Project Beaver

Steel arrived today, all cut to size, so drilling and tapping first, then brackets, then welding.


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Progress today, trial assembly, finding the the workshop floor slopes about 30mm over the length of the machine so good job fitting levelling feet.
Cheeking and marking out the moving bed and brackets. Its going to move down by 100mm amounts. I can not think I would want to move it in lesser amounts than multiples of 100mm, unless you people out there no better? (Z axis should have about 220mm travel.)

Just ordered 1500 screws which sounds a lot but I've worked out I need 340 so far and given that they come in 100's or 200's multiplied by the size and length combinations you end up with 1500. I think I will still need more yet.

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I'd give yourself a bit more room against the wall if you can... I have built mine too close as I have maxed out the size of machine for my tiny workshop - it's a pain in the ass not being able to get to all sides!


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Looking good though - are you planning on including any bracing or haunches?


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Originally Posted by JoeHarris

I'd give yourself a bit more room against the wall if you can... I have built mine too close as I have maxed out the size of machine for my tiny workshop - it's a pain in the ass not being able to get to all sides!

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Yes Joe, I will be giving it a bit more room, I have more clearing and moving to do to make space, you will see as the build progresses where it will end up. Plus you need room to role the frame over to carry out the welding. I'll be moving it around on a pallet truck as well until it ends up its final position as I expect I will have to take a break from building it, to do some work in the workshop.

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Originally Posted by JoeHarris

Looking good though - are you planning on including any bracing or haunches?

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Thanks, yes as per the drawing, today was just a trial clamp it all together and marking out day , its all dismantled again for drilling and tapping and welding ends and feet plates

Christmas has come early. "Our Man in China" has delivered on the order.
Well done Mr Fred Lee all present and correct.

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Excellent so should be done for 1st Jan . . .:yahoo:

:hysterical:

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Originally Posted by JAZZCNC

Excellent so should be done for 1st Jan . . .:yahoo:

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You don't say what year? Probably by 1st Jan 2018 :beer:

Bit of a redesign due to cocking up the order for the length of the RM2020 1400mm should have been 1500mm long.
Hope I can still get 1/4 sheet cutting area (1220mm x 610mm)

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Originally Posted by JAZZCNC

Don't now how well known Neil but your correct it's not documented in the manual and yes there are several of other useful additions which by the nature of External controllers have to be taken over by the Controllers plug-in.
This is true for other controllers like the ESS etc and most just take over the dutys but still do it way Mach3 does which is often less than ideal and lazyness on there part.

Cslabs on the other hand have opted to improve on some of these or correct things that Artsoft won't. Improvements Like Soft limits not allowing Jogging until machine is homed etc. Advanced Homing with Index to Pulse for Servos and Geometry correction when using slaved motors on higher end controller. Things like Backing off sw set amount etc.

There are other unknown features as well like being able to talk thru Modbus directly to the controller and by pass Mach3 which allows for much faster response times.
Now when you say it has it's own dedicated Macro's this is basicly what it's doing. It's replacing some of the I/O commands that are normally used and replacing with Modbus commands that talk directly to the controller so provide faster response. It's basicly cutting out the Middle man "Mach3" that other Motion controllers use or because programmers don't want to do them selfs due to being lazy or rubbish at it. ( Warp9(ESS) are prime examples of this Piss poor Plug-in lazyness)

It can still use the Old ways of doing things but it can also cause some issues. Gerry's screen set being one of them and glad you mentioned that because just reminded me got send Gerry some files and why I'll explain in minute. (Sorry Gerry I'll do it this weekend)

Now to be fair this isn't all down to Cslabs and some(most) of it is Artsoft fault for changing things to fix one fault but at same time breaking 3 other things. This is why it's not good idea to update Mach3 to latest Version if your not having any troubles. Anyone who knows mach3 knows if it's not broken leave well alone because updating can open can of worms.
You'll also find that they are running very Old versions of Mach3.

This is also true for Cslabs. If you contact Cslabs with problem they will tell you to use version 3.043.022. However this version had bug which would cause Mach3 to lockup when using M6 so don't know why they say that.?

The most stable version of Mach3 without doing anything is 3.042.040 and is what I run for long time before using Cslabs controllers.
When I started using them opted to use the latest plug-in at the time which think was 3.043.056 or something and had no issues until I installed Gerry's screen set.
This version didn't like the Probe macros and would throw up Epid faults which basicly means Mach3 is doing something that Cslabs controller doesn't like and considers dangerous. The message it's self is about usefull has fart in space suit but that's what it means.

Anyway to cut long story short I contacted Cslabs and to be honest they weren't overly helpful on this occasion which is unusual for them. But I put this down to fact that to them it was 3rd party screen set so didn't really want to get involved.!! . . . .Bastards I wasn't amused.

So I set about the problem my self and changed Gerry's macros so they worked with the controller. Took me weeks of trial and error and testing with just about every version of mach3 and found that 3.043.045 (which is actually3.043.046) was the most stable and worked with the changes.
Now to be honest I didn't finish fully testing and I don't actually use the Toolchange macros my self, infact don't even use the Simple Z height touch plate anymore.! So haven't given it much time but just recently user of Gerry's screen set had an issue which Gerry contacted me about because knew I'd worked on this.
So I'm going to pull the macros back out and give them good testing and when sure 100% ok if anyone wants them then contact me directly and I'll give them to you.
I won't post them in public on principle that Cslabs can get stuffed and why should make there life easier when wouldn't help me.!!

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Sounds like like lots of difficulty trying to get a reliable version of MACH 3 or MACH 4 to work. I have never used either so all I really know is what many, many builders have posted about each of them and what I have read online. Both of the machines that I have built used UCCNC from cncDrive. Version 1 did seem a little buggy but that could have been my inexperience. The latest version seems nicely refined and is working quite well. Its fairly inexpensive, less than MACH 3 or 4 I believe. And I think it would be worth a look. Just my opinion...

OMLCNC - nice to see you making progress. I like your design and I have been watching this thread for awhile.