Interface electronics advice X3

[matth]

Hi all,

I'm hoping for some advice from you guys in the know regarding the best / most appropriate electronics for my project.

I have most of the parts for my X3 conversion; CNCFusion deluxe kit, steppers and drivers from Zapp Automation (simlier to the Kellings etc). I have a 1.8KW AC Brushless servo with driver/controller (BonMet) for the spindle motor (which I'd like to be able to do rigid tapping with etc).

I have a fairly standard break out board at the moment and I have a full blown copy of Mach 3 (which I purchased some years ago for a cnc router which has since been disassembled).

Looking around there are currently a number of better options for interfacing all this kit i.e. the smoothstepper, CNC4PC boards, Galil etc.

What would you recommend for this setup?

Cheers,

Matt.

[Al_The_Man]

Maybe look at Dynomotion Kflop/kanalog
Al.

[matth]

Thanks Al,

i've had a quick look in the past but the C code editing put me off a bit. The electronics and power circuitry is fine with me but I always let myself down on the software side (i'm bad enough with Mach)!

[matth]

Just a couple of pics to show this isn't a vapourware project:

First shows my mottley collection of electronics (item of contention is the UIRobot BOB).
Second shows the 2 power supplies I will be using, the big one is a 48v and the smaller is a 5v, 12v and 24v unit that will run the electronics and the holding brake on the spindle.
Pic 3 shows the servo mounted to the head. I have been able to direct drive the spindle with a 1.5:1 gear up to give me a final drive speed of 4500RPM.
The last pic shows the table with the CNCFusion kit installed and air cylinder that will power my PDB.

[samco]

have you looked at linuxcnc?

LinuxCNC.org

It will rigid tap without any external hardware (just printer port)

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=C740zS9R9kk]Rigid Tapping M3X 5 750rpm - YouTube

You need a spindle encoder - a/b/z so you would need at least 3 inputs.

No C programming unless you want to. You will probably have to edit a few config files (there is a wizard for setting up linuxcnc but I don't know if it does what is needed for rigid tapping) but it isn't hard at all. You are limited in speed as far as how fast the printer port can count the spindle encoder. There is also inexpensive interface hardware that take the heavy lifting out of the computer (like encoder counting, PWM generation, and such) The mesa 5i25 emulates a printer port (so you could use your existing bob) but does the high speed stuff - and also give you an option of using one of their break out boards that give you a bunch more options and I/O.

LinuxCNC Documentation Wiki: LinuxCNC Supported Hardware

sam

[matth]

Thanks for the information sofar chaps.
Just to define the requirement and my thinking a bit more: attached is a pic of my spindle servo drive control setup. What I'm really after is the best solution for integrating with the 1024cpr differential encoder.

I have taken a closer look at Kflop and it does look good (I see that it only accepts single ended encoders).
With my albeit limited experience with Mach I don't think I will venture down the EMC/LinuxCNC route (but thanks for the info Sam, I did take a look).

Does anyone know how the smoothstepper deals with spindle sync?

Al, did you take the plunge and go with the Kflop?

Cheers,

Matt.

[matth]

Sorry for the rambling but just getting my thoughts down as I pour over all the information available.

I have confirmed that the smoothstepper can take the differential encoder input (from the mach 3 forum).

I have also been looking over Yantra3D's thread about tapping with the Kflop.
Looks like a toss up between the Smooth stepper and the Kflop.

Any votes for or against?

[matth]

I also see that you can connect glass scale encoders to the Kflop and use them as a closed loop system with steppers. This is very interesting as it could eliminate the backlash present in the axis.

Leaning towards the Kflop at the moment.

[matth]

Ok, so having read through the Kflop documentation a bit more I have taken the plunge and ordered one.
I will also add glass scales to the X Y of my mill so I can setup stepper closed loop control.