Alright a small update. I really cranked the oil output of the lubricator up and was able to get lots of oil to each component but it was/is way to much oil. I think I may have the wrong type of oiler, mine is a mist oiler and I think I may need a microfog oiler. For now I was able to get some lube to things so I could keep moving.
I have been trying to button up odds and ends on the machine while I wait for a timing belt for the Y axis. I wanted to mount the control panel to the machine that way if I ever need to move it I could more easily move it. Unfortunately I could not come up with a good way to mount with the space I have available to I mounted it to the wall with some unistrut. I have the main power just temporarily installed until I can re-run it permanently. I need to mount a cooling fan in the cabinet yet. On the previous machine I had the controls up high and just always ran with the door open. Early on I also wanted to see what the drives were doing so having it open helped. Now I am comfortable in how the control operates I think I can have the door shut.
Next was to finally level the machine, I used 3/4 inch leveling feet from mcmaster one at each corner. The leveling went ok using 12 inch starrett machinist levels having the whole table machined made leveling very easy. One thing I wish I had done differently is to use fine thread leveling feet. It was everything I could do to turn the wrench when I had to jack a corner of the machine. I actually got the floor jack under the one corner to ease some weight on the leveling bolt.
I ran the gantry servo motor auto tuning and learned I still need to bolt this machine down even though it probably is in the 7000lb neighborhood. With the gantry running 2 inches and an acceleration of 150 in/sec2 it walked the machine all around. The auto tuning also failed about 70% through I think this was do to the walking, it was causing error/overshoots/etc. In order to get the system to finish the tuning I dropped the accel to 100 for now so that I could get a good initial PID tuning from the autotuning function. I will need to re-level the machine once I am ready to bolt it in place.
Here is a video of the X axis running 600IPM and still the 100 accel
One thing I am struggling with, the X axis servos will fight each other a bit. I had this trouble on the old machine but because the x axis linear rails moved a bit (they had no reference and were just bolted to epoxy) it really wasnt a concern. On this machine there is no movement so the servos are really straining. What I mean by fighting each other;
When the machine is first powered on and I enable Mach4 both servo controls are reading roughly the same torque output (I have the display set to torque) the display shows + or - 1 or 2. Then I home the machine. During the home jog the 2 x axis servos read close to the same torque call it -20. Once the machine comes to a stop after the home sequence the output is no longer the same one might show -20 other shows +20 and these numbers fluctuate. When the machine is disabled there is an audible bump that comes from this fight being released also the DRO moves a bit as the servo (assume Motor 0) rolls back. When it is re-enabled there is another bump as they each drive to their previous position. To me it is as if the 2 servos are homing to a different spot or something however that shouldnt be possible.
I have just 1 home switch for the x and both motors are mapped to it
Motor 4 is slaved to Motor 0 in Mach
In the CSLABS config I have home to index turned off
In Mach 4 controls the motors are setup exactly the same
All mechanical hardware has been checked and re-checked
Any servo experts out there have some thoughts? My initial thinking is something is not set right in the servo drives themselves. I have gone through every perimeter and made sure they are the same on both drives. I also did the voltage 0 procedure on both drives which didnt seem to help. The odd part to me is that before the homing they are running very in sync so something during the homing causes this.
Any help is greatly appreciated, hopefully it is just something I am overlooking.