Reply with QuoteYou part looks great! But I'm curious: Why did you decide to use Smoothsteooer + Mach 3 rather than Pathpilot? With PP you get excellent performance, support from Tormach and for a lower cost than your choices.
Feeling chuffed
Thought I'd celebrate making my first part on my new PCNC440 by posting a couple of pics as my first post here.
The part's the front plate of a gear indicator for racecars and the mill's been converted to run using an Ethernet Smoothsteooer and Mach 3. The solid model was originally Solidworks, but imported to Fusion 360 to do the CAM work. Material is 6082-T6 alloy
The combination certainly impresses me.
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Re: Feeling chuffed
You part looks great! But I'm curious: Why did you decide to use Smoothsteooer + Mach 3 rather than Pathpilot? With PP you get excellent performance, support from Tormach and for a lower cost than your choices.
Re: Feeling chuffed
Glad you like the part - I am blown away by how good it looks and how easy it was to achieve.Originally Posted by kstrauss
I'm not sure why you think PathPilot would be cheaper. Tormach want $715 for the controller and an additional $259 for the touchscreen. That's as good as $1000 before you realise I'm in the UK and have to pay shipping, VAT and duty on top of that. And you can't even blame Microsoft for the licence costs.
On the other hand, the computer I use is one of the Minix Neo micro computers, running Windows 10 for around £120 and I've paired it with an Asus VT168N touchscreen that cost £127. If you consider I already owned both (used to automate my old Myford lathe) and a licence for Mach3, it's pretty hard to see why I'd want to fork out that kind of cash for a Linux box.
My lathe and mill each have a smooth stepper and with different ip addresses for each, all you need is a small Ethernet switch to run both from the same computer/screen.
Yes, Pathpilot has prettier graphics and looks like it has more of the frequently used buttons in sensible places, but I use Fusion360 to look at my designs and toolpaths and it's even prettier and I run it on a computer that's a lot more powerful than the PathPilot controller.
Re: Feeling chuffed
It is unfair to compare Tormach prices to something that you already have!
If cost matters (it does for most of us) don't consider purchasing a Tormach computer. I ran my 770 for over a year using a junque Dell mid-tower and similar machines are probably available at you local tip for free. Most any machine with a PCI slot and 4GB of RAM will probably suffice. No DVD drive is required. All you need to purchase is the Mesa card (from Tormach or directly from Mesa) for about us$100 and order the PP2 memory stick for $20 or so. If you want an Ethernet attached controller get a Mesa 7i92 and then there is no need for the PCI slot. I don't know about the Asus touchscreen but it may work with PP since Linux supports many flavours and according to https://gist.github.com/Francesco149...4bb171d88eb0it works with Ubuntu.
Re: Feeling chuffed
If I was comparing Tormach's prices to the cost of something I already own, I'd have described my computer and monitor as costing £0. The prices I gave are the cost of buying brand new hardware and not simply scavenging old stuff that might do the job and Tormach's prices don't look very attractive to me even at that.
Yes, I know Linux comes in many flavours and runs on lots of hardware, but so far as I know, Tormach only support 1 and it costs $715. That's a lot of dosh for a modest desktop computer nowadays and it would have to do something more than be 'just about the same' to justify that price tag.
The hardware/software setup I have is one I've used for a few years now and I know it works hour after hour. That in itself is worth a great deal to me.
Re: Feeling chuffed
what exactly come on the pp 2.0 use stick? The site states that it requires the 1.9 version.
The upgrade requires pp 1.9. New controllers ship with pp 2. Since you have a 440, you can get pp from tormach for nothing (or almost nothing) and install it on whatever. Several have installed it on their own hardware.
Re: Feeling chuffed
Not quite true.
You would still need the Mesa card.
What he has seems to work fine. Looks great.
Lee
Re: Feeling chuffed
I'm confused. Since the PP2 USB drive is bootable I assumed that that was all that is required. You said that PP1.9 is required for installation yet new controllers ship with PP2. If I need 1.9 then how do I re-install PP2 if my HD dies?
Re: Feeling chuffed
All it takes to run Pathpilot is a 5 year old desktop computer, a $89 Mesa 5i25 or 6i25 card, and $20 for the USB PP stick.
Much cheaper than the retrofit you did. And PP is pretty friendly to sticking it on a generic desktop.
You DON'T have to have pre-existing PP 1.9 to install 2.0. But if you already have a PP controller, and you want to be able to keep all your settings, than you have to upgrade it to 1.9.13(?) first, which gives you the ability to backup the settings. That way, once you upgrade to 2.0, you can reload those settings.
Tim
Tormach 1100-3 mill, Grizzly G0709 lathe, PM935 mill, SolidWorks, HSMWorks.
