LinkBack URL
About LinkBacksJust thought I should start a new thread for this project so it doesn't get mixed up with the DC drive story. Will start posting as soon as the VFD gets here.
Just thought I should start a new thread for this project so it doesn't get mixed up with the DC drive story. Will start posting as soon as the VFD gets here.
I just thought I'd preemptively respond to your preemptive post.
I love that cold war talk- takes me back to the good ol' days when your enemy was foreign and red- not the banker next door.Originally Posted by dahui
I just thought I'd preemptively respond to your preemptive post.
That's what we call a false syllogism
Sadly you are correct. All that military spending and the real enemy was wearing a 3 piece suit and playing golf with the President.That's what we call a false syllogism
Now try to keep them 3 dollar words outa here- this here is the Shoptask forum where men are men and book learnin' is optional.
OK guys- stand down- or we're liable to get into a hot war of words with each side going to the dictionary and lobbing longer and more obscure words at each other.
Back to the subject-
Big plus is the controller arrived in a couple of days- in one of those US Post office flat rate boxes. Its a nice unit, but the manual is small enough to have been put in a cracker jack box. I literally have to use a magnifying glass to read some of it. Its niceley made in that modern computer sort of way, with clean plastic housing and membrane keyboard.
Big minus- Whoever designed this thing made in such a way that you cannot get a nice clean installation. The keyboard is on top and the manual says to mount it vertically. But all the connections for the AC input, 3 phase output and other options are by screw terminals on the front of the unit. So you end up with all the wires strung out and sort of wrapped around to the rear. If the keyboard faced the other way, you could at least bundle your wires out the back and out of sight. The keyboard is mounted and shaped so that it can not be turned. It turns out that they have a remote keyboard option, but it doubles the cost of the unit. The computer control option will allow me to mount the whole thing out of sight, but I really wanted to have the ability to work the keyboard as well. I've got an old 3 phase motor I'm going to hook up and test-
You should be able to set it up to run with a pot, contactors, and panel mount buttons if you want to mount the VFD remotely. Not sure if that's still an option.
I have a bag full of Allen Bradley start and stop buttons if you are interested.
Here's a pdf manual for the teco fm50. probably be easier to read.
http://www.tecowestinghouse.com/Manu...anual_0405.pdf
Good Luck
Flathead
Thanks- I had already printed out the more relevant pages. I am thinking about sending it back if they can supply me another unit that has a better design with remote keypad. I would rather pay the freight and re-stock fee than be unhappy looking at all those cables hanging out there.
OK- Here's the latest.
Couldn't handle the funky wiring on the TECO unit, so I sent it back and ordered another from them. They were real good about the exchange and my comments on the design. This new unit is made in China, but its outward quality is the same, with the same basic design as the Teco as to the wiring. The big difference is that it has a cool detachable keyboard and a 15.00 remote cable, so you can put the main box out of sight and mount the keyboard on the front of the machine. You can also order an RS 232 cable to hook it up to a PC and program all the functions from there. Even with all the options added on, its only about 1/2 the price of the Teco with the remote keyboard. Will post some pics after I get all the hookup done.
Take a look at your documentation, on some of those units that have a 232 programming port, they also have an option to run the unit via RTU modbus control. (some of them have an option for 485/422 as well but thats another story).
At any rate, on most programables that are out lately, you can do "Parameter" block addressing as well. You get to some Really high end, diagnostics, monitoring/status and controls. You can have that data accessable in your Mach3 screen. You can also run it with a small PLC that would also give you access to some more functions. You could then do alot of control from your Mach3, and physical buttons.........
If you get "Noise" that is messing with your Step/Dir stuff to your Axis Drives, consider getting a "AC line reactor" on the input side to your VFD, and "RF filters" on the output side of your VFD. If both of your Mill and Lathe motors are the same, you can use contactors/relay combos to switch between which motor your using at the time.
scott
Commercial Mach3: Screens, Wizards, Plugins, Brains,PLCs, Macros, ATC's, machine design/build, retrofit, EMC2, Prototyping. http://sites.google.com/site/volunteerfablab/
Thanks for the tips- reading the manual ( which is much bigger than that old " cracker jack box" one) I see a lot of options etc. I suppose they design these things to be multipurpose for machine tools, automation equipment etc, so they put in a lot of features. For a simple machine like the Shopmaster, just the basics will suit me fine. Since there is some time involved changing from lathe to mill, just using the original push button switches serves fine for changing the motors. In fact, I think I can use just one switch for changing from lathe to mill because the controller has a function to reverse the motors. I'm a little bit " old school" when it comes to that stuff, and always sorta skeptical of using software programs that have low volume production- bugs always seem to crawl out from somewhere, negating any advantage they offer. That PC hookup sounds interesting, but for my purpose, the keyboard will probably do everything I need.
My DRO has nice shielded cables, but the CNC cables just have a tin foil wrap under the outer cover- I will definitely watch for noise problems.
Posting Permissions
