[ChrisAttebery]

I finally had the time and energy to get the summing amp circuit built to correct for the low end offset on the KBMM last night. I was able to get the spindle speed calibrated within 50 rpm of the requested speed over the entire 500-4500 rpm range. Thanks to everyone for their help.

All that is left now is a couple minor tweaks. I have the direction signal hooked to the CW relay on the C6. The relay turns the spindle on OK, but apparently Mach doesn't turn the direction signal pin off when the spindle is turned back off. I found the cure on the Mach Support forums. I need to move the relay pin from the CW signal to the output enable signal for M3/M4 in Mach. I also need to rewire the homing switches and touch plate on the mill. I'm getting some noise on these pins and I was never that happy with the way I wired it in the first place.

[ChrisAttebery]

I got the enable signal working properly tonight. I'm really happy with how the upgrade worked out. I'll have to actually machine some parts with it soon to see it in action. 😉

Sent from my TegraNote-P1640

[ChrisAttebery]

I finally got back to working on the mill today. I rewired the homing switches and touch plate. That seems to have cured my sensitive touch plate issue. I have a couple parts I want to make soon, so it's a good thing I got it cleaned up.

[ChrisAttebery]

I milled my first parts with the upgraded machine this morning. Wow! What a difference. The ESS has transformed the machine. I set the rapids back up to 120IPM and the machine moves with authority. Tool changes are also less stressful since the machine controls the spindle speed and turns it on and off. The only issue I noticed was that the MPG on the pendant is not as responsive as it was before so I'll need to look at the settings.

[ChrisAttebery]

Its been a while since I checked in. I thought I'd post a little update. I've been pretty happy with the machine since the upgrade. I have a had a few problems where the probing routine doesn't detect the tool has touched the touch plate even though the PROBE indicator is on in MSM. Dave gave me some things to check into and i think we'll get it sorted out soon.

I've been cutting a lot of plywood and G10 on my machine lately. The machine cuts it fine, but it's a PITA because I have to hold a shop vac nozzle near the cutter to keep the chips from getting all over the machine. I decided to make a vacuum hood that fiction fits onto the spindle housing. I made it from several layers of 1/2" MDF stacked glued and pinned together.

[photomankc]

That's a neat design, but isn't that going to pull all kinds of nasty right into the lower bearings?

[ChrisAttebery]

My thoughts are that the chips are going to be pulled pas the spindle nose with enough vacuum that they shouldn't be pulled into the bearings. If anything air should be pulled down the spindle past the bearings. I could always add a felt shield on the outside of the spindle nose to protect the bearings if it becomes a problem.

There's only one way to find out, right? ;^)

[ChrisAttebery]

It seems that the probing issue was caused by noise.It looked like Mach just wasn't getting the signal from the input pin. I tried increasing the debounce setting but it didn't seem to make any difference. I did some more poking around and found that there is a debounce function in the ESS plugin. I increased it from 0uS to 50uS and all of my problems seem to be cured. Yea!

I got the vacuum hood completed this morning. It was a bit too tight so I sanded it and then of course it was too loose. I thought that this might happen so I had a backup plan in place. I drilled a hole through the side and installed a threaded insert with a 6-32 screw to clamp the hood onto the spindle housing. It worked out great.

I have a had a few problems where the probing routine doesn't detect the tool has touched the touch plate even though the PROBE indicator is on in MSM. Dave gave me some things to check into and i think we'll get it sorted out soon.

[ChrisAttebery]

I stepped off into the deep end of the pool this week. I have a job to cut 3D shapes out of G10 material. I've never worked in 3D before. It took me a few nights to get comfortable drawing the parts in TurboCAD Deluxe V20. Then I downloaded the trial version of MeshCAM. It is really easy to use, but it does have some limitations. I think I can work around them by using SheetCAM to do drilling and 2.5D ops and only using MeshCAM for the sections that truly need 3D cutting.

I haven't been this excited about machining since I produced my first CNC cut parts. :banana:

[Kevinj308]

I like meshcam too. For drilling it works well at locating all the holes in a model, I then go back and add a g83 to each location. It's still faster than plotting them all out and writing he code by hand.
Just as an aside fusion360 has a free year for startups/hobbyists. I just downloaded it last month and have only tried the cam side of it. It's definitely more capable than mesh but also a little more difficult to use. The tool paths are definitely more efficient. Cut machine time down by 20% or more.
I don't know if I'll pay the fee when my free year runs out, this is just for fun for me. But it's a nice cam package while I've got it.
Kevin

[ChrisAttebery]

I've been side milling 6061 bar stock with a 1/2" aluminum specific YG HSS end mill this week. I needed to remove a lot of material so I've been taking .5"-.625" DOC and .025"-.050" WOC at 27ipm and 4500rpm (shooting for .6cu in/min). Today I cranked it up to 45ipm (1 cu in/ min) and the machine actually sounded better than at 27ipm. :^)

