Ok - I'm not about to argue it. All I know are some scattered tests from a couple old houses - and I try to avoid fights where I know I'm probably both wrong
and likely to lose.
(wow, the younger me would've
hated me for saying that)
(wow, I miss the younger me.)
Fair enough. Sounds like a pretty good reason not to use a jumper.
I
think I've still got a relay output free on the controller, which would make things easy. Otherwise it may get a little complicated.
Thus the problem.
I can't speak for spongebob, but I wanted the larger collet for occasional (very) light-duty use of larger tools (things like resurfacing spoilboards) and for no-load items like edgefinders that are harder to find or simply unavailable with small shanks. Since no one makes a little spindle with a big collet - for exactly the reasons you mention - I was stuck getting something much larger and heavier than I really wanted. After working with it off & on for a year, though, I love it, even if the machine's too light to use any significant fraction of the available power,
Now this I'm afraid I have to take some issue with. Those two statements can't both be true. If the manual were fine, thousands of people wouldn't have had to come here for you to tell them what the correct settings were. The fact is, it seems to almost completely overlook the model it was shipped with (or the entire 110V range), many of the listed defaults are wrong (if not impossible to set), and the writing tends toward vagueness and ambiguous translations. As foreign manuals go, it's not a
bad manual by any stretch - I've struggled with far worse - but it's far from being a
good one, and calling it "fine" is far too generous for something that's caused that many problems for that many people.
But, manual aside...From what I've been able to gather (based largely on
this post, and I hope you'll correct me if things have since changed) the main flaws in my settings were - aside from using 110V instead of 120V in a few places - mostly confined to unset/miss-set lower limits. Presumably my ass (or at least my spindle) was saved on that one by the fact that I don't think I ever ran below about 6-7k rpm, and never took a cut much below 10k - so the only time it tended to spend in the danger zone (cue Kenny Loggins) was during acceleration and braking.
The only other outlier I noticed was pd144, which I'd incorrectly listed as 1440. That was actually the
default (what good is taking notes if I can't read the damn things?), and I believe mine had been set correctly at 3000, as it
did display rpm accurately (as confirmed with a tachometer) while I know that other settings resulted in wonky values.
Ahhh, yes. I remember realizing that waaay back when I was getting everything set up, then realizing it wouldn't work on the plastic case of the VFD and figuring it could wait until I put together the metal enclosure for it. Which, apparently, it was still waiting for at the time of death. Oops.
Guess I'll add that to the shopping list along with the new VFD.
So if I read this right you're suggesting just removing the whole receptacle from the top of the spindle and replacing it with a gland? I generally like to keep things unpluggable (especially since I'm looking at moving the machine at least once and potentially rebuilding a portion of it some time this summer), in this case I'll definitely consider it.
On a related note (if I can even ask this without a dozen experts suddenly jumping in and arguing back & forth for the next thirty pages) - what's your stance on the the question of whether to ground the shielding at one end or both ends?
I'd believe that if the problem were just the overall noise level. But the problem I was trying to grapple with when I killed it was different.
I started out the afternoon with everything working perfectly (the only problem being the lousy operator), but then, over the course of about three hours, the interference gradually ramped up.
First the controller would randomly stop during toolpaths once in a while - although I could still engage & release feed hold to get it moving again...
Then it was stopping more often and was less willing to resume....
Then it would crap out almost as soon as the spindle started, and would show occasional noise (corrupted grbl status lines) in the log....
Then, finally, it got to the point where it would start spewing noise in the log as soon as the spindle turned on.
None of the wiring (VFD, spindle, motors, or control), had been changed in at least a week or so (when I set up remote control of the spindle & vacuum from the BlackBox), and, aside from the usual movement of the spindle, it hadn't been moved or even touched in a day or three.
If I had any idea what would cause something like this, I'd feel a lot more comfortable about having to buy the same model again.
(not that I really seem to have much choice, I guess)
That makes it
twice as informative!
-purp