[Mmpie]

You ‘should’ use white lithium grease on your rails and screws, or better proper way oil. But they are exposed, and both those things attract chips like flies and they get stuck on. I’ve been using silicone spray lube on mine and it runs smooth, chips don’t get stuck and not had any issues whatsoever. Just be sure to do it regularly. There is also ptfe lubricant which will probably work better.


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

[dharmic]

1. That's how I run mine, and it got rid of a bunch of noise issues which would bounce the USB connection after a couple of hours of spindle time.
2. I've managed to snap a couple of the nipples and could never get a great deal of oil into 'em anyway. So I general put a few drops of machine oil along the leadscrews and linear rails and run each axis from one extent to the other a few times to get my lube on.

Good luck with the reading - this thread has gotten somewhat out of control (about a hundred pages ago) and really, I - or some other volunteer - should ask to break it out into multiple related threads in one forum.

[erik65]

Thx.

......... There is also ptfe lubricant which will probably work better.
Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

I was told not to use ptfe (Teflon) because " Avoid anything with Teflon in it. It will create Fish eyes in your finishes forever. It is almost impossible to remove once it is in there."

[erik65]

Anyone of you made and use a spoil board for this machine? If so, a picture would be great. I want to lasercut one from MDF but can't quite figure out how to model it. I am planning to kiss-cut a nice pattern on it, straight horizontal and vertical lines, with 1 cm spacing. And a square ruler guide, or maybe rulers around the complete board, also kiss-cut into the MDF. And probably cut out long slots, so that the Alu T-slots are still usable.

[zeeflyboy]

Anyone of you made and use a spoil board for this machine? If so, a picture would be great. I want to lasercut one from MDF but can't quite figure out how to model it. I am planning to kiss-cut a nice pattern on it, straight horizontal and vertical lines, with 1 cm spacing. And a square ruler guide, or maybe rulers around the complete board, also kiss-cut into the MDF. And probably cut out long slots, so that the Alu T-slots are still usable.

What are you intending on making? Best solution will depend largely upon the general type of work you want to do.

I generally use a consumable fixture plate made from SRBP. Advantage over MDF is that it’s not affected by water so you can use coolant without causing the MDF to swell and throw things out of level, disadvantage is just cost.

For a lot of the work I’m doing at the moment, that works well for me - I can drill through into the bed and then tap and use that as a fixture point for the rest of the machining.

If you check out my thread on my new router I’m building in the DIY section you’ll see a few different ways I approach work holding on the X6. Again, may or may not be of interest depending on your type of intended work.

[zeeflyboy]

Something so simple

Yes I got rid of the bellows too. The hiwin bearings and ball nut both have wipers on, so they should keep most the crap outside. Even with them removed Z travel is still prohibiting, particularly with typical jobber length drills.

Off topic but just thought I’d share, this beasty turned up today







Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

Damn, want to adopt an overgrown kid?

[erik65]

...... Advantage over MDF is that it’s not affected by water so you can use coolant without causing the MDF to swell and throw things out of level.....

Good info, didn't think of the swelling issue with MDF. I've never heard of SRBP, but what I do use every day is acrylic. That doens't swell and doesn't hurt cutters. So I probably just make two of the same spoil boards, one of MDF and on top of that one of plexi. Easy job with the lasercutter.

Zeeflyboy, on page 8 you mentioned that you replaced the 3-wire spindle cable for a4-wire shielded one to get proper ground. What kind of connector did you use to connect this cable at the back of the control box? Original the connector is a 3-pin connector.

[Mmpie]

Damn, want to adopt an overgrown kid?

Haha. If you’re not too far away and need something your machine can’t handle maybe you could have a play..

Good info, didn't think of the swelling issue with MDF. I've never heard of SRBP, but what I do use every day is acrylic. That doens't swell and doesn't hurt cutters. So I probably just make two of the same spoil boards, one of MDF and on top of that one of plexi. Easy job with the lasercutter.

Zeeflyboy, on page 8 you mentioned that you replaced the 3-wire spindle cable for a4-wire shielded one to get proper ground. What kind of connector did you use to connect this cable at the back of the control box? Original the connector is a 3-pin connector.

I would recommend ditching the rear connector altogether and running the new cable and shield all the way up to the VFD. That then shields the important stretch of cable moving past the drivers and BOB inside the box. If you ever need to remove it, the VFD has screw clamp terminals so it’s easy peasy anyway. No need for connector.


