Quite an Unusual one

[Boyan Silyavski]

OK. Some development.

Did i tell you that i plan to add plasma to the machine. Front half for machining, back half of table for plasma. Or whatever life commands,

I know, old China HF plasma no good, combined machines no good... I can say yes, shoot 2500 euro and tomorrow a brand new Hypertherm Powermax 45 will be at my door.

First i have to know if that will pay off where i live, for what i do and so on. However instead i decided to start with what i have at hand, slowly make my way around. I did not skip the THC though as i believe it will be extremely important especially on a combined CNC table like mine.

I did my research and decided to go with the Neuron THC. I skipped the simple THCs where there were no advanced controls. Vietnamese and similar were out of question due to lack of support or support in some strange language.

The ones who are into plasma cutting know the choice is not so big money wise and feature wise. Razordance THC is only for Hypertherm, then there is the Proma, mini THC that looked promising, Cadcnc and Neuron. Or you pay big dollar. Cadcnc and Neuron seemed the most advanced. I as many times at the point of buying something from Cadcnc but the fact that he is in USA, his stuff works bundled together, some of his ridiculous policies mad em not do it. So the Neuron it was.

I will make a separate review when all is working, but i would say the documentation and the support from Andrey till now is outstanding. And to tell you the truth that the most important thing when you start doing something that you do for first time and you don't know nothing about.

So the Neuron THC lite came at home after customs delay /Russia is not EU you know /.

Thats the Plasma, tig, arc. German controlled Chinese machine with 5 year warranty.



First thing i changed the cover screws cause i decided i would open it quite frequently :-)



Then i twisted some pairs of wire for the voltage divider /1mm2 >600v wire, as per recommendation of Neuron manufacturer / :





Then i blowed the dust of the insides, by the way on the box says to do that 2 times per month


Here is my DIY drier for the plasma, painting and for blowing dust. No body would want to blow some drops of water on electronics, right. 10" filter box and 1/2kg of desiccant. Black plastic tube in the middle with a lot of holes so air can pass. On the right is a last stage lubricator outlet for air tools. Thre dry air outlet is in the middle



The insides, with the Neuron mounted, arc ok mounted , RJ45 ethernet communication cable. meanwhile i bout and learned to use cable connector making tools. as it seems Ethernet is the future.



The shed in front of the garage, the welding table and the machine bed arrived. I alsmost finished all till today, though run out of gas, otherwise i would have been welding right now. Will take more pictures when ready. the rage saw cut the UPN 140 like a charm. I was for worried for a moment when all arrived cause i forgot to check if the saw could do that wide



i need a welding table to make my welding table, isnt that funny

[D.C.]

OK. Some development.
Will take more pictures when ready. the rage saw cut the UPN 140 like a charm. I was for worried for a moment when all arrived cause i forgot to check if the saw could do that wide

Amazing build Boyan, those rage saws are quite the beast aren't they.

Do you have an update and more pics of how the build is progressing, this has got to be one of the best build logs I've seen, it would be shame for it to stop before we get some video of the finished thing in action!

[Boyan Silyavski]

HI,

yes i have an update.

First one of the piles of steel at the previous photos now is welding and fabrication table, the other pile with the long pieces now is a shed in front of my garage where the machine is. At the link above you could get idea how to fix the UPN to the bed









Now about the machine itself. Cables mounted and ready to run. I had some problems fitting the cables cause i made the error underestimate how big cable chain i need. I had some serious cable chain but it seems i needed even bigger.
Some of the encoder cables were shorter so i had to invent here also. Most cheap was to use HDMI cable, i hope it lasts some time.

Now the biggest problem. I can still not make run the machine. Reason being that although all is connected and programmed from Mach 3 side and from Galil side it would not move.

So i read 10 times the servo and the Galil manual / each 400 pages/. At the end frustrated i started trouble shooting. Checked 1 by one all cable connections cause the servos were tripping, cleaned contacts...this took a couple of days. At the end i discovered that when programming the servos somehow i missed to program correctly the motor name of 2 of them, hence the problems. So more or less all is ready here, still have 1 enable wire to 1 of the servos not working well so i have to rewire that.
Jogged the servos from the software and tuned them for a second.
That servos are incredibly fast, smooth and silent. The machine moves like crazy fast super silently. I directly jogged the Z assembly left right on the gantry 10-15m per min. Its scary.
Good that the frame is balanced horizontally. yeas i have 10 cm deviation on the floor so i used 30-35 square wood pieces leveled them and the machine is on top of them.

