 220VAC coolant pump I picked up yesterday and all's good so far I'm not sure the gallons p/hr output but it's flippin good and far better than the measly 12VDC marine pump that I had originally wired.

As my enclosure tray is large and with the pump on flood coolant I figured I’d also need a large coolant reservoir just to allow for the event of the drains becoming partially blocked during a long programme…..and I had an idea to fix the pump to a closed cell polyurethane rectangular sheet which would float on the surface of the coolant, but the only sheet that I had was a 1½ inch sheet and when cut to size it couldn’t support the pump weight and so I have to extend the pump submersible housing as you can see in the photos

__________________

[FannBlade]

Great work as usual. Nice looking pump.

[Mad Welder]

Had a little bit of a mishap with the pump I knocked it off the bench and broke the casting so I had to machine an aluminium block to make good my error .

[Mad Welder]

I am becoming a bit of a whiz kid with this new phone that last post I managed to upload in about 5 minutes including uploading the pictures directly from the phone