Any experiences with CNC 6040 ROUTER?

[Adverse Effects]

[*]It woud seem that some of the above are supposedly shipping from Australia, and some from the US.
Since I am in Japan, I would think that shipping directly from China to Japan would be much cheaper, but that does not seem to be the case - does anyone know why?

there all shipped from china i emailed several of them when i wanted to get mine

almost none of the prices quoted by them are the real price all the sellers care about is that the total amount will still give them a profit

[aarggh]

I've never understood why shipping to Australia is the same or more than to the US, unless it comes down to the degree of difficulty or the numbers that are being sold. I know to get a container from China is absolutely dirt cheap, but buying single items is very expensive once they are over a certain weight.

One thing you'll need to factor into your cost is the controller, you'll likely need to buy a new one that will work with the machine as the one supplied usually proves near impossible to get working properly.

So far as the machines go, they are all exactly the same, this email I recieved last week from a seller gives some insight as to who your dealing with on Ebay when you are comparing different sellers, chances are they are all the one company!

Don't be afraid to email the seller and ask if they can do better on the price, or on a "Best offer" offer a couple of hundred less, they'll counter offer the middle usually. You can generally save a hundred or so there at least.

cheers,
Ian

Email recieved from seller:

"Hi, this is Alice, thanks for your time to see this email.

I'm Leaving the Taiyou trade Company which manage many eBay seller account, like love-happyshopping, rumei-shopping, Qiandingzhensatisfaction, tool-zoom, world-etrade, industry-village, wholesale2worldwide, equipmentwholesaler1, Hotitemsale, Happykisssoul, Digitalzoneproduct, Beautydirectmall and so on. "

[larryy1022]

I am thinking about buying a Chinese 6040 CNC, and I have come up with a list of eBay resellers (I live in Japan).

eBay reseller__________CNC 6040____Ship to JPN__Total
---------------------------------------------------------
equipmentwholesaler1___US $970.00 + $898.00____$1,868
rumei-shopping_________US $882.00 + $986.00____$1,868
qiandingzhensatisfaction_US $1,796.00 + $99.00____$1,895
industry-village_________US $1,769.00 + $130.00___$1,899
world-etrade___________US $1,201.00 + $694.00___$1,895
amonstar______________US $1,699.00 + $299.00___$1,998

1. It woud seem that some of the above are supposedly shipping from Australia, and some from the US.
   Since I am in Japan, I would think that shipping directly from China to Japan would be much cheaper, but that does not seem to be the case - does anyone know why?
   
2. Is there any benefit (or drawback) to purchasing the 6040 CNC directly from one of the makers on alibaba.com or madeinchina.com?
   I would assume that eBay is the more trusted route, as sellers want to maintain their positive feedback (all of the above have 99%+ on eBay).

I can tell you Manufacturers, Suppliers, Exporters & Importers from the world's largest online B2B marketplace-Alibaba.com or www.made-in-china.com( not madeinchina) is much more trustable than ebay.
I mean....if you want to choose a China supplier.

As alibaba charges a gold supplier at least 4600 USD per year, and arrange people to check factory, registrition license...etc.
If no good product, few suppliers would invest this money.

I saw many foreigners complaining China products' terriable quality,,,,,the reason is very simple, most of them went to unreasonable cheap products that even no one use in China.....

[itain]

I'm thinking about buying a smaller 3040 model and I have some questions that I hope could be answered here. There various sires are very confusing about different models. Right now I'm focusing on the 3040Z+S that's using ball screws and a 800W VFD spindle. I haven't ordered anything yet so I'm open for suggestions on other models.

How much noise do these routers really make? Can the noise be effectively reduced building a enclosure (that will not limit the normal operation)?

I may want to upgrade with a 4'th rotary axis. What would be the max diameter and length or a workpiece? Will it be possible to do such upgrade when buying the engraver (possibly get a better deal and maybe save something on shipping)?

What materials could I work with (except wood and plastics). What about aluminium? Fiberglass? Carbon Fiber? (assuming a suitable tool and slow speed). Any special instruction for handling these materials?

Thank you very much,
-- Itai

[fox3d]

I got mine. do far i have only grief... I have 4 computer and all of them are 64 bit. lpt port won't work, so i had to buy 32 bit computer..
when it finally start working. up and down, left and right, forward and backward.
I install limit switches x 3. pure awesomeness
than i have decided to run some work... piece of wood. end mill. everything was ready and on place.
turned VFD on, and everything went nuts. machine start going all directions in random order. result = broken end mill...
piece of sh.........

i guess now its the time to change stepper motor cables in to shielded ones?
is an 4 wire + shield audio cable any good? or it has to be special cable?

for the spindle cable. should i change it to shielded one or not?
did the test with grounded tin foil wrapped around VFD cable but result was the same.
does anybody knows why it is happening ??

thanks

[aarggh]

i guess now its the time to change stepper motor cables in to shielded ones?
is an 4 wire + shield audio cable any good? or it has to be special cable?

for the spindle cable. should i change it to shielded one or not?
did the test with grounded tin foil wrapped around VFD cable but result was the same.
does anybody knows why it is happening ??

thanks

Unfortunately I'm pretty sure what your experiencing now is the fact that these are cheap and rubbish Chinese controllers, and they do not work. Period.

The machines are good value, but they are supplied with a buffer board and controller that is poor design, and poorly earthed and powered. What this means is that with the spindle off, the controller sort of works mostly allright, but as soon as you turn the spindle on there is so much noise feedback all over the circuit the controller interprets that as input and moves all over the place.