So the machine should be running any minute but 2 weeks i couldn't manage to make the Galil board work. Yes, it works communicates, switches signals and so, but still not able to make it speak / pulse/ to the servos. And on top of that i burned the COM port from changing cables. So i could not now change the servo type of signal expectancy. GRrrrrrrrrr!! Now have to wait for new COM board cause where i live...

I asked about help with the Galil at Mach forum, Galil forum, nobody... So after 2 weeks i discover that i have to issue MT command to change the type of pulse it sends. It may be the greatest board but with nonexistent support, no schematics of connection... maybe i did a mistake not contacting directly support, but from what i saw in their forum-please read the manual its explained there. yes its f***ng explained but its 400 pages manual and i am reading 3 of them at once and on the way learning new terms that i had no idea yesterday what that even means, so a bloody connection diagram for every application example and step by step instruction would be great for stupid people like me and the 20 engineers that asked the same questions...

So i am still stuck, last effort these days, then it goes off the machine cause i will receive 2 Pokeys boards, so one goes there. Will leave the Galil apart, mount it in another box , study it and use it in another machine. And then bloody sell it :-)

So any day soon it will be fully alive, then i will move the gantry around and mount and level the ready UPN140 pieces for the working table bed to be level, Thats why i need to move the Z around so i measure and shim where necessary.




Here where is the PC, the VFD and so on, at the entrance. Switch on the machine,mount piece, Mach3, program run, then go out and close garage door. The garage=Big enclosure for the machine

[toomast]

Looking good!
How did you end up mounting UPN140 for the bed? I mean how did you get it level? Or you just have them laying on the machine for the moment?

[eurikain]

I honestly think anything you touch turns into gold ;)

[Boyan Silyavski]

Looking good!
How did you end up mounting UPN140 for the bed? I mean how did you get it level? Or you just have them laying on the machine for the moment?

Drilled the UPN, soldered oversized nuts to form a bed, drilled machine and fixed with bolts. Same as what i did here http://www.mycncuk.com/threads/8600-Welding-bench



Thanks for the kind words :-)


Have not updated it long time. Its almost finished, now rectifying some design mistakes. Will speak about them later.

Here is a video i made yesterday of test runs at 10000mm/min acceleration 3000, gantry weights 180-160kg or sth like that. Its scary. Its snappy, so object achieved so far.

Waiting for the new cable drag chains, last were a bit small so now i bought bigger from Russia and should be any day here

Enjoy:

[Chaz]

Drilled the UPN, soldered oversized nuts to form a bed, drilled machine and fixed with bolts. Same as what i did here http://www.mycncuk.com/threads/8600-Welding-bench



Thanks for the kind words :-)


Have not updated it long time. Its almost finished, now rectifying some design mistakes. Will speak about them later.

Here is a video i made yesterday of test runs at 10000mm/min acceleration 3000, gantry weights 180-160kg or sth like that. Its scary. Its snappy, so object achieved so far.

Waiting for the new cable drag chains, last were a bit small so now i bought bigger from Russia and should be any day here

Enjoy:

What motors / gear ratios?

[Boyan Silyavski]

HI guys,
sorry have not been here a while. Thing is that have been busy with small orders last 3 months and i just couldn't find the time to finish the machine.

love this build! Any videos of it cutting yet?

Soon.

Boyan Absolutely awesome build as per usual! Actually it qualifies as CNC porn I think! I am soo jealous well done!!!!

(Way off topic) One thing I worry about is the roof of your extension has no gutter! So all the water is going to run down the wall and into everything you have leaning or hanging on the wall. Am I missing something?

Oh and more videos or at least photos of chips flying when you can!!!

Thanks! Rain goes down on the wall and then on ground. Distance between wall and shed is 2-3cm. reason being is that even if i made it closed using PU foam, water will still drip due to the wall type. So i did not bother

Maybe it's a case of the rain in Spain falling mainly on the plain and Boyan living in the Spanish mountains where it seldom rains?

In fact before i made the shed it was 11months drought here. I finished the shed- and it could not stop raining.

But main reason for shed is not rain only but sun, cause at summer is very hot here. Everyday.

What motors / gear ratios?

400w AC servo motor/ballscrew = 2:3 /20t:30t/ so 1:1.5 meaning top speed at 3000RPM will be 20m/min though that motors could easily spin 5000RPM but there the power drops.



Last Christmas orders, so i send my wife to her mother, switch off my phone for a week and finish the machine /hopefully/

Main problem after all was not aligning the ball screws well to the rotating nut assembly/ due to chinese nut out of spec size/ , so now thats what i have to do .then cables and box.