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  1. #81
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    Default Re: MULTICAM M1 ELECTRONICS UPGRADE

    Quote Originally Posted by CNCMAN172 View Post
    Pari,
    There are several ways to wire limit switches, but most people wire them all in Series with NC contact of limit switches.

    Here is a webpage that explains this in detail
    Wiring home and limit switches

    Keep in mind if you are planning on using the home switches as limit switches you can't wire these in series. But the reason for two wires is you have two contacts on each switch the Common and the NC connection. You could actually loop a single conductor from contact to contact all the way around your machine. Do to noise most people keep these in cables with a copper mesh inside that is grounded at one end to shield these signals from noise. For each higher noise immunity many people have the limit switches all in series that operate a 24V relay where the contacts are used to interface to the BOB (Break Out Board). This ensures that low level noise will not impact the signal which is 24VDC, and the interface to the BOB is very short wires from the relay, one to ground the other to the Limit Switch input pin on the BOB. If you have a controller picked out we can explain exactly what you have to do to get things working correctly.

    Russ
    Hi Russ,
    Thanks. I have my controller already. It is a Gecko G549 with a SmoothStepper breakout board. I want to get a homing system at least at first with soft limits set. One limit switch at the X zero, one at the Y zero, and one at the top of the the Z with a soft limit set at 70mm. As gantry height is so low and often I have to move the spindle up and down on the bracket for different length bits of thickness of material, I thought it might be a useful feature to have a Z minus soft limit to stop me from reaching the bottom of the stroke and indicate that I need to make the adjustment by sliding the spindle down.
    If all works out with the soft limits snd I'm happy with it then I probably won't bother with limit switches on the plus end of the X Y axis.
    So I suppose I'm looking for clarification on how and with what I should wire things up to achieve this e.i. Parallel/series, two core wire/single etc.


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  2. #82
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    Default Re: MULTICAM M1 ELECTRONICS UPGRADE

    I don't use Home switches myself, and I only have Limit switches at one end. At the other end the motor servo goes into overload and faults.

    But it sticks in my mind that normal Homing proceeds one axis at a time, so that you CAN wire the Home switches all in series. Mach will home the X axis, looking for a signal, then it will back off so the signal goes away, then it will do that for the Y axis and then the Z axis. I may have the axis order all wrong, mind you, but that does not matter.

    Some people use their Limit switches as their Home switches as well, but that can be a bit slow at times. Others put the Home switches in the middle of the travel. I believe (again from memory) Mach is a shade smart here: if you tell Mach to Home the X axis and the Home flag is already asserted, it will trundle the X axis off in the appropriate direction until the Home switches goes away, then it will come back and check for it. The logic for this is inside Mach. However, this method breaks down if you series all the Home switches.

    How to wire it all up? There are a number of different ways, and it is up to you.

    Cheers
    Roger



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    Default Re: MULTICAM M1 ELECTRONICS UPGRADE

    Pari,

    I would actually wire up Home Sensors, those do not need to be in series and in fact most breakout boards have a terminal for each motor home sensor. Why? If you have used a CNC machine for a while you will probably have experienced something going wrong during a given run. You even mentioned on some of these long runs something just stops. This is where homing can be very useful. If you home your machine before you start and then set you relative G54 location where you want your material to be on the table. Then if you write down those absolute coordinates for (0,0) you have no issue being able to continue a given job again with complete alignment. This is also true if you happen to have a power hit when you are running a job. You simply restart the machine, then home the machine and move to the absolute coordinates you recorded as the relative (0,0) where you started the job previously. Then you zero the X,Y and set your Z and you are ready to run again. Now you could do a run from line number or you could have it start the job over from the beginning and cut air until it gets to where it was previously.

    Some people run without limits switches but I do not recommend this approach myself. Why? Limit switches are used to protect your machine. If you have something go wrong and suddenly the machine starts charging towards a limit it can often cause damage before you are able to hit the estop, especially if you are not watching the machine all the time. All of the limits can be in serials and when something goes wrong you know if you hit a limit something has gone very wrong and you will need to figure out what happened. Much easier to do that if you don't have to worry about a damaged ballscrew, bearings, squareness of the machine, etc.

    As far as noise goes, you described a very common issues on machines. As the machine is moving about the table and doing fine for 30-40 minutes sudden it will stop and you can't control the machine. This is usually cased by EMI noise. Why did it work for so long before this happened? The answer is typically because when the spindle was being moved about the table it got much closer to some electrical cables on the machine which allowed the interference to cause the issue. On your limit switches if you run those at a voltage higher than 5V you can often avoid these issues all together. Having shielded and grounded machines does not always ensure you will have a noise free machine. Commercial machines using 24VDC logic for all their sensors which is high enough that noise will never be confused with a logic level. How can I do this? The easy way is to run 24VDC or even 12VDC through the NC contacts of the limit switches that are all in series. One end of that line will connect to a 24VDC relay and the other end ties to the 24V power supply. The other leg of the relay is tied to ground. This means when the machine is turned on the relay is activated, but if a limit switch is pressed the relay will be released. Then you will use the contacts of the relay to provide the signal to the BOB for limit exceeded. Some people do not even send that signal to the BOB they take it to the enable of the driver board or enable on the Servo drives and this disables the motors from moving any further until the issue is fixed. I also have a Ethernet Smoothstepper with the C25R3 breakout board attached. I run my home sensors to the inputs on that breakout board. In my case I run Omron EESX670 sensors with a slot, I run those sensors at 12VDC, but have to ensure they will not damage the breakout board at the higher voltage so I actually use opto-couplers to allow me to isolate the 12V and on the other side of the OPTO I use 5VDC so when it sees the sensors fire the breakout board only gets 5V so I have no issues and no noise.

