Jinan Quick CNC initial tribulations

[nash]

Hello All,

As you may know I've purchased a Jinan QuickCNC machine with the following dimensions, 1500x4000x400 with a Syntec Controller. The machine was idle till very recently (all kinds of issues with getting power). During this period, I did many small mods on the machine, like a dust collection system and currently am building a new dust shoe. I still have issues with the vacuum table sucking the MDF effectively. The suction is very weak to say the least.

Then I purchased VisualMillPro. Initially, I wrote the post, but couldn't get it to work around radii and canned cycles, my post at high speed made the machine vibrate a bit. Folks at visual mill were very nice to write a post for the controller and now I've been sort of lucky with the machine and did manage to do some real work. The machine is networked and I can currently send the nc files from my computer directly to the machine.

Three days back I loaded MDF blanks on the machine for machining. I wanted to first mill the X-Y reference line on the blanks, before milling the shape. The X-Y reference line was milled using profiling and went of well. After profiling, I uploaded the main file to mill the blank. Then I set the X-Y based on the reference line that was just profiled. After latching the coordinates, I wanted to move the head to its home position. I pressed home and the X, Y and Z keys to home. The head went up to Z and locked in there. There was no budging it from its top position. Immediately thereafter, I got an error "Z Axis Negative Limit exceeded." This is strange since in the top most position the Z axis is in its positive limit. Therefore, I thought that perhaps the rocker limit switch has broken.

After writing to and speaking with Taney, I discovered that the only way to lower the head was to rotate the motor with the machine switched off. But it appears that the Z axis servo has a brake and it did not rotate, I tried a bit of force but it was locked tight. So I undid the tensioning screws and got the head to come down, after which I tensioned the belt and tightened the screws again.

Now the head can be moved up and down, but when I move it till the point that it touches the roller limit switch, nothing happens (no error on the screen to have moved above the limit).

I'd like to know if anyone has experienced a similar thing, and how did you see if the limit switch worked or what is the process of diagnosing the various limit switches and cable connections in a Syntec controller (940M) based machine. I'd be happy to change the switch but want to be sure if that is what is broken or if there's something else that is giving the trouble.

Thanks a lot,
N

[nash]

Looked at the machine issue again today and have come to the conclusion that perhaps a relay in the system is gone. It will be great if someone who has a syntec controller could verify my observations.

There are two switches on the Z axis, one is a rocker type with a roller at the end and it has two Bakelite wedges that depress it. The other is a proximity switch which has a metal leaf pin that activates it.

In the case of my machine, when the rocker switch is pressed at any point of its travel, the bottom movement of the Z axis is stopped and it can only move upwards. When the Z axis is at its maximum height, then the metal leaf goes over the proximity switch (which of course lights up in red), and its my opinion, that at that moment the proximity switch should activate the rocker switch to move the slide downwards and not upwards. This can be easily accomplished by a simple relay.

At the moment this is just theory, but if one of you could check this for me it will be great, by trying tiny movements with the jog dial to see if at the top, of the travel of the Z axis, if the rocker switch is pressed after the proximity switch switches on, whether its possible to move the slide up or only down. And similarly, at any intermediate position, if the rocker switch is pressed, if its possible to move the slide only up and not down.

Thanks
N

[nash]

Just to let you know...

Checked all the relays on a multimeter,
Checked all the wiring
Checked all the switches and proximity switches...
Put locktite on all the proximity tabs to prevent them getting lose
Checked all the connectors going to the rear panel of syntec

Without any further ado the machine started working!!! Magic!!!

Just did another milling... check it out: [nomedia="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Fil0vfIoBUk"]YouTube - CNC machining the dust shoe[/nomedia]

[MaNo]

Just did another milling... check it out:

Hey Nash, glad to hear that the Z-axis problem is solved.

About that dust shoe....it looks like....hmmm...I don't know. How about a sketch of what you envision?

[nash]

Hi Norbert,

I'm still waiting for some materials to finish the shoe. Its going to be in epoxy fiberglass, it will allow the sucking up of dust from the source. I'm also building a small vortex dust separator which will be to catch up most dust produced. Its similar to the one you pointed me to.

Will post an image of the dust shoe when its done.

BTW, one thing interesting is that I tried a canned cycle yesterday. I'd never used a canned cycle since I do everything on CAM. But, syntec has some really cool canned cycles. I did 4 rectangular slots and they came out exactly as I wanted, in around 15 lines of code using G175 canned cycle.

Discovering new things... ;-)

N