[metalmayhem]

edit: my coolant concoction kills every bug that gets into the shop over night, thats a plus too, I leave the table led lights on 24 - 7 bugs go to the light an when the land on the table the show's over .

I need some of that along the edge of the shop doors . It's cricket season . They get into the shop and drive me nuts , they chirp and with the echo it is difficult to locate their position

[popspipes]

I have been thinking about cutting about 3 keyways in my r8 collet so that it could be rotated120 degrees and have 3 locations so as to get the best runout position, mine has about a .0004 difference runout now when I rotate the proble 180 degrees, splitting hairs I know ha!

I got about 15 gallons of mineral oil for free and am thinking about trying that for the coolant as the flash point is around 400 degrees or so. I got this in my burn barrels, the fellow even gave me a discount to take the barrels with some of the oil still in them!! The ulsd diesel really doesnt have an objectionable odor but can have a relatively low flashpoint. The oil type coolant doesnt cool as well a water either, but a bit slower cutting is ok with me.

I have too much free time I have been told ha! Next month I will turn 84 and I dont like the idea of sitting in a chair in front of a tv.

[metalmayhem]

Straight oil works great on a flood system but it gets everywhere after a while in a production environment . The screw machines I worked on that ran straight oil were great but being covered in oil wore on me pretty quickly .
A lot of guys used to use tranny fluid but I don't see much mentioned about it anymore .

I get a slight bit of runout but it's insignificant for the parts I run

It's good to keep active , my mother inlaw is 84 , she still plays an 18 hole with great looking score cards in the end

[shred]

old school method for disposal of oil , out of sight out of mind
I was scrolling facebook and this came up . I swear fb and google are always listening .

I put a bucket of old coolant out in the Texas sun with a fishtank bubbler running through it and in a couple weeks all that's left is some thick sludge for the trash can.

[metalmayhem]

I have a container of paint thinner doing the same thing right now , minus the bubbler .

If I ran a high volume shop then I'd be recycling in house . A company I worked for yrs ago had a machine for recycling our coolant , it worked more or less like a pasteurizer . It worked super well at bringing life back to skanky coolant and we never sent it out to the recyclers . Suck coolant out of the cnc tanks and hours later it was good to go . The best job done on that coolant was done by an ex dairy farmer who always laughed that it reminded him of being on the farm

[popspipes]

I have a container of paint thinner doing the same thing right now , minus the bubbler .

If I ran a high volume shop then I'd be recycling in house . A company I worked for yrs ago had a machine for recycling our coolant , it worked more or less like a pasteurizer . It worked super well at bringing life back to skanky coolant and we never sent it out to the recyclers . Suck coolant out of the cnc tanks and hours later it was good to go . The best job done on that coolant was done by an ex dairy farmer who always laughed that it reminded him of being on the farm

Pasturizing milk at the dairy, we heated it and ran it thru a holding tube at 160 plus degrees, it held the 160+ for a period of a few seconds then cooled it back down immediately thru the press (a solution of amonia cooled brine thru the plates). I dont remember the exact parameters anymore but it killed all the bacteria in the milk. I guess that Texas sunshine would do that as well. Maybe here too as it was 99 here today...

[shred]

I have a container of paint thinner doing the same thing right now , minus the bubbler .

If I ran a high volume shop then I'd be recycling in house . A company I worked for yrs ago had a machine for recycling our coolant , it worked more or less like a pasteurizer . It worked super well at bringing life back to skanky coolant and we never sent it out to the recyclers . Suck coolant out of the cnc tanks and hours later it was good to go . The best job done on that coolant was done by an ex dairy farmer who always laughed that it reminded him of being on the farm

The bubbler is important for things like coolant as otherwise the water takes forever to evaporate once an oil layer forms on top.

[metalmayhem]

I would really like to see a fix or reason why pathpilot randomly won't boot past the splash screen . I rarely shut down the machines because I don't trust they will boot up again , it's happened way too many times over the years on various machines .