    Some people combine the limit/home function with one switch and you can find this in the MACH3 manual but I like to keep them separate. In my case I only use the limit switches to disable the driver so the motors can't move. The Gecko G540 and probably the G549 have an enable on the drive. Lots of people just jump that enable input to Ground on the driver, but if you use that with the 24V relay system I described above the contacts of the relay will be what enables the G549 and you will be protected. Spend a little more time on your machine and you will be really glad you did some day in the future.

    Russ



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    Default Re: MULTICAM M1 ELECTRONICS UPGRADE

    +1 on the 24 VDC and the optical isolation. And the belt and braces approach.
    Cheers
    Roger



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    Default Re: MULTICAM M1 ELECTRONICS UPGRADE

    I've been absent from this thread, so thanks for the comments. I was just trying to handle the basics and get some kind of response to show me that I had the switch I was working on wired in and configured. Must admit most of the weekend was a waste of time as I was doing it wrong from the get go and couldn't of got the response in diagnostics and ESS Data Monitoring.( not entirely my fault, mis-information combine with lack of knowledge). But I am back on the right track now so once I get the switches responding in the correct way I can move on to installing them.


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    Default Re: MULTICAM M1 ELECTRONICS UPGRADE

    I got the test setup of homing X and Y working good last night. So am ready to start installing them properly now. Got my 2 core shielded cable so I'm hoping to make some headway this weekend.


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    Default Re: MULTICAM M1 ELECTRONICS UPGRADE

    Hi All,
    just a quick update on how it's all going with the upgrade. I'll put some pics up at some point when it's all a bit more tidy and finished, but things are going quite well and today I added another piece to the jigsaw to ending up with a smooth work flow. I was having trouble working out how to deal with interfacing with the machine in a tidy effiecient way. I didn't like having my new laptop in the machine room and thought maybe using the Mach3 Pendant app on iPad might be a way to go....that didn't work out, too unreliable.
    I didn't want a big touch screen so looked around at what was out there and today bought a little laptop that folds into a tablet ($366 from Hervey Norman Acer Aspire R3), it has a 11.6" touch screen running Windows 10, solid state 32gb drive and a 4gb ram celeron processor with a Ethernet port, all I need to run the Smoothstepper ESS and Mach3.
    I eventually would like it mounted to the side of the gantry on a stand as it is quite small and lite. I can pull up the touch screen keypad and bring up the Mach3 jogging MPG and jog etc. It's a very smooth setup. I used my work laptop in the office and can send the gcode file from there directly to the router, open it in Mach3 and away you go.
    I've got all the Home Switches working and it is a very satisfying thing to send it home and watch it do it's thing. I made my first piece in ages this week....a new cover to go on the side of the gantry that hides all the rack and pinion belt and cog etc that now has a recess to cover the X axis home switch cable.
    All the switch cables a shielded 2 core.
    That's all for now folks!!



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    Default Re: MULTICAM M1 ELECTRONICS UPGRADE

    Good to see your progress they are time consuming that's for sure i may have to look into the smooth stepper in the near future ,cheers John.



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    Default Re: MULTICAM M1 ELECTRONICS UPGRADE

    I remember that 1200 x 1200mm multilcam machine in the colour purple it was first displayed at one of the trade shows many years back. Did you finally change over the multicam running gear I have a similar problem my machine and yours run stepper motors and a controller and pendant made by axyz in canada, but sold here under the name of multicam. This model controller connects to the computer via a LRC card on a ISA slot which runs under windows 98 only. You need toolpath as the controller is dedicated to that particular softwear. Multicam quoated $10,000 plus to upgrade the controller so I am running the 98 version till it dies than will upgrade to gecko. Iam retired and use the machine now as a hobby - you will not have to change any of the machine hard wear just the electronics which isn't a big deal gecko and mach 3 all fine. Peter



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    Default Re: MULTICAM M1 ELECTRONICS UPGRADE

    Quote Originally Posted by Petergerm View Post
    I remember that 1200 x 1200mm multilcam machine in the colour purple it was first displayed at one of the trade shows many years back. Did you finally change over the multicam running gear I have a similar problem my machine and yours run stepper motors and a controller and pendant made by axyz in canada, but sold here under the name of multicam. This model controller connects to the computer via a LRC card on a ISA slot which runs under windows 98 only. You need toolpath as the controller is dedicated to that particular softwear. Multicam quoated $10,000 plus to upgrade the controller so I am running the 98 version till it dies than will upgrade to gecko. Iam retired and use the machine now as a hobby - you will not have to change any of the machine hard wear just the electronics which isn't a big deal gecko and mach 3 all fine. Peter
    Hey Peter. Yes the upgrade is finished for now and I'm living it. I have one of those Chinese wireless pendant and despite the criticism I've read it is brilliant. Mac3 is running great on the Gecko / SmoothStepper Ethernet system and all the homing switches make life so much easier. Next upgrade will be re surfacing the table to get it absolutely flat.


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