[Wilabee]

Kosymailman,

Your machine is looking very good! You have come a long way in a short period of time. Keep up the good work!

Wilabee

[Halfnutz]

I dont think the USB to Parallel port converters work. No one Ive heard of has been able to make them work that I know of. I just bought a 50 dollar desktop off ebay, I couldnt get my laptop to run Mach, even with a parallel port. (Dell Latitude w/ 512 mem 1GHZ)

[kosymailman]

Well she's getting close. I have bought a Porter Cable 7301 off ebay and hoping to have it in this week. Got a desktop from my son and set it up to operate the CNC, seems to work fine. I gave up on the laptop, sounded like a lot of trouble. Now I'm having problems with the stepper motors seizing up. When I first tried jogging the x-axis I thought I had the motor in a bind. It would stop and make a loud whirring noise. I was manually jogging it with Mach2 and if I let up off the arrow key on the keyboard and pressed it down again the motor would work again for a few more seconds and lock up again. I took the motor off the CNC and it would do the same thing without any pressure on it. I tried the other 2 motors and they would do the same thing. I finally hooked up all 3 motors on the CNC and just tried air routing the sample file "roadrunner". The x-axis would work pretty good until one of the other motors would kick on and then the x-axis would seize up again. Can someone give me a suggestion of what is going on. I believe it is in my computer,power supply or board but I don't know where to start looking. I can't believe I have 3 bad motors.

thanks

[tercero]

kosymailman;

You've done an excellent job. Looks really good. I'm at the start, so at least I have an idea what this should like as a finished product. Somehow, my plans got misplaced along the line and David was kind enough to replace them for me. I got over my head really quick, and decided to just buy the 4 Axis HCNCPRO Driver Board Kit from HobbyCNC. Ok, truthfully I chickened out after looking at what a bad job I might do on the electronics.
I need a power supply now and some NEMAs..oh and I've been looking at VCarve. Looks like an excellent program.

[Guldberg]

For a start, try a different computer, thats the easy part, else maybe try mesuring the voltage while all 3 motors are running, maybe the powersupply cant keep up. Im not that in to electronic, but just what i would do.

And howcome everybody's machines looks so neat!! Maybe im just not patient enough when im working with wood:-D

[pipertom]

kosymailman;

Your machine really looks good!
I am just finishing the z-axis on mine. I have not had enough time to work on it like I would like to.
It's a good thing you gave up the laptop. I tried to run my Taig CNC mill with my laptop and it just wouldn't work. And it had a built in Parallel port!
I hope to put in more time time on mine this weekend. I still need to get the stepper motors and decide on a router. I'm going to use the same controller from my Taig, which is a 4-axis from Xylotex.

PiperTom

[Wilabee]

Kosymailman;

I had similar problems. My solution was to write a simple G-code program to "exercise"
each axis. Set the FRO (feed rate over-ride) down to 5% and cycle start the program.
Increase the FRO as the axis is moving, until you stall the motor. Now you know how fast you can drive the axis.

N10 G20 G90
N20 G01 X15.0 F100
N30 X0.0
N40 M30

The above program is for the "X" axis. Start with the gantry towards the "back" of the
machine, (i.e. move the gantry towards the end opposite the "X" motor). The machine
should move towards the motor end for 15 inches, reverse and move back to the start
point and stop. Each increase in the FRO (5 %) equals 5.0 inches per minute.

If you want to exercise the Y or Z axis, change the X to either a Y or Z in lines N20 & N30.
Also change the 15.0 to 4.0 when running the Z axis.

This may not solve the "real" problem, however you will know how fast you can drive
the motors.

Good Luck,
Wilabee

[spalm]

Mr. Mailman,

You are on the right track by trying the motors while they are not connected to the machine. If you can not run them on the bench, then something is really amiss. Leave them unattached until you add in all the complexities of machine binding etc. The first thing I would look at would be your power supply. I looked back a few posts and didn’t see what you are using for one. Is it large enough? Put a volt meter on the supply while running each and all motors and let us know the results.

Another easy thing to screw up is the step settings in Mach2. You might be trying to spin the motors much much faster than you think and they are only responding to every tenth pulse or something like that. You want to post your settings?