A power outage knocked everything down and sure enough one of the tormach computers didn't boot and hung at the splash screen again !! The power has been on and off here over the past couple weeks and so have the machines. Today was the first day this has happened over the past couple weeks .

I tried numerous things hoping something would jiggle it out of that bug which I can often accomplish , but , nothing worked until I decided to back up before doing a reset . I started the backup and realized that the hd would be at full capacity so I shut it down . This was enough that pathpilot booted when I powered on .
I love pathpilot but this hang up thing is bs and makes zero sense . 3 of these computers are getting old and I'd blame that except this began early on and they are tormach supplied computers

I really need to get this all booting to the os then shortcuts to pathpilot . I'm going to get this done in the next couple weeks and I'd have done it today had the power outages not set me back so far on my work . Hopefully that will resolve that problem . I should have done it all sooner but it's one of those things - out of sight out of mind until the next time it happens .

I've also given up on the tormach way covers and going with straight rubber as these covers fall apart . The replacements I got from tormach didn't fit worth crap and didn't last very long . I'm going to dream up something better for the future and this works for now .

Aside from a few gripes I'm still digging these mills

[wavok]

@metalmayhem, I'm curious about your controller getting stuck at the splash screen and how often your controller loses power randomly? If your controller is being abruptly shut off often then that can cause erratic behavior. All computers want to be shut down in a controlled manner so if this is a common occurrence for you, you might look into putting a UPS on the controller.

[metalmayhem]

I'm out in the country and the weather has been a bit haywire over the past couple weeks which has knocked out our power out quite a few times .
I can understand problems caused by not powering a computer down properly but this problem can happen after properly powering things down as well .

If I take vacation and shut everything down I fear that they won't boot up properly when I come back to fire up the shop . Most times everything starts up , but on the odd occasion one will hang up . This can happen 2-4 times a year and it's not a regular occurrence , but it's a real pain when it does happen .
If it only happened on one computer then I would isolate the problem as being the computer itself but this has happened on all 5 of my computers .

On the computer that acted up the other day - I needed to reboot it , once again it locked on the splash screen on start up and nothing would take it out of that mode . I followed the path I took previously and pressed shift alt at startup which brings up recovery . From there I pressed backup install , then immediately shut it down as the backup started . A reboot had it move past the splash screen and pathpilot booted up and runs perfectly fine . It's almost like giving it a jiggle which snaps it out of that bug
I may or may not see this problem on that computer for another year but it will happen on one of the other mills in that period of time .

Looking online I haven't found a way past this when it happens but it's clear that I am not the only person to have this problem . One guy stated that tormach suggested that the hd could be bad but I don't think that is the case . I started having this problem not long after buying the first 3 mills which were supplied with tormach computers .
Back then I ran them 7 days a week and shut everything down every night . After having this problem numerous times I gave up on shutting down , there was that plus it's soo much quicker to start up in the morning when everything is ready to go .

The thing is it is not a regular occurrence but it is enough to ruin the odd morning

[shred]

Looking online I haven't found a way past this when it happens but it's clear that I am not the only person to have this problem . One guy stated that tormach suggested that the hd could be bad but I don't think that is the case . I started having this problem not long after buying the first 3 mills which were supplied with tormach computers .
Back then I ran them 7 days a week and shut everything down every night . After having this problem numerous times I gave up on shutting down , there was that plus it's soo much quicker to start up in the morning when everything is ready to go .

The thing is it is not a regular occurrence but it is enough to ruin the odd morning

Have you left one 'stuck' for an hour or so? Its possible its decided to do a filesystem check or something of the sort that takes a while to complete.