Re: Feeling chuffed
I stand corrected. I assumed the upgrade was just that, and only those buying new controllers were getting a self sufficient copy of PP 2. This is great news. If I have to reinstall, I don't have to install 1.9.x first.
Re: Feeling chuffed
The total cost of my retrofit was £2.50 for a 25 way IDC connector. Everything else I had on hand, so switching to PathPilot would not have been cheaper.
Re: Feeling chuffed
Good work!
What kind of race car is this going in?
Mach3 is certainly old and ugly, but setup right it runs quite well. I ran my Mach3 machine for more than 4 hours straight yesterday, an hour of which I was eating dinner while the machine ran, the only issue I had was when some chips got on a proximity switch. A switch that admittedly is poorly shield from such dangers.
Re: Feeling chuffed
Thanks,
The car's used for sprints and hillclimbs in the UK and I share it with another driver. It started life as a clubmans circuit racer but we bought it as an (almost) rolling chassis and built it up to what you can see in this video.
Just under 500kg in weight and with over 290 bhp @9000rpm gives 0-100mph in something like 6.2s - gets your attention!
The electronics package that runs the data-logging, traction control and semi-auto pneumatic gearshift is my contribution to the build and the gear display is part of that. More info on that at XoomBox It's also got a little touch screen digidash that'll be next in line for a machined front plate.
A lot of bits on the car were turned on my old converted Myford and the mill should add to that capability.
David
Re: Feeling chuffed
Very cool! Is that the same Duratec that commonly get's used in Formula Ford?
I assume the motors sits to the drivers side a bit? Also, what transmission? 5 speed sequential?
Looks nice! Congrats on the build. I've got two time tirals/Hill climb cars myself and can appreciate all the work you must have put into that car. The small details like the gear indicator bezel you originally posted about really give a professional touch. Keep up the good work.
Re: Feeling chuffed
It is the same motor - at least that's what it says on the outside! Inside there are no Ford bits left. What we've got is the development motor that led to this kit SBD Motorsport Duratec Taper Throttle290+BHP kit Compared to the kit, our motor has a steel crank, 5-1/2" twin plate clutch, reduced diameter flywheel made mostly from air and a fancy geared starter so you can still start it despite the tiny flywheel.
It does still say Ford on the outside though!
The gearbox is an Elite IL200 IL200 5/6 S ? Inline 5 or 6 speed sequential - Elite Racing Transmissions with a somewhat modified shift mechanism. More mods to that are on the cards for the 440's work load.
In clubmans racers, the engine is moved typically to the left and then pulled back as far as possible. In our car, the front of the engine is behind the rear of the front suspension, putting the flywheel just beside the driver's knees. That leaves the gearbox sitting under your left elbow and a very short prop shaft to the diff. There are some videos of them racing at Silverstone here https://www.clubmans.org.uk/register...3_stoneGP.html
This style of car has been around in the UK since the 70s and the race series is still going strong today.
David
Re: Feeling chuffed
Thanks. It took us 18 months to build the thing and then another year to get it to run properly.
What you really want to see is the exhaust manifold. The car originally had a K series where the exhaust exits on the left. The Duratec''s exhaust is on the other side..... That means the manifold comes out of the engine above the drivers legs, wraps around the front of the engine and then down the left hand side of the car. A nice man knitted it for us! Here's a pic. You can see the hydraulic cylinders low down and just to the left of the engine in the photo. The pedals - and my feet - are just behind there.
The driver's compartment is 'snug' but you can see where the gear display sits and also the digi-dash I mentioned earlier. They're both currently 3d printed components that'd look a lot nicer in alloy.
David
Re: Feeling chuffed
Your right that exhaust looks good, a lot better than mine. My care is a Lola chassis with a gsxr1000 engine for the power plant. It's a little snug and a reminder that I need to lose a little weight every time I climb in/out of it. The other one I have is a Yamaha R1 powered Lotus/Locost 7, its for my daughter when she gets her permit this year. Looking forward to moving her up from karts to cars.
Re: Feeling chuffed
Woooo That sounds good. gsxrs are very popular here in small single seaters and the good ones are faster than us. R1s are less common, but I do know of a couple. They don't hang around either.
If you're used to bike engines and their gearboxes, you might be able to help with the problem we have with the Elite gearbox. Like a number of other car gearboxes (some Sadev and Hewland boxes share it), there's no mechanical stop on the barrel that positively stops it rotating at the end of a shift. There's just a spring detent. If you change quickly enough - and pneumatic cylinders can push pretty quickly - then it's possible to get it to change 2 gears at once. Typically this only happens on downshifts when you let the revs drop a bit, but it's very unwelcome when it happens. what I really need is to meet someone that's good at deigning mechanisms.
David