If you want some free Gcode to route some simple designs, check out SpiroCNC. Not much, but it is kind of fun for that first cut. And the price is right.
http://www.cnczone.com/forums/showpo...45&postcount=5

Steve

[Micro Rotors]

Do those NEMA motors have 4 or 6 wires?

[Revtech]

Well she's getting close. I have bought a Porter Cable 7301 off ebay and hoping to have it in this week. Got a desktop from my son and set it up to operate the CNC, seems to work fine. I gave up on the laptop, sounded like a lot of trouble. Now I'm having problems with the stepper motors seizing up. When I first tried jogging the x-axis I thought I had the motor in a bind. It would stop and make a loud whirring noise. I was manually jogging it with Mach2 and if I let up off the arrow key on the keyboard and pressed it down again the motor would work again for a few more seconds and lock up again. I took the motor off the CNC and it would do the same thing without any pressure on it. I tried the other 2 motors and they would do the same thing. I finally hooked up all 3 motors on the CNC and just tried air routing the sample file "roadrunner". The x-axis would work pretty good until one of the other motors would kick on and then the x-axis would seize up again. Can someone give me a suggestion of what is going on. I believe it is in my computer,power supply or board but I don't know where to start looking. I can't believe I have 3 bad motors.

thanks

I think you can fix your problem very easy! Go into motor tuning and slow down the inches per min. I've been getting around 19 to 36. try some lower settings. I had the same shock when i set mine up. Hope that helps. Rev.

[kosymailman]

That did it! Thanks. I slowed it down and it buzzes right along now with no stopping. All I need now is my router. Most of my axis are running @ 15 units/min. I guess a unit is an inch?? What do most folks use to run the CNC. I have a trial version of Mach2 I am using and I guess it does all it is supposed to do. When I get my router hooked up I will buy a full version of something. I'm getting some good practice now.

thanks again

Doug

[Wilabee]

Kosymailman;

I am using the Mach3 demo package and am quite pleased with the software. Mach3
is also the same price as the Mach2 demo. (free) Try it, you will like it!

Wilabee

[Fluxion]

Hello all! I have only been lurking here for a few days, I bought the Solsylvia plans last week and I started construction last night!

[kosymailman]

Welcome aboard Fluxion. I'm not doing anything with my machine but trying to learn how to run the software. I see exactly what Revtech was talking about. I consider myself software literate but this gcode and dxf stuff is killing me, but I haven't given up yet. I keep waiting on the "light bulb" to pop up and says "so that's how it's supposed to work", but I haven't seen the light bulb yet. I'll read a little of the mach3 manual and then head to the shop to try it out. Revtech, have you figured it out yet? Willabee, I don't know how I missed your reply about exercising the different axis, but I did miss it. I'm going to give it a try. My machine is running pretty smooth now, but it seems very slow. Maybe your tip will help, thanks.

[kosymailman]

One thing I forgot - I have two sets of the brass measuring bars like you see Bob using on The Router Workshop and I think they helped me more than anything else as far as marking and drilling my holes. I started out using a 6" stainless steel measure and remembered that I had the bars. These things were wonderful. I would use my tablesaw table as a flat surface to make my measurements on and when it came time for assembly, I don't think I had a hole that did not line up like it was supposed to (this says a lot about the quality of the plans). The bars are a lot faster and more accurate (I think) than any other way I had to measure.

[tgreening]

I built mine a few months ago and off and on I've been fighting with it since. The biggest problem has been getting any consistent speed out of it. The plans say 30ipm cutting speed is acheivable but unless I am completely inept and brain dead I don't see how. One of the things I had to do was scrap the whole fuel hose coupler idea, at least on the short axis. There was no way on gods earth I was going to get any kind of reasonable alignment between the motor and the threaded rod using fuel line. The rod is one diameter and the output shaft on the motor is another. No amount of fudging was giving me a smooth transition from one to the other and the motor would stall almost immediately. The only way I could get it to function at all was to leave the motor mount loose enough that the motor could shift around to make up for the misalignment. I ended up using a belt drive. The Z axis I've left alone so far because the speed required is not as high as that required by the x and y.

