Wow! That's impressive! What type of vise is that? I have a couple of the Shars house brand vises in 4" and have found them to be really good. They are nice and square too, I checked them all out on my surface plate for mounting them up.
Wow! That's impressive! What type of vise is that? I have a couple of the Shars house brand vises in 4" and have found them to be really good. They are nice and square too, I checked them all out on my surface plate for mounting them up.
It was one of those $100 deals off of ebay. It can be mounted on it's sides also.
It was not true, straight, or square by at least a couple of thou over my Suburban 6" cylinder square. So, I ground it in true straight and square with in 5 tenths over the same 6"... I don't trust the iron. I use it as a drill press vise. I didn't spend the money to impress. After 31 years working as a tool and die maker, I have learned a thing or two in the way of quality and value: there are somethings that you just bite the bullet and spend the money to get the real thing, Kurt vises being one, Suburban "anything" is good that's why I bought their magnetic 6" cylinder square (good to 1/2 a tenth over 6"). I also recommend screwless grinding vises, I have 1", 2", 3", 4" with the 3" being a sine vise. I didn't buy all this at once, these have been spread out over decades (except the DX-6 and DX-4... tax return lol). When Kurt came out with the Dx's, I had to have them, even though I don't really need another 6" Kurt (I also have a D675 I bought used- it was new in '92 I checked with Kurt)... Do I have some cheap tools? Of course I do. I really like HF Pittsburg wrenches LOL...
It was a CDCO vise. It looks impressive until you flip that movable jaw over and see that it's pretty hollow inside.
The first vise I looked at was Glacern. I almost pushed the Buy It Now button but I thought I should shop around. Then I realized that their 4" vise was MORE than a new Kurt. Their vise jaws and accessories are really expensive for what they are too.
I looked at Shar's. I have a bunch of their lathe tooling and I've been pretty happy with it.
Then I came to the conclusion that I had promised myself to not to cut corners on the mill upgrades this time around. I'm not going to spoil the experience with a cheap vise. I've already made that mistake once.
The simplest way to avoid tool related pain is to buy a good stuff from the start. Another bonus is that, if you do actually manage to break it, you can get parts from Kurt.
I hear you man! Almost without fail, every single time I have cut corners it has bit me square in the ass. The Grizzly vise I started with liked to let parts go all the time. That was fun! The move to the Shars vise was a huge step. I imagine a nice name brand vise is even better!
The Kurt arrived today. Man, it’s sexy compared to the import I had.
Kurt uses reamed holes in the bottom of the vise for alignment dowels. I turned a pair of 1 inch long 4130 pins .624” OD on one end and .508” on the other.
I need to pick up some washers so I can clamp it down and get it aligned.
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[QUOTE=ChrisAttebery;2421918]The Kurt arrived today. Man, it’s sexy compared to the import I had.
Kurt uses reamed holes in the bottom of the vise for alignment dowels. I turned a pair of 1 inch long 4130 pins .624” OD on one end and .508” on the other.
I need to pick up some washers so I can clamp it down and get it aligned.
That looks great!
I got my first opportunity to machine some parts in the new vise. It was a revelation. You turn the handle and then it just STOPS. Leaning on the handle doesn’t turn it much, if any, more. The parts stay locked down even though I’m only tightening the vise to about 40 ft/lbs. As a result the parts are much more consistent in height.
My machine is usually pretty reliable but the other day it stalled on the Z axis three times in roughly 130 runs of a short 20 second program. It stalled in the same place each time. The program finished an adaptive rough and was supposed to rapid to clearance height and then finish contour.
Looking at the settings I have all three axis at 240 IPM and .025G acceleration. I reduced the Z down to 120 IPM and finished the run.
Looking at the torque curve for these 570in/oz steppers they maintain ~380in/oz until 80 IPM then the torque drops rapidly down to about 108 in/oz at 120IPM and 56 in/oz at 240 IPM.
I looked around and found that Leadshine’s D57CM31 NEMA 23 stepper has basically the same torque at 80 IPM but it falls off much more linearly so it still has about 200 in/oz at 240 IPM. They are $60 each.
I’m going to order one for the Z on Monday and try it out.
I'm getting ready to convert my mill from Mach3 to Acorn. I'm trying to finalize the wiring for my tool setter and touch plate. I want to use one input for both. The tool setter is NC and obviously the touch plate is NO. I looked through my electronics box and found a IRL510 NFET. Here's the schematic I came up with.
It turns out that the Acorn inputs are pulled HIGH internally and have to be pulled LOW to be activated. So the schematic above is NOT correct. I've attached the updated schematic. One change I made was to add a 1.0mF cap between the gate and ground to protect the gate from noise.
I tried out the Leadshine motor on the Z and it also stalled at 240 IPM. I set it back down to 180 IPM and it seems happy there. I took the Y axis motor mount and ball screw loose so I could add a mount for the new home switches. I tried to move the table my hand and could barely move it. Apparently in my zeal to reduce the slop in the ways I over tightened the gibs. I'll have to readjust them when I get some time.
I machined mounts for the new homing switches, mounts for the VFD, and a set of T nuts for the tool setter over the weekend. I also drilled and tapped holes on the machine for the the home switch mounts. I need to pull the front panel off my controller so I can cut a window for the VFD. Once that is done I can start converting the controller over to the Acorn.
Yesterday I cut a window into the front panel on my controller enclosure for the VFD and mounted the VFD in the enclosure.
After that I stripped the Ethernet Smooth Stepper, C35 BOB, C6 variable speed control board, and the two 5v/12v DC power supplies out of the enclosure.
The Acorn inputs are all 24V. Centroid recommends using a dedicated PSU for the controller so I needed a 24V PSU for the inputs. Then I realized that the power relays I'm using are 12v so I needed new relays. I got those on order so hopefully I'll have them shortly. My two 90mm case fans are also 12v but I'm going to wire them in series for now.
With all of that done I finalized the placement of the Acorn and its relay board. Now I can start wiring everything up.
Chris,
Why do you have the drive poking through the enclosure? Typically they're inside as there is no need to access them on a routine basis, as least that's how mine is.
Stuart
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I made a lot of progress on the Acorn upgrade this weekend:
1. Replaced the cooling fan in my 48V PSU. It had been making noise for years.
2. Installed a dedicated 24V/2A power supply for the I/O, power relays and case fans.
3. E-Stop, Cycle Start and Cycle hold buttons connected and functional.
4. Homing switches and TLO setter connected and functional. I had to remove the series resistors. They were pulling the HIGH level down low enough that the Acorn didn't recognize it.
5. Installed covers and GX-4 connectors on all three stepper motors.
6. I got all three drives hooked up and working. I have them set to 1600 steps/rev right now. I tried using fewer steps but the motors sounded terrible.
7. Hooked up the VFD to the Acorn and power. I still need to hook it back up to the spindle motor and test it.
This morning I got the homing switches mounted and adjusted. These screw type limit switches are so much easier to adjust than the lever type that I used before. All three are set to trigger right before a physical stop.
Very nice work, as usual, Chris!
Thank you sir.
I got the VFD and spindle up and running tonight.
To do:
1. Tidy up some wiring in the control enclosure.
2. Do something to the X axis home switch wire so it doesn't get pinched by the Y axis (mount it to the stepper mount and add some spiral wrap?).
3. Bundle and tie down all of the wires between the control and machine.
4. Tune the steppers.
Looking good!
You'll be happy to know I've been using the same limit switches on my mill for the last 2 years without a single issue. They are awesome!