Welcome back. Congratulations on the job. Looking forward to seeing your kit.

 

I just received a bunch of those and others from Bang Good and are about to see what it is. Will update when I have results of the testing.

 

Yeah I did step up and go to a 24v PS. So I will just have to play to see where the machine maxes out. One question I posted earlier was about reversing the z so the two mounting plates were bolted together so the z extrusion moves up and down instead of the z carriage moving up and down. Any reason not to do this?

 

My OX was built with the extrusion moving up and down, but I plan on replacing the Z-Axis with a C-Beam bundle mounted fixed. I see two advantages, I believe it's more rigid and it provides a place to mount a dust collection shoe that doesn't move up and down. Other than that, I don't see an advantage either way.
See this thread:
Cebu | OpenBuilds

 

I figured the benefit would be more room under the z for taller materials and that dust collector WOULD move with the router bit up and down

 

You set the Z extrusion to the bottom of the X-Axis. You can't use material that is taller than that.
I had problems with my dust collector shoe because when the shoe went down, the brushes hit the material I was cutting and it put enough pressure on the Z-Axis to torque the router slightly. With a quantity of brush fibers, they cause quite a bit opposing force, even really flexible ones. I tried to ramp the plunge moves to minimize the force applied, but it didn't help. The pressure exerted by the cutting action was much less than the pressure exerted by the brushes, even with the most flexible ones I could find.

I don't see how a "moving" dust shoe would help anything.
The purpose is to isolate the area being cut, which a fixed shoe does.
One of the problems I was having was my vacuum was creating so much suction, it was pulling the brush fibers up into the nozzle.
Air leakage and lack of dust collection were never issues.

Maybe you will have better luck than I had.

 

Looks like if the bottom of the z c-beam were level with the x C-Beam you might have a hard time getting enough downward z travel?

 

That's what I originally thought until John sent me pictures showing it wasn't a problem.
Did you look through the Cebu link I sent earlier?
It's all in there.

 

Finally got home from work will look though it. Thanks for the help sir.

 

Makes sense now. Thanks. Just what I needed

 

As you can see from the Cebu thread, I had a hard time understanding it, too.
The good thing is that I can just turn it around if it doesn't work this way.

 

Yeah looks like plenty of travel. Also looked like the router could have gone down even further if needed. Now just need some time to start building

 

I've got all my parts for a Rotary OX except the plates. Those are on order and should be here in a couple of weeks or so.
Waiting is the toughest part.

 

I do experience a strange calmness when parts arrive

 

Yeah .... and it also heats up your stepper drivers alot more too! I found that out last night as i didn`t adjust the current pot. Went straight from a 12v PSU to a 24v. It was snappy and had oomf but started loosing steps and started randomly pausing during a short job. Had a fan pointed at the heatsinks on the CNC Shield too; very hot to the touch.

Live and learn I guess ..... lol


BTW ...... Got mine up and mostly running thanks to this forum and Dany @ Fuzztech.
Check it out and let me know what yous think

 

The voltage and current have little to do with the speed of a stepper motor as long as you have enough to turn the motors, the rate that you send the steps to the driver determines the speed. The power that the motors use is voltage times the current. The more voltage the less current that is needed to turn it. Having less current generates less heat in the wiring. Heat is lost power = current square times the wires resistance.

 

I'm hoping someone can help me..... I am using Mach 3 instead of GRBL, I had a Mach 3 License available to use that is why. Could someone please assist me in the settings/configuration primarily the motor tuning (Stepper Motors), I am using imperial settings. I was able to get the revolutions correct, when I tell the machine to move 1" it moves 1". But when it is moving, it sounds a little rough. The cuts look a little bad also, but that could be the amount of material that was being cut at each pass (.020"). Any help will be useful...

 

It could be the depth but also look at speed. It could be you dont have your drivers current set properly also. What are you using for a power supply and what are your drivers/ driver board? If current isn't set correctly on each driver your steppers will not perform efficiently. Also what are your settings for micro stepping or not? I am far from any sort of expert since this is my first time starting from scratch too. These are the first things that come to mind though.

 

David, I agree with all that you said. I should have given a more detailed explanation. The higher voltage does run better for most cases. For the steppers that I have used (not as many as you), most will run on either 12 or 24 volts and provide more speed that the machine can normally handle. I prefer to 24 volts for the higher torque as you explained. There is a wealth of information available here and on the internet.

Thanks for the additional information. Hope he has what he needed.

 

Please Help

I have just built a c-beam and just going through the settings for the Grbl - xpro in the build video. looking at the settings jpeg in the download there is $14 1 auto start bool
I cant find this in the settings tab of the Grbl its missing. What do i do and is it important?

 

Configuring Grbl v0.9 · grbl/grbl Wiki · GitHub

I don't have very much experience with grbl yet but hopefully this helps if you haven't seen it already.

 

$14 was for grbl v0.8 done away with in v0.9
so easy answer skip it the rest are ok....
Bob

 

That's great thank you. Is there a way of seeing what firmware version the board is on and what's the most recent on the X pro?

 

v.09j I believe
3. Updating GRBL Firmware · Spark-Concepts/xPRO Wiki · GitHub
if you download the Arduino IDE
then you can open it and select Arduino uno as the board and your comm port.
then open the serial monitor and type $$
I'm sure there's an easier way, someone else will chime in if there is.
but good to know that info anyways that's the same way to update the firmware if you ever want to...
Bob

 

I can't seem to order a c-beam. Are you out of that kit.? Never mind. I noticed that it was the kit with the steppers. So I purchased just the hardware kit.

 

Really like the c-beam ! Great job and video ! A couple questions though and please forgive me if you've answered them for others previously.
1. What are the pitfalls with extending z to say 1500mm and y to 750mm ?
2. By extending the towers could I safely get 2" under z ?
Thanks in advance !

 

So I ordered a C-beam kit. When can I expect it to ship.

 

extending z by 1500mm will yield around 60" of clearance so I would say 2" would be closer to 50mm and yes it won't be a problem. I don't think extending the towers a little will give you any problems...
and y you can make as long as you want till you reach lead screw whip. If you want to extend x then think about going to 2 rails or some other support.
Bob