I am kicking some ideas around. Possibly mounting the VFD like this with a factory looking sheet metal enclosure painted to match. At least the VFD color matches the lathe.
Edit: 3-31-13, decided to mount the VFD above the motor on the back side of the lathe.
Last edited by Turbo442; 04-10-2013 at 11:11 PM.
Nice thread Matt. I'm enjoying this. Just a comment about the spindle bearings:
They come from the factory greased, and using the oilers wipes out the grease. (Why did they put that there?) You can see it weeping at the headstock already. You might want to clean it out and get some high-temp grease in there, then refrain from using the oilers, to prevent seizure. Some zerks would be better.
CR.
http://crevicereamer.com
Too many PMs. Email me to my name plus At A O L dot com.
Not much done today. Index disk installed. Next I will mount the sensor. Machined it on the CNC mill out of .049 sheet aluminum.
Last edited by Turbo442; 03-04-2013 at 10:39 AM.
Yes CR I agree, I did my best to flush out the oil today with some wax and grease remover and some compressed air. Put some Kluber on the bearings. Time will tell how good of a job I did!Originally Posted by Crevice Reamer
Do you think if I installed a couple of zerks fittings in place of the oilers we can get grease to the rollers?
Spindle index sensor mounted last night.
Question:
If I add additional holes to my spindle index disk, will this allow Mach to track the spindle rpm more accurately? I am thinking the answer is yes?
The CNC kit arrived from Billy today. Everything arrived in excellent packaging. I am VERY impressed with the machine work so far. Having converted a G0704, I know the time, pain and cost involved in doing this work. The ball screw machining looks great, ball screws feel great as well.
The answer is no, not really. If anything, it's likely to be worse, as it will be more affected by the "jitter" in Mach3s timing. There is really no practical advantage to having more than one pulse per rev, and, IIRC, if you're using it for threading, that *only* works with one pulse per rev.
Regards,
Ray L.
IIRC Mach can only utilize a single pulse.
OK one index hole it is! Thanks for the quick reply guys!
Next step for me will be to get my hardware and motors installed.
Then I will go to town on electrics.
I am going to temporarily mount up my electronics on a piece of plywood to get all of the bugs worked out. It will also give me some time to come up with mounting plans as well as experiment with different switch / EMO options.
The CNC hardware is installed. Everything in the kit shipped assembeled. Everything was torqued correctly and the radial bearings were adjusted perfectly, no slop. It took less than an hour to mount everything including re-adjusting the gibs on the cross slide. I could not not detect any binding, everything fit well and feels tight. The NEMA23 570 oz/in 5A 3/8 shaft dual shaft stepper motors are mounted. The only deviation I requested from Billy was that the X axis pulley accept a 3/8 shaft instead of 1/4. That way I can use identical motors for both axis. Billy bored the pully for me and it fit perfectly on the shaft. The ball screws from Linearmotionbearing are pretty much the best bang for the buck I have found, I am glad that Billy used them, I have a set on my G0704.
I have been working on the electronics. To make things easier they are temporarily mounted on a board for testing. I needed to get a reliable PC going for this machine which required a replacement power supply and CMOS battery, now all is well.
I am using 2 stand in stepper motors for testing as well as a different 3 phase spindle motor and index sensor. Other than that these are the parts I will be using. The stepper motors are now correctly responding to Mach, The spindle index pulse is reporting to Mach.
My next step is to get the VFD to respond to Mach. FORWARD OFF REVERSE and speed control through the C6 board.
This photo is a work in progress, not the final electronics setup. I will be mounting a power switch, EMO and power buss bar as well, just not there yet.
Once the electronics are completed and mounted on this board proving functionality I would like some experts here to hopefully critique the setup, help me make any changes and improvements.
When the electronics setup becomes finalized, I will remount everything on the white board in a logical manner, label everything and take a few high res photos. This will probably help a few people who are struggling with the electronics side of a CNC lathe conversion. I know the electronics side of a CNC conversion can be challenging for people who are not terribly electronics savy.
Not sure why so many threads are locked on CNCZONE? Is there a way to fix this? (EDIT: it no longer shows locked after one post)
Did you login between the time you noticed the threads were locked and when they were unlocked? Threads show locked until you login.