This is not easily fixed, if you want to you'll need to have a good read through the zone, such as the links I've put just below, also do a search on al_the_man, he has some great earthing advice, but again, this will not be easily fixed. You can use the very best quality shielded cable till the cows come home, but if you don't actually fix the board design and earthing issues, it will make no difference whatsoever. I would strongly recommend not wasting further time on it and buy a good controller like a G540, Linistepper, or similar, as you probably have a greater than 95% chance you'll never get it working, unless you have a bit of decent analog/digital electronics knowledge.

Try these links for some info.

good luck,
Ian

http://www.cnczone.com/forums/chines...40_router.html

http://www.cnczone.com/forums/genera...y_chinese.html

http://www.shield.net/files/catalogue/support/2.4.pdf

Video Cable Shielding -- Blue Jeans Cable

[aarggh]

I forgot to add, the 800w spindle is really a great little unit, and is more than capable of machining fairly thick aluminium, I made a 38mm thick spindle mount with one, no problems. The noise I don't consider bad at all, they are not on the same noise level as wood routers, far better than them. A lot of use though could anoy the people around so an enclosure or cover of some sort would dampen things really well.

cheers,
Ian

[fox3d]

guy who sold me this cnc asked me do make video showing issue.
so i did, and some tests with oscilloscope etc.
sorry for hectic random video, i had not much time to do it. but i think is really interesting.
i hope you will like it



cheers
fox

[port_huon]

Good video - it shows just how bad the electrical side of these units is.
Replace the stepper cables and earth the spindle/frame.

[aarggh]

Seriously, lodge a paypal claim immediately if you can, try to recoup a little refund to put towards a controller that actually works. In case the seller deliberately strings you along with promisies of sorting it out (very, very common!), just lodge a claim, and then let them sort it out. They'll stuff you around until the claim period is over otherwise, then it's just tough luck.

Although you seem to be a little luckier than a lot of others, you're one responds to commands it seems. Be aware, there is another serious issue with these controllers, it was something in that if you don't power them up or down properly, the drivers IC's blow! I can't remember the exact details but it will be in the threads listed earlier. Unless you feel like rewiring and altering the circuit boards, I'd say this controller is toast. As has been mentioned anyway, the boards, even if they worked, and if they also weren't prone to blowing the chips if the wind changes direction, are still just a plain bad design.

cheers,
Ian

[Helloagain]

Hi,

I still think the worst point in these devices is the parallel interface board, and the wrong chips on them.
E.g. I have no shielded cables on my machine, and no problems at all (after some modifications of the interface board).

To see, if this could be your problem:

* Measure what voltage the output pins on your parallel board have. If they have 3.3V, then you probably found your problem.
*Also measure the voltage on the pins, when the interface is connected, and with the spindle on.

IMHO the noise has not enough amperage to go through the optocouplers. Therefore either before or after them, the noise is pickup up in a high impedance part.
So another interesting thing to look would be, the scope signal after the optocouplers. If they obviously come from the interface side, you will see that immediately (namely a digitized logic level noise), if the noise is pickup up on the driver card itself, then, you will see there a normal noise (like you saw, in your video).

[fox3d]

Thanks for the ideas :-)
I will do some more experiments tommorow.
Showing the progress of debugging on video might be a good idea for the future generations :-)

[MarcusWolschon]

Best guess for the noise are probably the cables and the spindle-motor.
Did anyone replace the original ones with shielded cables, isolate spindle from frame and still have the noise issue?

[aarggh]

Best guess for the noise are probably the cables and the spindle-motor.
Did anyone replace the original ones with shielded cables, isolate spindle from frame and still have the noise issue?

This has been done many, many times with no success or even slight improvement by people. The problems lie with design issues beyond just the earthing and noise immunity problems.

Cheers,
Ian

[Adverse Effects]

Be aware, there is another serious issue with these controllers, it was something in that if you don't power them up or down properly, the drivers IC's blow!

my problems are in this thread

[fox3d]

well, now i see my future with this machine.. G540

i have to say that i was really pist off at the first go. because i bought this machine to do some work on my already big project. and now i have 2 projects.

my next project is just to show step by step, what you will have to go through if you buy this machine.

F load of PAIN
now i find it just funny.
whoever manufacture this cutting edge Chinese engineering electronics combined with brilliancy of their minds in wiring this machine in the way that is able to mill anything by it self, without any software to drive it.
should made a tiny tiny innovation, they should sell just a hardware, without any controllers or artificial intelligence cables.
Its pure state of art for creative minds, in comparison to the kinder surprise which comes with manual.
great DIY project for long winter days. pocket drilling experience.
definitely no Plug And Play feature

well.... its a piece of kaka

[jaru-eri]

They offer now a new model of the 6040 router.

CNC 6040Z-S80 ROUTER ENGRAVER DRILLING AND MILLING MACHINE - carving-cnc.com

Do you think this will be a better choice than the older one?

[MarcusWolschon]

They offer now a new model of the 6040 router.

CNC 6040Z-S80 ROUTER ENGRAVER DRILLING AND MILLING MACHINE - carving-cnc.com

Do you think this will be a better choice than the older one?

It's the one I ordered a few days ago.
Will tell you when it's here.


What is the inductance of the stepper motors? (To choose and order a power supply with the apropriate voltage for a Gecko G540. Don't want to waste time by waiting for 2 transatlantic shipment in a row.)

[aarggh]

Looking at the new model, the only real difference I see is that the controller case has black panels instead of blue. The machine construction looks identical to my model, with an auto zero probe included.

These machines if you get them at a good price, are really good value and perform quite well, the only caveat is the crap controller.

cheers,
Ian

[itain]

Ian, Thanks for all the info!

I see that you have recommended on Linistepper drivers. As far as I have found they support only unipolar steppers and they gat pretty hot (esp when using microstepping, hard to handle more than 1.5A). Have I missed anything?