Automate my shop with a CNC Driller machine

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    Default Automate my shop with a CNC Driller machine

    At my shop we have a need to start automating a process of drilling lots of holes in sheet metal.
    I'm talking 10,000 to 80,000 little holes in a fixed pattern. The sheet metal material varies from Grade 70 Steel to 304L 8 guage stainless steel.
    The pattern changes slightly and the diameter does too. My plan is to build a machine that is 5' X 10' using 80/20 T-slot aluminum.
    Eventually I want to have 2 gantries running on the same table with stops at the mid section.
    My question have to do with finding the right drill like the Grizzly Drilling CNC makes that is 1 HP, 0 to 2600 RPM that I can buy to mount on my Gantry. And using the right cnc tool or bit to drill the holes.
    I do have plans for the T-Slot table, Gantry and Z Axis hardware.... but to be honest that is the easy part. It's the machanics and technology to make it all work that I'm still working to understand and implement.

    I've done this (drilling) for years using conventional drills and good old sweat but that is very labor intensive and expensive to do. In the last 2 years alone, we drilled over 500,000 holes, and know what drill bits work best. How long they will work, how many times you can resharpen, when to use cutting oil and when it will not help etc.

    Any thoughts or ideas are appreciated and, would go to a shop to physically see someone's machine or idea.

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    Default Re: Automate my shop with a CNC Driller machine

    Hello.

    If I understood correctly the drills you make change only in sizes. If that is correct the system I´m about to describe might be a good solution. If for any reason you need to enlarge a hole by moving the tool in a path around a given position, that would not be possible and you would need a full CNC system.

    Trajectory generation as that performed in let me call them standard CNC machines requires a lot of mathematical computations for the tool to move along a mathematically defined path and kept close enough to it so that deviations are kept to a minimum.

    In your particular case it does not matter how the tool is moved from one point to the next. At this point it is interesting to know that straight lines while being the shortest distance they do not make the distance in the shortest time. What I mean with that is that in this case it is better to let the motor on each axis to move freely unrelated one to the other. That way it may be possible that one motor gets to a target position before the other.

    Having said that I would use a simple GWBASIC program to control de positioning of the tool and execute the drilling movement.

    One problem I cannot solve "on the fly" is how to automate the tool changing process but since you automate the most of the process manual tool change at a HOME position may not be a problem. If it is let me know.

    There might be options using PLCs but to my taste they become expensive and difficult to maintain. In the PC you can set the microstep (the minimum distance an axis moves for a single input pulse) and then have the program calculate the needed microsteps required to move from one position to the next, In low cost PLCs you have to calculate those quantities yourself and feed them into every single move. You can also have the PC repeat the aforementioned movements as many times as you may require as blocks.

    Perhaps the newer PLCs allow for block repetitions. I don´t know. It´s been quit a while since I used a commercial one and might not be aware of the advances. The only thing I´m sure of, in my personal opinion, is that their pricing appear to be at least in the range of low cost PCs but without their advantages.

    There are a number of "PLC controlled CNCs" that you can watch in Youtube. If you do, notice that they normilly move in straight lines either horizontal, vertical or 45 degrees. That is because they don´t really sincronize the motors.

    If you would like to know more about this idea please let me know.

    Regards.



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    Community Moderator Jim Dawson's Avatar
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    Default Re: Automate my shop with a CNC Driller machine

    What a fun project.

    Let's start with what is the minimum and maximum hole diameters that you are working with? If the hole diameters are in the right range, it might be possible to use router spindles as the drill heads. I'm picturing hole sizes around 3/16'' or so which means the 2600 RPM would be a bit slow for an efficient CNC drilling machine. Correct me if I'm wrong here.

    Rather than 2 gantrys, it is common to install 2 or more drill heads on a single gantry and operate them together. Each head would be independently manually adjustable for lateral spacing at some multiple of the hole spacing then all work together as a unit for drilling the hole patterns.

    Jim Dawson
    Sandy, Oregon, USA


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    Quote Originally Posted by Jim Dawson View Post
    What a fun project.

    Let's start with what is the minimum and maximum hole diameters that you are working with? If the hole diameters are in the right range, it might be possible to use router spindles as the drill heads. I'm picturing hole sizes around 3/16'' or so which means the 2600 RPM would be a bit slow for an efficient CNC drilling machine. Correct me if I'm wrong here.

    Rather than 2 gantrys, it is common to install 2 or more drill heads on a single gantry and operate them together. Each head would be independently manually adjustable for lateral spacing at some multiple of the hole spacing then all work together as a unit for drilling the hole patterns.
    My drill sizes start pretty small, 3/32" to 3/16"
    On an indivual sheet, let's say 4'x8' we can drill up to 10,000 holes, we've done as many as 20,000 holes.
    The hole size for each sheet would be the same size. But there are times we do change hole size for the design needed.
    I've thought of the double drill on each gantry, and that is a design I'm looking at.
    But there would be a problem on the edges. Holes are typically less that 1 inch apart.
    Typically, 0.75 to 0.50" but again each deck we build can vary.



