My new CNC toy

[TimKoene]

Okay, let me first start out by saying, very arrogantly, that my cnc>your cnc I am so very happy!!

I "acquired" an industrial grade pick and place robot sporting 2 5phase 350W stepper motors, direct belt drive, 0.01mm accuracy according to it's manual, 2100N nominal load bearings and 2m/s traverse speeds. I also got the controller and stuff! I made a small (9.8Mb) movie of it doing some rapids.

http://timkoene.4hv.org/test/cnc.avi

I still need to make some proper interface between the controller and my turbocnc pc and need to make an up to par Z-axis, but I am so happy I could just dance all day. Which I will. Starting now.

[Oldmanandhistoy]

Looking real good, do you wanna sell it?

Will be interested to see it when you get the Z axis on.

What are you intending to cut with it when you've stopped dancing?

John.

[Jason Marsha]

Thats nice. Its fast and smooth. Keep us updated I want to see this in action cutting.

Jason

[TimKoene]

I will keep you updated. And about selling, PM me with an offer I can't refuse I do have a lot of 25mm THK rails and matching ground ballscrews with motors and mounts and endbearings for sale though.

Anyway, back on topic. I am planning to turn this into the start of a small speaker cabinet building enterprise, but it still needs a lot of work. And a z-axis which can match this brute's performance. Hoping I can scrounge a working z-spindle out of an old Posalux PCB miller/driller.

I am still dancing though

[Oldmanandhistoy]

Was joking when I said do you wanna sell. More than I could afford Just a little envious as it looks like the dogs do dars.

Keep us posted please about your Z axis. Interested in final spec feed speeds and the like.

What do you calculate your cutting area to be?

John

[TimKoene]

Well the travel of the unit is 710*680mm which you can divide by 25.4 to get inches. :P A rough guess with me sitting behind my pc at 2am in the morning would be about 30 inches times 27inches. The cutting area should be thereabouts.

Anyway, good night to everyone on this side of the pond, and a good day to everyone on the other side

Greetings, Tim

[WarrenW]

Just watched your video... that thing moves fast! And smooth like Jason said.

Post some more when you get more progress done.

Warren

[TimKoene]

Yes, I will post more when more updates are made. I am now converting the drive electronics from some obscure industrial standard to accept step/dir input from a pc. The biggest hurdle is the weird 24v digital signals it wants, so I am building a converter with optocouplers and ULN2003's to interface it to a computer. Should be ready this weekend, and then I can make it do plots and stuff.

Kind regards,
Tim

[Kammo1]

That is amazing and so fast!!!!!!!!! nice work.

[Netjams]

Thumbs up!

[TimKoene]

Thanks for the kind comments. I have made some progress interfacing it to my pc. Ended up creating a whole new circuit for driving the inputs of the stepper cards and had to reverse engineer the whole control cabinet to find out how to get rid of all the security blocks and startup checks. Finally have it working with TurboCNC though. If time permits I hope to show a pen plot this weekend.