Sent from my Nexus S using Tapatalk 2
CRP-4848 CNC Router, CNC G0463 (Sieg X3) Mill, 9"x20" HF CNC Lathe (current project)
Yes, that seemed to resolve the issue. Thanks!
Need a little C6 help!
OK, looking for a little help from the experts regarding the CNC4PC C6 board. The 1-10V DC variable speed output voltage from the C6 board is not stable. Its jumping around by about 1 volt and causing the VFD/motor to surge.
So far everything is working. I have a good tach signal, it is reporting to Mach with in 1 rpm or so of my optical tach. I haven't tested much above 2500RPM. My stepper motors are running smoothly on the bench. I am using spindle step control output from pin 14. My VFD is currently set to 10 HZ min 60 HZ max. The motor and VFD will run very stable with a potentiometer or from the VFD control. My 5 and 12 v DC input power seems very stable to the C6 and C35 board. My spindle motor will run CW and CCW with the M3 and M4 command. The speed can be adjusted with a M3S500 command and works fine other than the surging. I am currently set to pulley 1, min speed 100 max speed 1000. I have tried tuning the Spindle motor movement profile to within 10 or 15 RPM of actual and it still surges. The closed loop function works correctly, although I have been leaving it off for testing. It will set the spindle RPM very close to the target RPM but it will fluctuate up and down about 30 or 40 RPM.
Some of the things I have tried so far that have not fixed the issue.
1. Different parallel port on the PC.
2. Different output pins for the step signal.
3. Testing the C6 output voltage with and without the spindle motor running.
4. Testing with and with out the optical isolators set on the C6 board.
5. Lots of different motor tuning settings. One thing I have noticed, the higher the step pulse in the SPINDLE MOTOR MOVEMENT PROFILE, the worse it gets. The step pulse is currently set to 1us.
6. Different ground scenarios.
I am considering trying CNC4PC's C41 PWM spindle control board to see if I have any better luck? Any thoughts or things for me to try tomorrow? I have found a few people mentioning the same issue but no real solutions. Some people mentioned grounding and chokes.
Here is a quick video I made that might help explain the issue.
Last edited by Turbo442; 03-11-2013 at 02:21 AM.
I ordered a C41 - PWM Variable Speed Control Board to see if that will resolve me voltage instability issues. My friend is a Electrical Engineer, we tried everything, no luck. Different grounding, different power supplies, batteries, you name it.
I started working on my tool post mount last night. I am using a 4" precision toolmakers vise here. I can easily remove the jaw and mount my AXA tool post which is what I plan on using the most often. As you can see the height is perfect for an AXA tool post with out modifying the vise or cross slide. This setup puts it a 1/2" cutter about dead center of the AXA tool post adjustment. This vise has a precision ground surface and will allow me tons of flexibility in positioning the tool post. The vise can be flipped 90 and 180 deg to allow for different tooling setups. The fixed jaw also provides a precision reference point while using a square. I am thinking I may just bolt it to the cross slide with 8 countersunk cap screws in a square pattern allowing for different mounting options on the crosslide. I would like to have the option to mount it forward and back, parallel or perpendicular on the cross slide if needed. As you can see in the photos I can also use the jaw to clamp the tool post and give the it some extra rigidity. The tool post still releases the tool while clamped in the vise. Also in one of the photos you can see a Tormach style TTS held in by a 3/4 5C collet clamped in the vise. If for some reason I need to use the compound I can easily put it back on.
Last edited by Turbo442; 03-12-2013 at 02:36 PM.
It looks like it might be possible to also bore an R8 taper into the side of the fixed jaw so one could mount a drill chuck and also have a quick and easy TTS setup. I suppose if your bored it with the lathe chuck it would be at the correct height...
just thinking out loud.
Nice!!
Good idea if you can bore into that hardened metal. It might be easier to add a fixture to just clamp up the 3/4 inch TTS holders though.
This setup is just crying out for a rear-mounted parting tool.
CR.
http://crevicereamer.com
Too many PMs. Email me to my name plus At A O L dot com.
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