Its right here:Attachment 5567
I went with the pink shoes just for you Jazzmin, i hope you like it :twisted:
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Its right here:Attachment 5567
I went with the pink shoes just for you Jazzmin, i hope you like it :twisted:
Eh she kicks just like my Ex wife.!! . . . . She looks just like the fat bastard as well.. .:rofl:Quote:
Originally Posted by Lee Roberts
And I will be the second in the queue :beer:
Some small progress on the machine.
The rear doors have been modified to a two piece sliding design from the original double doors. I had to do this because space is tight and that made it a right pain in the backside to get in there. I've also fitted a larger e-chain to the gantry as the original was far too small for the spindle plumbing and various cable for spindle, home switch and stepper.
Gotta love how slack I am! Its still half in pieces and hasn't cut much apart from air. My excuse? Well I've been putting off finishing what I started and instead using the old manual methods that have never failed me(that's a lie they fail me all the time).
I sense Jazz at the back tutting at me.
Its not all in vain though, I'm making a push to get things done at last. Who knows, it might cut its first useful part this year!
Anyway the control box is now wired up and ready to let out magic smoke! Only the vfd, random wiring, x axis ballscrews, home switches, testing and setup to go... ok I'm gonna shut up now because it'll end up on ebay otherwise.
Attached are the before and after shots.
Me too. Wiring is ready to begin but work has been weird at the moment. Although that may well be just an excuse.Quote:
Originally Posted by Shinobiwan
Control box looks well tidy.
Bruce
Thanks Bruce.Quote:
Originally Posted by motoxy
I know what you mean. I have little interest in the DIY side of CNC, ironic really since I bought a commercial machine and still ended up doing just that! Anyway its hard to build up the motivation to play around stripping wires and doing generally boring and fiddly jobs. But its getting beyond a joke now and I need to make a push otherwise all I have is an expensive lump of metal that isn't paying its way.
Nice AM882 drivers,
Trust me you will really notice a difference from the ones that you had been using. As far as wiring goes I have got it done to the point of the machine working and starting to earn it's keep. I still need to get a few parts of my own and get them fitted and done. Also need to get the relays I bought in place so that all the other work is safe guarded and reduce risk of things going wrong.
Just put your shoulder to it and get it done. No it is not fun and can be a pain in the back side but the end result will be worth it in productivity increase and increase in quality control. Then comes the fun of g-code, which so many think is just turn on the CAM program and plug in the code and I can tell you that is rarely the case unless you have done a huge amount of set up to the CAM program. Some CAM does not let you do that level of set up so you have to go in and edit the code to get a really nice finish.
Michael
Unfortunatly No he won't Micheal.? . . . The old ones never got used for much more than 10mins and never cut anything but air (Badly. .:stupid:).!! . . . . But your right in that there will be difference in the performance of the machine because he's gone from crappy chinese lead shine copies running 44V to kick arse lead shine full Digitals running 70V. . . He's going to be smiling from ear to ear. . :onthego:Quote:
Originally Posted by m.marino
Looking good now.
More jobs done like the home switches, sliding doors and the rewire is finally complete(*#&! of a job! Will be glad if I never have to strip another wire in my life!).
Only the spindle plumbing and refit the x axis screws left.
Looking good, all the stripping of wires will be worth it in the end.
Looking forward to the first cut video :thumsup:
'kin better be! Cheers Andy. Waiting on that slack mate of yours - Jazz. He's had the plans for my ballscrew mounts since April(might be exaggerating here) and every time I ask how they're coming along he always says he's been busy. Yeah busy chasing women hahaQuote:
Originally Posted by audioandy
Z axis home switch done this evening.
Fired it up for the first time and whilst nothing exploded(good) I did only have it on for about 5 seconds as the stepper motors were making an odd noise. Hard to describe it really but I'll have a go - the noise was a rising pitch kinda like a kettle coming to boil, the volume level of the noise was consistent and didn't increase. Maybe I'm being paranoid and whimped out unnecessarily but didn't fancy damaging the expensive electronics until I'd got the all clear on here.
I didn't have the PC hooked up to the machine but everything else was as you'd expect.
Tune the motor with with driver and they will then be silent.
Also make sure you set the current to the peak value of the phase current of the motors.
Thanks Gary I'll give that a try.
One thing I forgot to mention was the green led was flashing constantly. Does that mean anything to you?