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    Quote Originally Posted by BBMNet View Post
    Hello.

    If I understood correctly the drills you make change only in sizes. If that is correct the system I´m about to describe might be a good solution. If for any reason you need to enlarge a hole by moving the tool in a path around a given position, that would not be possible and you would need a full CNC system.

    Trajectory generation as that performed in let me call them standard CNC machines requires a lot of mathematical computations for the tool to move along a mathematically defined path and kept close enough to it so that deviations are kept to a minimum.

    In your particular case it does not matter how the tool is moved from one point to the next. At this point it is interesting to know that straight lines while being the shortest distance they do not make the distance in the shortest time. What I mean with that is that in this case it is better to let the motor on each axis to move freely unrelated one to the other. That way it may be possible that one motor gets to a target position before the other.

    Having said that I would use a simple GWBASIC program to control de positioning of the tool and execute the drilling movement.

    One problem I cannot solve "on the fly" is how to automate the tool changing process but since you automate the most of the process manual tool change at a HOME position may not be a problem. If it is let me know.

    There might be options using PLCs but to my taste they become expensive and difficult to maintain. In the PC you can set the microstep (the minimum distance an axis moves for a single input pulse) and then have the program calculate the needed microsteps required to move from one position to the next, In low cost PLCs you have to calculate those quantities yourself and feed them into every single move. You can also have the PC repeat the aforementioned movements as many times as you may require as blocks.

    Perhaps the newer PLCs allow for block repetitions. I don´t know. It´s been quit a while since I used a commercial one and might not be aware of the advances. The only thing I´m sure of, in my personal opinion, is that their pricing appear to be at least in the range of low cost PCs but without their advantages.

    There are a number of "PLC controlled CNCs" that you can watch in Youtube. If you do, notice that they normilly move in straight lines either horizontal, vertical or 45 degrees. That is because they don´t really sincronize the motors.

    If you would like to know more about this idea please let me know.

    Regards.
    I'm open to a challenge, so you are saying to have the drills fixed and move the table?
    Look at my other reply, on further details... without giving away to many secrets.



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    Community Moderator Jim Dawson's Avatar
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    Default Re: Automate my shop with a CNC Driller machine

    Quote Originally Posted by Rplummer3 View Post
    My drill sizes start pretty small, 3/32" to 3/16"
    On an indivual sheet, let's say 4'x8' we can drill up to 10,000 holes, we've done as many as 20,000 holes.
    The hole size for each sheet would be the same size. But there are times we do change hole size for the design needed.
    I've thought of the double drill on each gantry, and that is a design I'm looking at.
    But there would be a problem on the edges. Holes are typically less that 1 inch apart.
    Typically, 0.75 to 0.50" but again each deck we build can vary.
    To accommodate the edge, each drill head could operate independently in the Z axis, powered by an air cylinder and a solenoid valve, with a hydraulic damper attached. That gives you very good control over the feed rate, while dramatically simplifying the control system. With that many holes, I would probably hang about 10 heads across the gantry.

    For that drill size range, a router spindle with a 4 pole motor would be perfect. That would get you down as low as about 4000 RPM for stainless and a max RPM around 18,000 for steel with the smallest bits.

    Jim Dawson
    Sandy, Oregon, USA


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    Default Re: Automate my shop with a CNC Driller machine

    Hello again.

    May I refer you to the two following videos?





    These are two chain quilters using the same breakout card as shown in the picture. It is no more than a ULN2803 chip and 5 pieces of 1/2 Watt 3900 ohm resistors connected to the LPT port on a PC on one side and to the drivers, microswitch and main motor status monitor on the machine.

    While both programs appear to do the same job, the first one was written in old reliable GWBASIC and the other one was entirely written in assembler.

    The reason for me to have both versions is that the first one is used for the retrofitting of old mechanical machines that do not stand the high speed as those like the one in the second video being a rehabilitated originally CNC equipped machine that withstand speeds nearly triple of those in the first group. The price of this latter system is nearly twice that of the first.

    Just as a reference, the language I use has its own instructions: LIN, CW, CCW, DWELL, TLON, TLOFF, GOSUB, GOTO, END. I have the postprocessor to convert to and from "standard" (if there is any) GCODE.

    That language is a lot simpler to understand to my clients so that they can relatively easy either change the provided programs or write their own. And I don´t need as many functions as other CNC processes require. My attention needs to be in other problems that arise due the fact that in this case we are dealing with soft and bendable materials. Vertices and edges as well as distortion compensation are of much more interest here.