At first I chalked it up to the laptop computer I was using, even though the Mach 3 test program showed acceptable numbers. I ended up dumping EVERYTHING on the computer except windows and mach 3, but it made no difference. I went out and bought a 2.5ghz destop and wiped everything except windows and mach 3. Once again the test program showed acceptable numbers but consistent cutting anywhere near 30 ipm was impossible. The only thing I could find on the computer was that the parallel port did not provide a full 5 volts out to the xylotex controller, which xylotex said wasn't a problem.

Even so, I went ahead and purchased a pci parallel port card for the computer so I could have a solid 5 volts, but still no joy. The only thing left computer wise would be to add a video card since the machine now uses onboard video. It also used onboard I/O but I took care of that with the PCI card.

At this point it seems I can do 20ipm, but I'm not entirely sure it's going to be consistent. I just got back at this project and since the addition of the pci parallel port card I've only run 3 test cuts, all of the same type and approximately 1 hours worth of cutting. The first at 20ipm was successful, the second at 30 lasted about 20 seconds before failure and the third at 25 ipm which lasted maybe 5 minutes before failure. These times are just approximate but suffice it to say, they failed pretty quick.

As far as I can tell I have everything adjusted right as far as software goes, and the hardware all seems to be aligned properly with no binding that I can see. At least none that I "think" would be an issue.

I really like the overall design of the unit, but I'm not sure 2x4 technology is cutting the mustard. If anyone has successfully run this at 30ipm or better I'd sure like to hear about it. I'd like to hear about ANY consistent speeds other users have been getting. So far I haven't seen any feedback to speak of on this design, only lots of guys building or getting ready to build.

Right now I'm considering scrapping the whole unit as it sits and coughing up the coin to reproduce it out of 80/20 material, drill rod, and acme screws.

Any experienced feedback is MORE than welcome.

[kosymailman]

I followed the tip given by Willabee and used his program about exercising the axis. I am probably the lest knowledgeable person that you know of on this CNC stuff but according to Mach3 my x & y axis was traveling around 13-15 units per minute. After following Willabee's instructions I got as high as 46 units per minute on my x-axis. I slowed it down to @38, was vibrating pretty good at the 46. 38 seemed like everything was running fine and motor sounded good also. I went from @13 to 32 on my y-axis. (thanks Willabee!) Now when I practice the machine runs kinda like a CNC, not a snail. As far a actually using the machine for something productive, I can't help. I have not cut anything since I increased the speed of the CNC. I haven't figured all that part out yet. If someone has a test program so I could change the settings of the axis I would appreciate it. Maybe this would help show me which way the x,y & z axis are supposed to travel. They don't necessarily travel in the direction I think they should now. I have loaded up different wizards but it seems that my when my z axis is supposed to be cutting, it lifts up from the workpiece. Seems like I have some setting backwards on Mach3. I am not giving up yet though. I believe I will eventually figure it out. Will try the roadrunner again tonight with my increased speeds and see what happens. Is there someway on Mach3 to rotate the view on computer monitor to match the actual table of the CNC. I'm having problems with telling where my cutting point actually is on the monitor as compared to where it is on the CNC table.

[HayTay]

One thing I forgot - I have two sets of the brass measuring bars like you see Bob using on The Router Workshop and I think they helped me more than anything else as far as marking and drilling my holes. I started out using a 6" stainless steel measure and remembered that I had the bars. These things were wonderful... The bars are a lot faster and more accurate (I think) than any other way I had to measure.

Kosy,

What are these "brass measuring bars" to which you refer? Do you have a picture or a link? How do you use them, or are they self explanatory?

My inquiring mind would like to be enlightened.

[gmfoster]

http://us.oak-park.com/catalogue.html?list=bars--


That link ought to get you to them.

Keystock would work about as well for just marking, these are brass and don't hurt the router bits as you set height ect..

Garry

[kosymailman]

I could stack multiple bars to make different measurements. Use a 1/2" bar and a 1/4" bar together to use as 3/4" measurements (for example). This would be an exact 3/4", not just close. This was so much faster and more accurate than any other way I had to measure & mark.