That is normal.
Quote:
Originally Posted by Shinobiwan
Sigh why are things never as simple as they should be.
Had it up and running with mach doing some jogging about and it jerks around like a jack hammer on the Y and Z stalls all the time even with low speed/accel. The software from Leadshine doesn't work for me either and throws up errors then crashes when reading or writing data to the drives.
Why didn't I spend the money on a nice long holiday instead!
Found an updated version of the Leadshine software on their website. Hopefully this fixes the crashes.
What errors are you getting?
the software works very well, and will alow you to get very smooth motion and reduce resonance to a minimum.
what RS232 cable are you using? and are you going from native RS232 or through a dongle?
You may be better to just do the Auto tune till you get it running right, then do the mach 3 motor tuning (set accel / de accel up) and so on.
after this if you want to tune more, then use the software, but in most cases it is not needed.
Quote:
Originally Posted by Shinobiwan
Hi Gary.
I'm using the leadshine RS232 cable(bought from you) and it plugs into the COM1 on the PC, no dongles or USB converters.
The motor tuning done by the DIP switch 4 doesn't rid the howling noise unfortunately.
I'll give this new version of the software a try. The one I was using seemed to be quite old 2010 vs 2012
Newer version still does the same. Its odd because I can access everything within the software ie. the tuning options work and control the drives. But I can't read or write the RAM/EEPROM without getting the error.
The error is a string of numbers and letters followed by 'This type of data collation is not supported by the operating system'. Running XP btw.
I wouldn't be that bothered if the auto setting could get rid of that damn annoying howling noise. I was more impressed with the cheap chinese drives I had before than these and that's not saying much! I'll let Dean have a look at them when he's over but if I can't fix the issues can I return them for an exchange Gary?
Have you tried another driver? is the problem with one driver?
is your version of windows 32 or 64 bit? did you do the tuning without any load on the motor shaft (Disconnected from the ballscrew?)
What is the motor? do you have the dasheet, and how are you connecting (Series or parallel) and what is the current set to?
These drivers are very good, and i personally use these drivers on my mill, and they are near silent and we only autotuned them.
As with everything we sell, returns are accepted.
The noise is on all 4 steppers.Quote:
Originally Posted by Gary
XP 32bit fresh install with only mach installedQuote:
is your version of windows 32 or 64 bit?
A bit of both. 2 steppers (the Y and Z) are connect to the ballscrews and the dual steppers for the X are without.Quote:
did you do the tuning without any load on the motor shaft (Disconnected from the ballscrew?)
Quote:
What is the motor?
Nema 23 4Nm (8 lead type) on the X and Y. The Z is a Nema 23 3Nm.
Quote:
do you have the dasheet
Have the datasheet from your webshop.
Parallel wired and I've tried the current on the default (DIP 1,2,3=ON) and also 3.93A RMS (DIP 1 & 2=ON, 3=OFF)Quote:
how are you connecting (Series or parallel) and what is the current set to?
Thanks Gary. I'm not ready to throw in the towel just yet but its good to know if I can't resolve whatever it is that's causing the noise I can at least swap the drivers for something else.Quote:
Originally Posted by Gary
They are not our motors, we dont sell 4Nm motors (Nema 24) if the current is 4A, then you need to set this to the peak value not the RMS.
if you are setting to 4A RMS, the motors will most likley burn out, and may be the cause of the excess noise?
Set the current to either 3.6 or 4.6A, but start at 3.6A peak.
see if this solves the noise problem?
Regarding the software problem, this could be noise? make sure the RS232 cable is away from any power cables, and also make sure that your signal cables (Step, direction and enable) are well away from any power cables like the motor and the power supply cables. I cant see in the picture if you have done this. Also are the motor power cables shielded? and grounded at one end?
Thanks for the help.Quote:
Originally Posted by Gary
The stepper cables are shielded and ground at the control box end.
I'll try changing the current to what you suggest. The motors still made the same noise with the default setting of 1A before I changed it to 3.93A so no damage done to the motors.
Will play around some more this afternoon based on whst you've suggested.
OK, make sure that the rotary switch is in the "0" position.
Set the current to 3.6A and then power up.
Then move SW4 on and off twice to get the driver to tune to the motor specs.
Once this is done it should work ok.
Make sure the signal cables are not close to any power cables.
When you power the driers up, did the inverter for the spindle power up? if so disconnect it.
