OmioCNC report

[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.


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

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

Sent fra min SM-A520F via Tapatalk

[dharmic]

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.

I had an issue with mine that took a couple of hours of spindle time to build up, then the machine would shut down (lost connection to the USB board). Every time I started the spindle then, it would cut out. Leave it a couple days and it was fine - for a couple of hours.

Ended up crimping an eye onto the end of a ground wire I yanked from some surplus house wiring, removing one of the frame bolts and re-installing it with the eye behind it. Other end of the wire will one day go into the ground pin on a mains plug, for the moment (and the last two years) it's just jammed into the ground pin hole on a power board

Fixed the problem. I haven't had any spindle noise issues since. No need for four wires, shielded stepper cables or any of the other wasted expense.

[RCaffin]

I have seen racks of computer systems with 25 mm flat copper braid going from chassis to chassis. I was assured it was essential.
Grounding is not a science; it is an arcane art!

Cheers
Roger

[dharmic]

^^ a lot of that is lightning / surge management. There's some fairly clear standards applicable to grounding arrangements for telecommunications infrastructure including network management racks etc.

[jo_ky]

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...

Make sure it's a USB 2 port, not USB 3. They say this in the docs, and I suspect it's because some bug or non-standard protocol usage breaks backwards compatibility. For latency, I believe the best ports are the ones connected directly to the southbridge chip on the motherboard. For instance, the ones next to the PS/2 port, if your motherboard still has that. Sometimes a portion of the other ports are connected through an onboard PCI or PCI-e chip, like with an add-on card.

I was reading the Mach 3 manual. It's too bad there's not an equivalent of the parallel driver test program, for this USB-based driver.

[jo_ky]

I'm having a weird problem today. In Mach 3, when I switch the jog mode to step, the step increment starts cycling through 1, 0.1, 0.01, etc., all on its own! There's no way to stop it. Agh, what a stupid problem to have. Anybody have any ideas? I tried putting in a "999" in the increments config. It cycles through once and then goes back to continuous mode.

[extent]

the USB 3 may be situational, but it's certainly not a universal problem. My host PC has no USB 2 ports at all, only USB 3 and I never had any problems running the controller.

cycling step increments sounds like a key stuck down on the keyboard to me, are you using the wireless pendant? Try unplugging that if you are.

[jo_ky]

Of course, the pendant! Thank you so much.

It was cool at first, then I forgot all about it. If it's going to cause bugginess, not worth it for sure. OMIO would be better off spending that on an AC connector for the controller box that's relayed so you can plug your pump, etc. into it. That's a mod I think I'm going to have to do, myself.

[jo_ky]

I just learned a valuable lesson, with my first crash. When you press the e-stop it cuts power to the stepper motors. Sounds good, right? Well if they were moving, then they still have momentum! Better to stop the program with Mach 3, so that the steppers will brake.

Other lesson: Mach 3 offset controls are weird and don't do what I think they do. Arghh!!!

I'm not telling how much I paid for the tool that was in there. :-o Just happy the machine is fine.