[RCaffin]

Could I do that with HDPE?
Well, I do quite regularly. hint: you need a sharp cutter. A fly cutter works fine too.

I would just use good old MDF to begin with. Other materials are expensive
All good advice. I use scrap HDPE I got from the skip at a local plastics supplier ... Ask and ye may receive.

Cheers
Roger

[jo_ky]

Thanks. I'll start with the MDF and then try HDPE. One other question I have is, what if the piece is small enough to fit on the table, but larger than the area the spindle can move in? Is there a way to make it work?

[dharmic]

If your spindle can't reach the workpiece, you need to move the workpiece back within the spindle envelope.

Usually this means you'll need to do your job in multiple operations, moving the workpiece in between operations so you cover the whole lot. You'll need some kind of registration to ensure everything meshes together properly.

[RCaffin]

Lots of us move the job to get it within range. Very often two solidly-located precision pins in the base are used for this. Of course, what is a 'precision' pin is a good question. Sometimes the shank of a good drill bit is enough. Sometimes ... its a precision 6 mm shaft of carbide, otherwise known as the shank of a broken cutter. Eh - they are useful.

If you are doing a lot of this, a carefully-made metal base plate holding the pins with an MDF surface plonked over the top is viable.

Cheers
Roger

[jo_ky]

Thanks, that gives me a good idea of how to proceed.

Now, if I could just get my spindle working. The replacement arrived but it shows the same fault, E002, and I'm waiting to hear from OMIO again. Since there didn't seem to be anything wrong with my cable, It appears I need a new VFD. :/

[Mmpie]

Try a new cable first. Get some copper shielded CY cable, run it directly into the U V W terminals in the VFD bypassing the 3 prong connector on the back of the box. Before buying your cable pop the 4 prong socket off the top of the spindle, see if the earth wire is hooked up. If it is, use it and remove the need to ground your machine via the frame.


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[RCaffin]

I'm with mmpie here. Do a direct hookup from the VFD to the motor, bypassing everything. Just 4 separate bits of insulated wire would be enough for a TEST.

Faulty cables and faulty connectors have put more splinters under fingernails than you could imagine.

Cheers
Roger

[jo_ky]

Suddenly the spindle works! I pretty much did everything the same way, as far as I can tell, but who knows. If I have the issue again I'll start with the cable as prime suspect, but for now I can get going!

Oh and (edit) I want to add one thing for all the newbs to follow me. 5 meters of replacement PU tubing is not quite enough. I made it work, cutting the supply hose a little longer than 2.5 and having the shorter drain that needs help from gravity to reach the bucket.

[RCaffin]

Timeo Danaos et dona ferentes
In due course (which means at the most inappropriate time possible), the cable will fail again - I suspect.

Cheers
Roger

[Zbud]

Hi all, another newby with an X6 2200 just ordered. Half way through this thread and haven’t seen anything regarding any benefits of getting the 240V vs the 120V unit. I went with 120 basically for convenience of location(s) but I could go 240. Should I? Great thread and look forward to reading the next 80 pages or so. I probably have only a day to make the change so apologies if this info is in the posts I haven’t got too yet. You all have been a great help getting to know this machine.

[jo_ky]

Hi all, another newby with an X6 2200 just ordered. Half way through this thread and haven’t seen anything regarding any benefits of getting the 240V vs the 120V unit. I went with 120 basically for convenience of location(s) but I could go 240. Should I? Great thread and look forward to reading the next 80 pages or so. I probably have only a day to make the change so apologies if this info is in the posts I haven’t got too yet. You all have been a great help getting to know this machine.

We talked about that a few pages back. I was concerned about it, but then it turns out that the 120V controller is equipped with a 10A fuse, so 1200W is the most it's going to draw. Any outlet should work, just watch what you put onto the same breaker.

[Zbud]

Thanks jo_ky, I’lol let it ride as is then. No doubt I’ll have more Q’s to ask once I get hands on. I’m hoping to do some aluminium engraving and some basic 4 axis stuff to start. Seems like a pretty steep learning curve but can’t hardly wait to get on it. I’ll update how well my experience goes with Omio and the machine delivery state. So far Lance has been very responsive; hope I’m on the lucky side of their QA.
Paul on Vancouver Island, Canada.

[ronsand]

For anyone interested, here are the working Nowforever D100 VFD (same parameters as E100 FW 1.3) settings for modbus (modbusez plugin UCCNC) http://www.cnczone.com/forums/uccnc-...gin-uccnc.html

parameter - default -> new
p000 - 1 -> 2
p001 - 0 -> ok
p002 - 2? -> 6
p055 - 1 -> ok
p056 - 2 -> ok
p057 - 0 -> ok


UCCNC settings for actual spindle speed DRO:

UCCNC Sact label setting 870 (default) -> 2451 (new)

The rest is as in the "screen shot" below (select com port from your installation)

[jo_ky]

I wanted to check squareness of the frame, so I used the Z-axis pre-setter tool at each corner of the machine's X-Y extents. I got the following measurements for the tool tip @ z-max to table, vertical distances:

x-min, y-min: 96.559
x-max, y-min: 97.163
x-min, y-max: 96.691
x-max, y-max: 97.047

And so, I found out that the X to Z is not particularly square! That led me to measure the height of the gantry arms, as best I could with the machine assembled, and sure enough it does appear that the left one is at least 0.5mm shorter than the right one.