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

[erik65]

..... I would recommend ditching the rear connector altogether and running the new cable and shield all the way up to the VFD. That then shields the important stretch of cable moving past the drivers and BOB inside the box. If you ever need to remove it, the VFD has screw clamp terminals so it’s easy peasy anyway. No need for connector.Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

That might be a good idea too. In the meanwhile I did find the source for the 16mm connectors, thx to a comment on page 13 (yeah, I'm slowly reading through this complete topic! )

[dharmic]

FWIW, Erik, I haven't upgraded the spindle cable. Once I grounded the machine frame, I didn't need to.

There's a lot of good mods in this epic but bear in mind not everyone needed to do all of them. Collect the ideas, info, sources for kit etc by all means but I wouldn't go pre-emptively fixing problems before they show up for you.

[erik65]

Yep, that's exactly what I'm doing, collecting all the interesting comments in a Word document. I grounded the frame yesterday and checked continuity from all parts, including the spindle, to the wall socket and that was OK. So I guess that I will only ground the VFD in the control box, that definitely is missing ground.

[Mmpie]

Yep, that's exactly what I'm doing, collecting all the interesting comments in a Word document. I grounded the frame yesterday and checked continuity from all parts, including the spindle, to the wall socket and that was OK. So I guess that I will only ground the VFD in the control box, that definitely is missing ground.

The VFD is grounded via the case, on the bottom is a big metal plate. I actually removed my VFD from the black box because I was having big problems with the USB connection dropping out. It helped a bit.


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

[erik65]

The VFD is grounded via the case, on the bottom is a big metal plate.

Ah, that is good news. :banana: Then everything on my router that should be grounded, is grounded.

[erik65]

Are these the correct soft limits on the X6 (see attachment)? These are the settings in my machine that I bought secondhand.

[Arc-Light]

After your S***** M03 command, on the next line put in ‘G04 X**’

G04 being wait and X being seconds, so G04 X2 would wait 2 seconds before moving to the next block.


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

Finally got time to play in my shop with the G04 dwell command, just a note for others I found the "X" for time function didn't work for my machine, I found my CNC required a "P" representing pause. So I wrote G04 P5 on the line after my M03 command. This paused my machine for 5 seconds as the spindle spun up to speed. It worked great!

[erik65]

How do you guys handle the maximum feed rate of the X6. According to the manufacturer's specs this is 4000mm/min (equals to 157 i/min), which seems so low to me. For instance a machine like the Stepcraft Q.204 has with 394 i/min more than double the feed. I'm asking because the Omio maximum gives me a 'headache' in CNCcookbook's feed and speed calculator, always running into the max feed rate.

[Mmpie]

It can’t run a lot faster. I went to 5000mm/min, some people are running it faster, but I had some binding issues. Probably because my ballscrews aren’t quite straight. They’re not supported very well either.

Edit: it’s worth pointing out as well most wood routers have at least 10mm or usually higher pitch (20mm or 25mm) screws for speed, ie each rotation of the motor and screw moves the axis double or more the distance. The omio has 5mm pitch screws for torque and accuracy. Given how thin they are (and the already mentioned poor support) there’s only so fast they can spin before they start to whip anyway, the Y axis being the main problem.

Quickly using a ball screw critical speed calculator, and this is assuming aligned proper rigid ballscrew mounts instead of skate bearings pressed into a piece of extrusion with questionable alignment, the calculator says a max rpm of 1160 on the Y or 5800mm/min feed rate.


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

[davekenyon]

Please could somebody help me with how to get rid of the fault in the attached video (had to zip it for some reason I'm afraid). I tried a cut this morning and my machine has started stuttering in the y-axis; all other axes are fine. It's also a cut that I've made a few times before with the exact same settings. Thanks in advance.

[Mmpie]

Please could somebody help me with how to get rid of the fault in the attached video (had to zip it for some reason I'm afraid). I tried a cut this morning and my machine has started stuttering in the y-axis; all other axes are fine. It's also a cut that I've made a few times before with the exact same settings. Thanks in advance.

Can you stick it on YouTube? I’m on my phone so unable to unzip


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

[davekenyon]

Bloody hell - didn't know I could... but I have!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hGd9...ature=youtu.be