    To solve the problem of drilling holes in determined positions can easily be solved by and old program I published years ago. I believe it is still available. Yet it was designed to directly drive step motors taken from old 5.25" inch disk drives and as such it would not be directly useful to drive any current drive without "translation". The link directs you to that video.



    A stripped down version of that program might be the solution to this problem. At this time I believe the only needed instructions would be LIN, TLON, TLOFF, ZUP, ZDWN, DOBLK, END.

    Any other ideas?

    Just as a challenge to myself I will start rewriting that code. I´ll then show you the results. If I succed maybe it can be useful to many.

    Regards.

    Attached Thumbnails Attached Thumbnails Automate my shop with a CNC Driller machine-dsc_0007-1-jpg  


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    Default Re: Automate my shop with a CNC Driller machine

    Hello again.

    I believe I have been messing too much with this thread. I don´t like it.

    I have opened a new thread named DIY PC BASED CNC CONTROLLER. There I will present the design of a CNC controller program written in GWBASIC running under FreeDOS.

    Using the technique of minimum distance the main axes motors, namely X & Y, will be driven into secuential coordinates stopping at each one to perform the single movement of the Z axis (drilling cycle). In that thread I already posted two versions of a program to drill two rows of 10 holes each separated 10 cms from each other and from row to row.

    I would like to know what our host Rplummer3 thinks about it as I think that might be what he may be looking for.

    At this moment program DRLMAP1.TXT has been simulated in my full CNC version of the control program. Unfortunately the video is slightly less than garbage. I´ll try to get a better camera.

    Best regards.

    PS: I hope to meet you all in that new thread.



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    Quote Originally Posted by BBMNet View Post
    Hello again.

    I believe I have been messing too much with this thread. I don´t like it.

    I have opened a new thread named DIY PC BASED CNC CONTROLLER. There I will present the design of a CNC controller program written in GWBASIC running under FreeDOS.

    Using the technique of minimum distance the main axes motors, namely X & Y, will be driven into secuential coordinates stopping at each one to perform the single movement of the Z axis (drilling cycle). In that thread I already posted two versions of a program to drill two rows of 10 holes each separated 10 cms from each other and from row to row.

    I would like to know what our host Rplummer3 thinks about it as I think that might be what he may be looking for.

    At this moment program DRLMAP1.TXT has been simulated in my full CNC version of the control program. Unfortunately the video is slightly less than garbage. I´ll try to get a better camera.

    Best regards.

    PS: I hope to meet you all in that new thread.

    Love the ideas, in the middle of finishing up a 60,000 job.
    I'll check out the new thread over the weekend



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    Default Re: Automate my shop with a CNC Driller machine

    Hello.

    I´ve just posted the interface (breakout) card used by one of my systems. You may find it interesting because other that the PC and the step motor drivers no further electronics is needed.

    A program to drill 4 holes is a diamond shaped path is what was programmed. The reason for the actual path is due the motor relations of to their transmissions. Note that XSTEP & YSTEP are different. However the only actual points of importance are the four drilled holes disegarding how the machine moved to those positions.

    Regarding contouring, this apparently old technology is still well and alive. It is being used in many hobby and professional quilting and embroidery machines. The second picture is taken from a pattern taken from a commercial quilter The trick to make this type of figures is to provide as many positions as you can. The more you provide and the closer they are from one another the most perfect shape you accomplish.

    As I´ve mentioned before this is a NC not a CNC wich means that for some patterns specially those of contouring the files might get pretty big. Please check the enclosed picture.

    The included file SNAILOEM.TXT is the pattern used in the XLG image. Please note the size.

    The included file DRLTST.TXT is the one used to produce the figure of the DIAMOND picture.

    It may be an interesting exercise if you could write a listing according to how the included TXT files are written. In any case the format you could use is a simple TXT file with lines like the ones that follow.

    REM: DRILL PATTERN
    LIN: 1000, 1000
    DRILL: DEPTH
    LIN: 2000, 1500
    DRILL: DEPTH
    ,
    ,
    ,
    END:

    I can take that and complete the program.

    It is interesting to know that regarding only the software your cost would be in the range of $500.00 to $1,000.00 USD. If that appeals to you it might be a choice.

    Just out of curiosity, may I suggest you take a look at post I mentioned before?

    Note: this program is part of a project I´ve been commissioned to develop as one of my clients wants to manufacture certaing type of quilts in short runs.

    Best regards.

    Attached Thumbnails Attached Thumbnails Automate my shop with a CNC Driller machine-diamond-jpg   Automate my shop with a CNC Driller machine-xlg-jpg  
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