On going chinese 6040 problems

**amxen** · 09-09-2014

ok here are my findings for today. I changed the switch settings to 2 in the mico stepping (K1 n K2) and the steps per to 80. The motor runs smooth when not attached to the cnc (good i thought sorted ). But as soon as i attach it back to the cnc the motor jams more than before. It has no torque at all i can put my hand on it and it jams. it has not got the power to traverse the axis. i put it back to how it was.

So my thoughts are that the steppers motors are under powered.

But the question

1 will the stepper motors take more power

2 will this board give them more power

3 do i need to replace just the board,? should i get a new all in one board or use the drivers i have from the other kit and just get a BOB that will run these drivers,

4 will the stepper motors from the other kit i have be ok for me to use ?

so many questions

thanks for all the help btw

**EddyCurrent** · 09-09-2014

Wait, give this a go first, if the velocity / accel in Mach3 is set too high the motor will stall, put the setting back to 2, fit the motor to the machine and reduce the velocity and acceleration until you get good torque.
Even though you reduced the velocity it could well be faster than previous.

Here's a quote from another forum;

"The other day I did switch from 1/10th step to 1/2 step. Seems to operate about the same overall - only MUCH faster. That first rapid move at 180 ipm was a bit shocking. I ended up at 108 ipm - the motors quit stalling then. Probably had to do with the 20 tpi lead screws. The mill runs great! I was slotting ).050" deep with a 3/16 end mill in aluminum at at 18 ipm and the machine seemed happy as can be. And a 0.015" climb cut finish pass left an awesome surface finish. Fun stuff!"

**amxen** · 09-09-2014

And this is set on k1 and k2. I'm not sure as I'm not at home but is that a 2 or 3 position switch on the board. ?

I'm going to guess it is a 2 position switch and it is either ON or OFF and you can have a combination of on-on, on-off, or off-on. And this will determine what micro steps it runs at?

**EddyCurrent** · 09-09-2014

Correct, there is a table printed on the PCB showing the options.

**amxen** · 11-09-2014

Hi Clive. We'll I have reconstituted someold pc power ssupply's that I use to run my 12v battery charger this give me around 20a. Good for a cheep bench 12v supply. They have the added advantage of having 5v and 3v if I need them. But that's as much as I have done. I know my way around a multimeter thow as I'm a heating breakdown engineer. I will have a look on YouTube and see if I can find a video on building a linear supply that will give me what I need. Thanks for all the input.

**Clive S** · 11-09-2014

Originally Posted by amxen

Hi Clive. We'll I have reconstituted someold pc power ssupply's that I use to run my 12v battery charger this give me around 20a. Good for a cheep bench 12v supply. They have the added advantage of having 5v and 3v if I need them. But that's as much as I have done. I know my way around a multimeter thow as I'm a heating breakdown engineer. I will have a look on YouTube and see if I can find a video on building a linear supply that will give me what I need. Thanks for all the input.

You just need a few parts:
You can get them from http://www.rapidonline.com/ say 2 of these http://www.rapidonline.com/Electroni...tor-11-3121and one of these http://www.rapidonline.com/kbpc5006-...00v-47-1012and a transformer like this http://www.rapidonline.com/vigortron...-0-50v-88-3844 but to suite your voltage. Remember to multiply the output of the transformer by about 1.4 to get to the DC voltage you require. ..CliveAttachment 13363

**EddyCurrent** · 11-09-2014

I'd like to know this, with the settings now at their optimum does the machine perform adequately. ? i.e. within it's designed capability.

**amxen** · 11-09-2014

Eddy. I'm not sure if If it's running at its designed optimum as I have not had time to test it. I ran some code to cut a sign from 6mm mdf last night. Like the photo of the one I have posted here before. It seemed to not miss any steps it cut very clean and quite fast. The sign was about 10inch long and 5inch tall. It had no problems and took about 20 mins, but I only have the plunge set at 1mm so it took 7 trips to complete the final cut out. but that was planed and expected. If you let to know who I should test its performance I will gladly carry that out for you.

**JAZZCNC** · 11-09-2014

Originally Posted by amxen

It seemed to not miss any steps it cut very clean and quite fast. The sign was about 10inch long and 5inch tall. It had no problems and took about 20 mins, but I only have the plunge set at 1mm so it took 7 trips to complete the final cut out.

To be honest you haven't really defined if the machine is running correctly because your not actually cutting at correct feed rates. 1mm DOC in MDF is hardly a challenge or test. I suspect that if you tried to cut MDF at the correct feeds/speeds/doc then you may get very differant story.

With a Shallow DOC then you really should be running high feeds rates or very low spindle speeds to give any decent tool life. Your setup 99.99% sure won't run the correct feed rates for 1mm DOC without stalling motors and if you increase DOC then chances are it will struggle if it's still not setup correctly. Spindle speeds are about the only thing your in control of and this alone isn't enough.

With MDF then you should be able to cut much deeper and still maintain decent feedrate even with these types of machine. Minimum DOC should be 50% tool diameter and 100% + is common in MDF with carbide tooling. Can't say on feed as don't know what you cut this at but I suspect it will be well short of what it should be.? Minimum feed in MDF would be 2000mm/min and thats with lot deeper DOC IE: 3mm cutter = 6mm or more.!

So just because your cutting doesn't mean the machines working OK. Tool life is something you need to consider and cutting like this will drasticly shorten tool life, esp in MDF. Sharpness of the tool greatly affects finish quality so you very quickly lose finish quality when cutting with wrong feeds/speeds/DOC so it really does pay to spend some time and set the machine up correctly.

**amxen** · 11-09-2014

Eddy. I'm not sure if If it's running at its designed optimum as I have not had time to test it. I ran some code to cut a sign from 6mm mdf last night. Like the photo of the one I have posted here before. It seemed to not miss any steps it cut very clean and quite fast. The sign was about 10inch long and 5inch tall. It had no problems and took about 20 mins, but I only have the plunge set at 1mm so it took 7 trips to complete the final cut out. but that was planed and expected. If you let to know who I should test its performance I will gladly carry that out for you.