kx1

[ihavenofish]

so i got a sieg kx1 today. i got it from novakon.net who normally sell the how mau version of this mill, but they had a demo model of the first gen sieg kx1 that had never been used, and gave me a nice price so i took it.

the mill had no controller, so i bought a gecko g540 last night, which should be here tomorrow morning (now thats service). i have a pc set up with the mach demo and only need a 40v power supply to get going.

i didnt have time to check the mill over much, but its a cool little thing. its very very rigid for how small it is. some of the design details are also really cool, like the spindle head set up. it gave me an instant modding idea which may be one of my first projects for it.

hopefully by the weekend i have it all running and going through some test g-code.

fun fun

[ihavenofish]

so i went over the machine to see if anythign was broken, what the full travels were, stepper specs and the like. its a pretty well build machine. it had been sitting around a while and it seems one of the limit switch brackets was bent cause the table didnt have enough clearance. i fixed it up and made it clear the table. other than that, one cable was frayed from being moved around, and thats about it. novakon is very responsive and offered to fix everything - but i had already done it myself in this case.

steppers turned out to be 40v optimum at 3amps, so ill be using a 350w 36v psu.

the full usable travels i measured were interesting. the specs read 9.45" x, 4.3" y and 9.45" z. these i assume ar for the new version of the mill. mine is in fact 11" in the x, a whopping 7.5" in the y, and 8.3" in the z.

the full y travel isnt usable for a few reasons. the way covers knock it down to a hair under 7", but the centre of the spindle to the column is only 5.5". so practical travel ends up something over 5" which is still pretty decent. if i mounted a high speed spindle like a dremel or proxxon to the side i could set it up to use nearly 7" travel though.

for "safety" ill call my practical travels 10.75" x 8" x 5".

ill post some pics later.

[ihavenofish]

[apriorius]

Very cool and congrats! I'm jealous yours will be up and running before mine...

BTW, WTH is that stuffed booger thingy on top?

[ihavenofish]

Originally Posted by apriorius Very cool and congrats! I'm jealous yours will be up and running before mine... BTW, WTH is that stuffed booger thingy on top?

that is the cheat. hes is a little yellow squeaky thing the some the times steal my ladytypes....
www.homestarrunner.com
(thats a line from the cartoon)

[ihavenofish]

so i got my gecko, but didnt have anything else ready so i started to hack together a control system.

first i tried to use it on my workstation... mach didnt run on xp64.
installed xp32... realized.. my workstation has no paralell port.
bought a pci parallel card... wouldnt boot - dead card.
store was now closed so i found an old pentium 4 system (mobo cpu ram) and placed it on a table, hooked up a hard drive, cdrom, and power supply and went to instal windows....
no go.. .my apple monitors are digital only, video on the motherboard was analogue.
soooo, i pulled out an lcd glass that was for a special project, along with its controller board. i taped the glass to a box so it would not fall over and hooked it to the pc.
voila! worked. finished installing windows and mach.
ran the mach driver test and at all speeds up to 100k got a "system excellent" rating. i used the g540 xml file from gecko to make a preset.

next issue was the gecko psu. i didnt have one yet, noone in town had a 36/48v psu in stock. so, i took an old notebook 19v 5A psu - the lower limit on the gecko - plugged it into the gecko and got the red fault light. so far so good.

i was going step by step in the instruction, and along the way i disconected the gecko from the psu. when i reconnected it no light up. after a short while i realized i crossed the wires and blew the fuse. didnt have a spare fuse so i just shorted the fuse socket.

wheee! green light!
hooked up the x axis motor on the mill and whadya know... it moved!

so, after playing around in mach i managed to get the axes going on 19v at 85 ipm with no lost steps and good reasonable acceleration. this is not bad at all. it should go over 100ipm with the correct psu easily as the motors are rated for twice the rpm they are moving right now. this will be a very decent rapid traverse speed. acceleration on the machine is ok but not spectacular. i assume the new psu wont help here, as its purely a function of low end motor torque fighting the table friction. more powerful motors are probably a better choice - but i have somethign else planned instead for later.

next step is to make up propper cabling to the mill and get the spindle VFD running. i also need to put the pc and gecko and psu into an old atx chassis.

i did notice one thing in my axis testing, but im not sure what it means yet. the machine is repeatable to better than .0005" which i tested with good digital calipers taped to the table. but there is a lead discrepency between what mach says and the caliper says. its something in the range of .001" to .01" at various points. i dont know if this is lead error, or if my screw isnt precisely 4mm per turn or something else. i do know it isnt slop or backlash, its a 100% repeatable offset.

anyone know if this is normal for screws to be off the spec'd pitch? do i just need to use mach screw mapping to compensate?


in any case, im having fun and am surprised how relatively easy it is to set up a gecko g540 in mach. this should all be working by the weekend ready to cut some test pieces of wood n stuff.

[ihavenofish]

its alive!
almost.

all the axes work, and the spindle runs, but im having issues with the pwm controller. its being jerky (literally) and never actually turns off completely.

even still, i manages to make a manual jogging test cut in some hardwood. 65ipm through 1/4" of purpleheart with the spindle at 5000 rpm. cut perfect. i think it could go through alot faster too, but 65ipm was my compromise in tuning the motors to have good acceleration and decent rapids. im still on the 19v psu though, so it might get a little faster when the new one comes.

so far so good though, i think this is goind to be a very very useful tool.

[apriorius]

Sweet dude.

We need video! (youtube link?)

[ihavenofish]

eep. i just ran the machine through some aluminium and some steel.

now, at this point i have the vise taped to the table with 2 sided tape. it has alot of give (.005 at least) and can only take so much force before it pops off the table.

i ran the machine through a 3/8" drill rod, skimming maybe .01" off the end in a full depth pass at 4 ipm and 5000rpm. had no issues. i ran it about .02" and you could hear it working harder, and it was moving the vise. clamped down properly i think it would run that cut at 25-30 ipm. surface finish was nice even though the workpiece was moving.

so then i tried some aluminium. not sure what grade, 6061 i think. my cutting ed calculator said i should be able to do 100 ipm with a depth of .5" and width of .04". this would use the full 500w of power in this spindle it claimed.

so, i ran it through at 100 ipm... and it worked fin for about an inch and forced the vise off the table. i think with the thing properly clamped i can mill aluminium like that no problem. i was climb milling here.

i also tried .12" width on the same cut at 10ipm, and it also forced the vise off, but did cut briefly.

once i get some t nuts and lock the vise down i will do some reall cutting. i am pleasantly surprised so far though. this thing is a little beast.

i will make some videos of it later this week

[ihavenofish]

so i ran some sample gcode. the roadrunner file that comes with mach3. seemed to run it fine up to 100ipm - though it rarely got up to that speed during the program. it didnt seem to loose any steps at that speed, but i dont have anything to do really accurate measurements.

[apriorius]

Haha, I would have never in a million years thought to hold a vise down with DS tape. I can't figure out if you're a genius or just insane

[ihavenofish]

Originally Posted by apriorius Haha, I would have never in a million years thought to hold a vise down with DS tape. I can't figure out if you're a genius or just insane

definitely genius.


2 sided tape works rather well actually if you have enough surface ara and light loads. the vise doesnt have enough mounting surface though, so it doesnt hold that well. was ok for a quick test though.