Any recommendations? Does it need to be shimmed, or can I "take it up" somehow, maybe? From my recollection of the many pages of this thread, X tramming is somewhat easier to deal with than Y, at least, right? The y accuracy I measured seems like what I was hoping for. Am I being overly picky with the X?

Thanks,
John Kyle

[Mmpie]

Yeah mine was quite some out but it was more than just gantry arm size which from memory I never bothered to measure, but my gantry beam itself was lopsided as the holes were drilled slightly lower on one side. I just shimmed underneath the gantry arm with aluminium foil as it was the easiest thing to do, and it did its job.

Measuring off the standard bed with the tool height probe is hopeless though as the bed is more out of level than the gantry is likely to be and also the cheap z probe for some reason has no repeatability. When I actually measured the z heights it gave me with a dial gauge I found it could be anywhere up to 0.3mm wrong either way.

Edit: thinking about it the homing switches are the same error wise. As the error is curiously in the same ballpark, whilst I know microswitches are hardly the pinnacle of accuracy and repeatability, I wonder if there's some latency in the communications somewhere causing an issue...

Oh and second edit, the z probe itself is far from flat anyway. I have a granite surface plate which I checked it on and I can't remember the error but that was a fair amount. So depending on the size of your tool and the point you touch it off you will get a different result anyway. My measurements which I spoke about about were all done with a spot drill touching off the same spot to +/- the positional accuracy of the X and Y axes, which to be fair isn't bad at all.

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[jo_ky]

3 more measurements of the first one: 96.566, 96.559 and 96.572. So I have a Z tool that's usable for measuring this amount of error, I think. I'll try the aluminum foil shim, I guess. Thanks.

[RCaffin]

What a ghastly / revolting / horrible mess. Makes the brand rather questionable.

One is tempted to suggest replacing everything below the top nut (in the manner of the old Scottish steam engine), but it would be worth trying the shimming first. You would need to relax the joints a bit while doing so.

Mind you, you might need a bit more than a layer of 'alumnium foil shim' to fix this! Many layers of baking dish plus kitchen foil maybe?

Good luck
Roger

[Zbud]

An update on my just arrived X6-2200 USB, I'm a happy camper.

Ordered the machine Feb 1st, it arrived to my surprise Feb 13th through USP whom left it on my front porch in clear view of the street with no body home, happened while I was out of the house for twenty minutes. The two boxes were well packed with only a couple of cardboard rips from the trip. And surprise surprise, no duty or customs bill!!

There are no instructions or user guide (expected) and assembly was both, easy following the video Lance linked me too, and everything bolted and fit together well, about a 1/2 hour. The only thing different between my X6 and the one in the setup video are the max limit micro swithches, mine came with three terminal connections rather than two, providing for both normally on or normally off configuration, a small bonus for possible future reconfig. There where also two extra micro switches that came with it, awesome, and a few tee-nuts, bolts and small raw metal clampdowns, enough to mount something for testing the machine. the $400 vice will have to wait. The fourth axis seems beefy for its size and also came with a second set of jaws. There was also a small kit containing a second smaller collet and a few engraving bits; they seems to market this machine as an engraver, maybe engraving machine are free from customs duties???

I set up an old desktop with XP Service Pack 3, installed Mach 3 as per instructions, spent four hours finding out that I accidentally somehow unplugged the USB cord from the controller, and low and behold the dang thing then came to life first attempt, all axis travelling smooth!!! Spindle cooling water pump is submersible type and seems from the upper end of cheaper quality, looks plenty sufficient to me. A little surprise was seeing the collet nut slightly dimpled in a couple spots by a small drill, for balancing I assume, nice.

Just to hit upon the grounding issues that I've read about here. Both the controller and the spindle have only 3-pin connections so, assuming from what I think I've read prior that four wires are required to ground the spindle correctly, it is still an issue. On an up side though, in documentation from Lance, in one of the links he sent, in big bold letters it states to ground the chassis properly. Apart from a safety issue, they also talk about it reducing the noise from/on the electric system. Maybe shielding the cord will no longer be necessary, I'll wait and see I guess.

There was also about 6" of spare chain (cable/hose housing), The wrenches are very beefy, though they where not required for assembly, three allen wrenches did the job.

Needless to say no glitches, other than stupidity, yet. My learning curve is about to steepen exponentially. Thanks everyone.

[Mmpie]

About the nut balancing, the whole spindle shaft and nut are balanced together, so look after your nut.

I bought a load of new nuts so I could have clean tools preloaded in collets ready to swap over but it became apparent straight away that they weren't suitable for running over 10-12k ish rpm IIRC.


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[ronsand]

About the nut balancing, the whole spindle shaft and nut are balanced together, so look after your nut.

I bought a load of new nuts so I could have clean tools preloaded in collets ready to swap over but it became apparent straight away that they weren't suitable for running over 10-12k ish rpm IIRC.


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You can buy balanced ER20 nuts from Sorotec. The work fine on the machine

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