It's begun....

[Washout]

Quick update - powered up the control box and nothing has sparked or smoked, which is nice.

The steppers seem to have power to then as they are making a slight humming noise and the ballscrews are now solid (i.e. I can't hand turn them). However, I can't seem to get any movement from the jog control or up and down cursor keys in the motor tuning dialogue. Also I have green LEDs lit on the drivers, which I also consider a good sign.

I've probably missed something silly in Mach3 so will watch some more tutorials and see if anything jumps out at me.

[Washout]

Great Jonathan, I will throw the power switch tonight and all being well should get some movement out of the machine.......consider me excited now :-)

[Washout]

Hmmm I think I am stuck now:

- I have checked my wiring several times (including continuity testing to make sure I haven't crossed any on the signal wires in error) and everything seems to check out.
- My drivers have their green lights lit.
- The breakout board seems to be responding on the axis correctly i.e. I use a jog key in Mach 3 or run the Roadrunner.tap GCode and the activity lights on the axis outputs seems to be lit when they should.
- I've tried the enables 1 to 3 ticked in the mach3 Outputs tab on Pin No.1 using Active Low ticked and unticked and using Pin 1 as suggested in the BoB instructions (when I have these checked the diagnostic screen in Mach3 is showing 3 red "LEDs" for each
- Tried 25000 and 35000 Kernel speeds (35000 is the setting suggested in the instructions)
- Checked to make sure the parallel Port's address is correct
- Checked and re-entered the Motor profiles for each axis as per the BoB manual, although I notice my G's value doesn't match theirs

Anyway all of that and each time I switch the machine on the steppers lock in place with a kind of high pitch hum and refuse to move, as if there is constant power going to them but no direction.

If anyone has any suggestions I'd be grateful , as I think I'm either missing something very fundamental, got some defective parts or some arcane setting in Mach3 is eluding me and I'm running out of things to try.

Cheers


Chris

[Washout]

Hi Guys,

Having slept on the problem of my stuck machine can someone with wiring knowledge check a theory I have:

I've been wiring up according to this diagram on the Zapp website: http://www.zappautomation.co.uk/down...%20%281%29.pdf

Looking at it and taking the x axis as an example, the wiring diagram shows all the +ve connectors for Pulse, Direction and Enable wired together and going back to XN (which I am assuming is X -ve?). Shouldn't this be the other way round i.e. the Pul-, Dir- and Ena- should be wired to XN?

If so I can re-wire and try, but some wiser head than mine with a view would be appreciated.

Thanks in advance.


Chris

[mocha]

try this one... :-)
http://www.mycncuk.com/forums/driver...42-wiring.html

[Washout]

Aha then I think my theory is right - I have the +ve's tied to XN on the BoB, not the -ve's.

Going to rewire now and hopefully having them the wrong way round the first time hasn't damaged the drivers. A classic Meccano moment if you've ever tried to build that stuff as a kid from the instructions (they deliberately put errors in their diagrams to make you think for yourself ;) ).

I'll report back in an hour or so.

Cheers


Chris

[Washout]

Well it didn't take an hour - the diagram is wrong and the polarities did need swicthing.

Happy days - my machine is moving.

I do have motor stalls though when the steppers have accelerated to a certain speed, so I assume I need some tuning.

Not felt quite like this since I first solo'ed a light aircraft :-)

More as I progress and thanks for the help chaps......

[Washout]

OK, next challange:

I'm now trying to tune my motors and am thinking the following:

My steppers are 1.8degs and I am assuming this is 1.8degs per step, which would mean 200 steps per revolution (360/1.8=200)

My ballscrews are 1605, so again an assumption that 1 revolution of the ballscrew is going to translate to 5mm linear travel

So I am thinking that to get the number of steps per mm for Mach3 I am going to have to set the motors to 200/5=40 steps per mm?

Not sure what the velocity should be set to or acceleration in that case, but I guess I can play with the sliders and get the motors running "smoothly" and not stalling.

Again any advise welcome.

Cheers


Chris

[Washout]

Oops forgot about the driver dip switch setting of 400 steps per rev, so that will be double what the above calc comes to per mm

[Washout]

Quick update and yet another question:

Spent most of yesterday playing with motor tuning, setting soft limits etc and just having fun jogging my machine about the place :-)

Today however I have put in a seperate 32Amp spur from the office workshop consumer unit to a double socket for the VFD/machine and also wired up the VFD. So far so good, as whilst I type my VFD is whirring away with a flashing F00.00 LED display, which I think means its passed its self-diagnostics and is now waiting for me to set it up.

Having burrowed into a few threads I have picked up these settings from a woodworking forum, which seem to apply to a water cooled spindle setup:

Change PD001 Source of Run Commands to '1'
Change PD005 Max operating frequency to 400hz
Change PD004 base frequency to 400hz
Change PD003 Main frequency to 400hz
Change PD006 Intermediate frequency to 2.5
Change PD008 max voltage to 220v
Change PD009 Intermediate voltage to 15v
Change PD010 Min voltage to 8
Change PD011 frequency lower limit to >100hz (120hz to start)
Change PD142 7 Amps
Change PD143 2
Change PD144 3000

Thread here: Tips for Newbie Huanyang VFD users - Page 2

All fo those look sensible?

However, I am pretty sure the 2.2Kw spindle uses up to 11Amps and I have no idea what the PD144 3000 setting is.

Can someone post their 2.2Kw spindle and VFD settings for me or confirm those above are correct? I dearly like to connect the spindle up and get some rotation along with axis movement :-)

Thanks again in advance.


Chris

PS. Will try and get some video up soon, as pics don't do an active machine justice:-)