finally got my new nm145

[urbanimports02]

well, to my surprise, my nm-145 showed up yesterday morning( thought i would get a 24hr heads up, not 20 minutes) i was actually out running around when i got the call, so i had to run back real quick to meet the driver. the crate looked perfect, and the mill looks great too. less then 2 hrs after getting it, i had disconnected everything from my nm200, and hooked the pc and related hardware up to the 145, and had it all working well. before i hooked it all up, i looked everything over first to get a feel for how it all works and how it related to my nm200 control, which i am very familiar with at this point. shockingly it homed in nice and all axis move nice and smooth, and the spindle rpm was good. i guess you could say it worked well right out of the box. i read here that someone said the novakon xml file was not correct(think it was rpovey) i did notice that limits were not set, so i carefully traveled each way with the x axis so as not to crush the oil lines, and adjusted the limit set point, and set the parameter in mach. for the y, i ran it back until it hit the limiting bolt, which only had 1 or 2 threads of engagement and popped right off when i bumped it(they had nuts on the bolt to stand it off) i adjusted the limit set point to here, then ran it out 8" and liked what i saw, so i set that as the soft limit in mach(14" on the x) i am sure i can go a little more each way, but i have the nm200 if i need more, so i prefer the little safety margin. i measured over 9" spindle to collumn, so i may tweak the y to get 9" of travel, but no reason to go more then that. one question i have is why are they only using 4:1 micro stepping? my geckos on my nm200 are 10:1 and thought these sinusoidal drivers would be at least that(though i have read there is no reason to go higher) no reason, just curious. so aside from no soft limits being set, and the limit points being loose and not set(they really should set the limits at the factory) and the rapids being set to only 75ipm when they advertise 130, what else should i look for as far as mach settings? mechanically, i will probably just clean everything i can get to and run it. it seems to be getting oil to all the locations, my x ball screw oil lines are not crushed, and i do not see much sand anywhere, so not sure there is a reason to tear it down. i will however be taking the dc motor and controller out and switching to an ac motor and vfd with 1.5:1 ratio running the spindle to 8000rpm. anyone want to buy the dc motor and controller? khai said they have been good lately....

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[rpovey]

Check the X axis ballnut oiler, you can see it under the table from the right hand side.
The oil line has no protection from the endstop and several people have reported them crushed on delivery (mine was).
Replacing it is easy and you can also pull one of the ballnut screws at the same time, replace it with a 20mm longer screw and a lock nut to act as a stop.

I got mine pre-Xmas, the XML file Khai mailed me was for the older hardware. It's only an issue if you didn't buy the built in PC. Novakon clearly have working XML files internally since my mill had clearly been run for testing, but at the point I purchased the one they had for download was out of date. You clearly have the correct XML file, since mine had axis swapped, was set for the wrong number of uSteps and wouldn't run the spindle until I fixed the XML.

I run mine at 150ipm rapids, I could easily run it faster, I just didn't spend a lot of time messing with the tuning.