Quote:
Originally Posted by Shinobiwan
OK result! The software is now working.
Took hours of faffing around and the solution wasn't clear at all!
Just in case anyone else runs into the error "Selected collating sequence not supported by the operating system." When trying to read or write data to the drives. Here's how I fixed it. You need to enable multi language within XP. Be sure your regional settings are English(UK) and then select the check boxes for Thai and also East Asian language support. And that's pretty much it. No idea why I had to do this but it refused to work without those options.
I've managed to eliminate the noise using manual setup but the autoset function brings it back. Seems that too high a Kp value increases the noise. The autoset function wants to set it around 2000 but to get the steppers silent you really need to be around 700. This value seems suboptimal as the rise time is fairly lax. Seems I have shite motors? Weird because the 3Nm behaves the same as 4Nm too, you'd think there'd be some difference unless they're both from the same manufacturer.
Anyway the drives are working well now so I'm happy there.
What's less good is the fact that Strike CNC have messed up on replacement parts and there's some binding issues in the Y and Z ballscrews. There's loose bolts, rail slides that haven't had their tension adjusted, missing screws from motor mounts, cock-eyed mounting of the supported rails on the Z front plate, damaged bearing in the floating end Z ballscrew support. AND that's in the replacement gantry that was supposed to fix all the other problems I had in the first one.
Now I've got strip the Z axis down, check and loctite every bolt. Thank god I've got the help of Dean because if I hadn't I'd have given up and cut my loses. The guy has spent hours on the phone and a couple of trips here and for virtually nothing. A true asset to the community.
OK here's some shots of the problems with Strikes replacement Gantry.
At this point I'm going to re-design the Z plate and then pay someone on here to cut the part.
I don't have many regrets in life but not building my own machine is now one of them.
Btw is it essential to have the ballscrew floating end mount on? The bearing is damaged and I figure it isn't really needed for such a short ballscrew since its supported at the fixed end and the ballnut?
Probably not.Quote:
Originally Posted by Shinobiwan
The support bearings purpose in life is to support long screws from bending under thier own weight, and/or to stop screws from whipping when spun at speed.
If the screw is short enough/not spun fast enough that whipping is going to be an issue, and it's not long enough/mounted in a way it's own weight could bend it (i.e. hung vertically), then you don't need one.
I'm sure Jonathan will be along shortly with the required calcs for working out the theoretical critical/whipping speed (or just search for his posts, as he's covered it before)
Agree with what m_c said. You can find the formula he suggested by searching for screw critical speed on google, but assuming the ballscrew is 350mm long the critical speed is 3500rpm - so 3500*5=17.5m/min. The formula isn't that accurate, but that's a huge amount more than you'll ever get on the Z-axis so you're fine to run it. It's <£2 for the bearing you need on eBay, so it's not much loss to get a new one, not that you should have to pay for it anyway.
This thread is the first result on Google for 'Strike CNC', so I wonder how long it will be until they re-brand!
I doubt they will go out of business soon, as it's so easy for these companies to blatantly lie about their products:
http://strikecncrouters.com/page2.htm
If you want a critical speed calculator, i use this one.
http://www.nookindustries.com/ball/BallCalculators.cfm
Not to worry Jonathan. If you lay too many bad eggs eventually it'll make a stink.Quote:
Originally Posted by Jonathan
I'm not the only unhappy customer
http://www.cnczone.com/forums/europe...nc_please.html
In particular this comment from that customer rings very true:
"On receiving my machine (the eBay service was great!), I found that the build quality was terrible....really terrible. Basically, I have completely rebuilt the machine, adding a host of parts that I made to strengthen and support the various axes. Most of the extrusions and support rails were not bolted correctly and the stepper motor mounts looked like they'd been chewed instead of machined!
However, I found that the price paid was actually not that bad, when used as a basis for a new machine, but you would most definitely need to at leat check the build quality or better still, strip it down completely."
Go on Ant sock it to em.!!. . . . . Show the full length movie.! . .Lmao
You mean this one mate?
That's the first attempt Strike had at my Gantry. Only a bit of play there in the Z axis!
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ee_2J...=youtube_gdata
Ye thats the one.!!. . . The one with the gantry made from 6 pieces of 30x30 light extrusion with a single bolt thru the centre to hold together.!!Quote:
Originally Posted by Shinobiwan