[metalmayhem]

I've left them for hours while trying to find a solution online .

i think the only way to completely resolve this is to disable pathpilot from booting , shut down any splash screens and boot straight into the os , then boot pathpilot from a desktop shortcut . If the screen still locks up on boot then it's got to be a bug with mint

[metalmayhem]

funny how some adjustments can make a mill feel like new again . A couple mills have started to produce a bit rougher finish than they should across the y
. Tonite i finally took off the covers and adjusted the gibs on one of them . This mill has probably had the most run time of all of them and I didn't need a dial to find where the wiggle was while I shook the table . The y was the worst of it and it's tight now with a backlash of a few tenths , x is around .0008 which I need to check again because I may have over tightened . And the z which has never been adjusted is still within a few tenths . I don't expect absolute zero backlash and I can easily work with it , plus I doubt it was any better when I got it new

I put a part on and it's right back to perfect finishes again . Tomorrow I do my shipments and I think once I'm done packaging then I'll tweak the other 3 since I don't usually run the mills on shipping days
I'm pretty bad at neglecting these machines but for the most part they don't need much other than the odd time that the gibs need adjusting , or the odd new part . Surprisingly the z rarely needs adjusting and I think I've only ever had to adjust a z twice . That usually becomes noticeable on the 2" face mill passes because the head nods and the finish isn't 100% smooth between each pass on the surface .

Anyhow the old mill feels like new again and I shouldn't need to do any adjusting on it for at least another couple of years . I used to think I'll wear these mills out sooner or later but they've proven that I can't kill them

.

[metalmayhem]

2 blown drivers on one machine over a week sucks . This one tonite is a new driver which ran good for a few days , I heard a pop and that was the end of that run of parts .

I've got a few older blown drivers kicking around and I figured one had blown an axis rather than the top board . Swapping out the main board has the mill running again . Always keep your mx3660's because you'll never know when you need parts

I don't know what is causing the problem but the estop is no long a functional part of the machine or driver and is bypassed with a piece of wire . I've read enough problems from others who blew their drivers while running and having to hit the estop
. Both drives blew mid run , I don't use the estop but if there is a short or something in the wiring then the problem is solved , if not then it's going to be a drag if I blow another
I have one more new driver that arrived a few days ago , I really don't want to blow up another at 330 a pop plus 150 to ship

[joeavaerage]

Hi,
what are the drivers? Are they for steppers or servos or what?

Craig

[metalmayhem]

the pcnc 440's come with leadshine mx3660 stepper drivers

[metalmayhem]

there are a couple surface mounted fuses on the main board of these drivers . I'll have to do some playing around but my guess is that one of them popped . If thats the case then I may be able to salvage a couple complete drivers . There is nothing noticeably burnt otherwise . It would be nice if replacement components were available considering the fact there are 4 boards inside those driver cases , but thats not to modern way

[metalmayhem]

that was pretty short lived . Blown up again . Time to start tracing wires .
I checked the surface mount fuses on the other boards and they are good , so it's a bit deeper of an issue that keeps frying the main boards

[joeavaerage]

Hi,
if I understand correctly is the mx3660 just three stepper drivers in one unit? I presume three of the boards are identical, one for each stepper, and the fourth board
is an IO board?

If that is the case why not have three separate drivers, each one a damned sight more reliable than what you have at the moment?

Craig

[metalmayhem]

the mx has 3 drivers and a top board that they connect to . The top board works as a breakout board ,, this is the one that keeps blowing .
I could gut the mill and add all new drivers and all that fun stuff but it's more trouble than it's worth and defeats the purpose of turnkey . I'd probably scrap it and replace it before it comes to that .
The drivers themselves aren't the problem , and blowing them is only a sign there is a problem elsewhere . I've only blown a few drives in the time I've had these mills which I think is pretty good for the amount of use they get . I've blown an awful lot of dm860 drives on my torus so they all crap out at some point .

I need to carve into it . I have other mills that I need to keep running for the day , so I'll check it later . I have a feeling the wires could be shorting on the x . The wire casings they put on them are terrible and they eventually break . The metal from the casing then cuts or carves into the coatings on the wires which causes shorts . I've replaced or repaired a few motors because of this ,I haven't blown a driver because of it though . I have a couple extra motors on hand so hopefully it's just a motor issue