[ChrisAttebery]

I've been trying to use more side milling lately since it allows you to spread the cut over a longer edge on the tool. It's a royal PITA to make work in SheetCAM most of the time. I don't have the money to plunk down on expensive CAM software right now so what can I do? Someone on another forum mention that Fusion 360 is now free for individuals, students and startups making up to $100k. Hey! That's me. I've been playing with it for about a week and cut my first parts with it yesterday. The post needed some work, but Autodesk jumped on it right away and now it seems to be perfect. I'm side milling .480 DOC, .050 WOC at 45IPM and the machine seems happy as a clam.

I also upped my rapids to 240ipm from 120ipm. I had problems with rapids before I installed the SmoothStepper, but I never tried retuning them after I installed it. You can really see and hear the difference with it installed. It moves with authority now and as advertised it sounds smooth as butter.

[ChrisAttebery]

I really haven't done any maintenance on my machine since I got it up and running and I've done quite a bit of machining with it over the last 3 years. Lately I've heard a bit of bearing noise from the spindle. So I tore it down and found that the lower bearing had a rough spot. I ordered a pair of new bearings from VXB tonight.

[ChrisAttebery]

The bearings arrived on Saturday and I had them installed about 45 minutes later. The noise has been reduced but did go away completely.

Meanwhile the PC I've been using as a controller started acting up a couple weeks ago. It would blue screen every few days, but it has gotten to the point that it crashed 2-3 times over the weekend. I tried running memtest86 and chkdsk on it but I think the motherboard is going out. I'm going to pick up a newer SFF Win7 32 bit system ASAP.

- - - Updated - - -

The bearings arrived on Saturday and I had them installed about 45 minutes later. The noise has been reduced but did go away completely.

Meanwhile the PC I've been using as a controller started acting up a couple weeks ago. It would blue screen every few days, but it has gotten to the point that it crashed 2-3 times over the weekend. I tried running memtest86 and chkdsk on it but I think the motherboard is going out. I'm going to pick up a newer SFF Win7 32 bit system ASAP.

[cjsamples]

Good to hear the new bearings fixed you up. Might want to look at the micro computers, picked up a great one for less than $160 and it fits in my cnc plasma controller box.
Fully Assembled PC with M350 Enclosure, Intel Dual Core Celeron (Braswell) 2.16 GHz, picoPSU-80, 60w AC adapter

[ChrisAttebery]

I bought another system off Craigslist for $50. I got Mach3, MSM and the ESS software installed last night. I'm having some trouble getting the ESS to load with my old xml settings file. I got some help on the ESS forum that I'll try tonight.

[ChrisAttebery]

I'm back in business. It turns out I copied the wrong xml file to the new machine. I copied the xml to a new name when I added the ESS last summer, but I didn't rename the desktop shortcut. Once I figured that out it fired right up.

[ChrisAttebery]

It's been a while since I've updated this thread. After I replaced the bearings my finishes really didn't improve that much. I checked the screws for slop and realized that the gibbs were pretty loose. I tightened them up and my finishes improved.

A couple weeks later I noticed that my parts were coming out out of round by about .010" or so. I did some more checking and found that the bearings at the end of the Y screw were getting loose too. I tightened them up and the backlash was reduced to about .002" again.

While I was at it I rechecked the column and found that it was out about .002" per inch in the X direction. I got that dialed in to within .00033" per inch. I checked the Y direction and it was about .0005" per inch.

Since I moved the column I had to tram the head. I got it dialed in within .00014" per inch in the X direction. In the Y direction it was within .0002" per inch.

I'm going to cut a test part tonight and see if the accuracy improved or not.

[lcvette]

Nice!!! I bet it makes a huge difference... I hated when my little piddly spanner nuts would loosen up so I switched them out and used a locking nut (the crimped thread type.. Since then I haven't had an issue with it loosening up.

For your column tram, those are some pretty big errors still. Any reason you can't get it dialed in better then that?

If you had to make anything taller then 2" it may be a problem..

Chris

Sent from my XT1080 using Tapatalk

[ChrisAttebery]

That was supposed to be .00033" not .0033". It was less than .001" over 3" in both directions.

I've never cut any deeper than 1" on my mill. The couple parts that I make that are deeper than that get flipped over and machined on the backside.

Nice!!! I bet it makes a huge difference... I hated when my little piddly spanner nuts would loosen up so I switched them out and used a locking nut (the crimped thread type.. Since then I haven't had an issue with it loosening up.

For your column tram, those are some pretty big errors still. Any reason you can't get it dialed in better then that?

If you had to make anything taller then 2" it may be a problem..

Chris

Sent from my XT1080 using Tapatalk