Lol

Yep I will keep you in the loop

The motors are from dddman, here is his site http://www.fuzztech.ca
I have cleaned them up, blasted them with the chrome bomb and wired them to some flexible shielded 4 conductor wire


What I like about the new drivers I sourced are the screw terminals are better quality, high voltage in and motors out are on one side of the board and low voltage, step dir are on the other.
They will come ready to wire/mount with stand offs and heatsink
They will be used in my production mill along with the MK2 board

 

Can't wait to see where you coming up with!

Also, tonight at around 20:30H local time my Buffalo has come to life. It moves and makes little stepper sounds, very quiet but distinctive.

 

Well, I finished my build, and it's great. Besides having to learn about positioning, zeroing, and all that jazz, I have run into one hardware issue I hope someone can provide input on.

I've got the DeWalt 611 in there nice and solid. But once I turn the router on, the leadscrew on the z-axis starts turning, slowly but constantly, from the vibration of the motor and drops down. Has anyone seen this before? I'm hoping there's an easier solution than disassembling the axis and tightening the eccentrics, which I could tackle tomorrow I suppose.

The z-axis wheels are pretty tight, and the motion is unexpected. The wheels can hardly move if you push them manually. The gantry does, however, move down when you push the whole thing by hand.

 

You should have the motors enabled before firing the spindle.
If it moves with the motor enabled then the motor is not strong enough to handle the vibration

 

I have the same issue, and I think Mark mentioned before as well.
What I do for now is hit the start button and while the machine is raising the router to go to its first point I start the router. As soon as the script is running all motors are under power, at least that seems the behavior of GRBL.
I plan to have GRBL switch the router on for me via a relay and I hope this will automate this process.

Frederic

 

Today cleaned up and covered the cabling and installed the cable chain on the X. Except for some really minor tweaks I consider my build to be completed. Now it's time to start tuning the software and make the system ready for its first cut. Let's see if that can happen tomorrow.

 

@Robert Hummel; what resistance should I measure on the TB6600 for 2.8A? Thanks in advance.

 

Are the following settings correct for the stepper motors: Nema 23 1.8 degrees, 1/8 micro stepping, GT3 belt 3mm pitch, pulley 20 tooth is 26.666667 steps per mm?
And.. for the Z - Nema 23 1.8 degrees, 1/8 micro stepping, 8mm ACME lead screw with 2mm pitch, direct drive should be 800 steps per mm?

 

Hi I was looking long time some vids about how OX can cut aluminium. Well After short pause due too many issues to do I was able to do my own cutting video. I´m quite happy about way cutting works. My material is really very unsuitable for milling, didnt really know should I vacuum it of use cutting fluid, so surface is bit "technical" level. But this step was bigger for me than for mankind.

v=400mm/min, rpm ~25000, diameter 3.175mm 1-cut, z 0.7mm.

And I managed to make couple very usable household items, cheers and happy weekend

 

I have not got that far with them
I just set them with the pot at 50% and a bit
I will fine tune everything after the controller is assembled.
Waiting on my 24v power supply still

I assembled the X access of the Fiber OX, things run real smooth with the new metric spacers


I'm going to wire the other motors while I mill some plate sets

 

We'll done!

Vac the chips and lube in little amounts just to keep the bit cool.
Best bet lube, let 2 passes go then vac/repeat

 

Thanks, I´ll keep in mind. Still so much to learn.....

 

Are you using the tinyG board?
If so there is a fix that will enable all motors on power up.
From what I understand by default it is set to enable when the g-code starts

 

$1=255 should disable grbl releasing motors... Not sure if your board will use grbl...

$1 - Step idle delay, msec
Every time your steppers complete a motion and come to a stop, Grbl will delay disabling the steppers by this value. OR, you can always keep your axes enabled by setting this value to the maximum 255 milliseconds. Again, just to repeat, you can keep all axes always enabled by setting $1=255.

 

Cam angle and lighting
The shine of the finish is nice but not perfect

 

@Robert : it is grbl...

@Hokkaju and @Mark : indeed $1=255 for GRBL 0.9 works fine, as soon as the board is powered the motors are active. ($7=255 is for 0.8)

Thanks,
Frederic

 

I don't take the risk and rather a flat flush mounting surface for just the reasons you posted.
It just makes for a more solid machine

 

What I got done while milling today


All motor wires have been ran / cleaned
Drag chain installed and it's on to the Y axis I go
The rest of my parts should be here soon.
Must say the assembly is very stiff / strong and the weight difference is amazing

 

I'm pretty happy with my garolite fiber plates on my ox, they seem to be very capable. Robert, I'd like to see your production machine more up close. Some of your youtube videos doesn't showcase it super well
I'd like to see Chris's setup too

 

The mill I use to produce all of my parts at the moment was built from the ground up.
It started out as an RC spindle setup that I then used to upgrade itself.
The entire mill was built with hand tools and the controls where also built from scratch because I got a 4 axis Chinese board that the Z axis diver ic burnt.
I dissected the board and built standalone drivers with the remaining good chips.
Here are some pics I have of the upgrading process

 

Does anyone know if there is possibility to replace laptop with some memory card reader and UI panel.
I mean it would be really awesome to have possibility to run my machine stand-alone.

 

Open-source code like grbl could be adapted. Alternatively this could be very nice little arduino project for a standalone device. This has the advantage of not having to touch existing well-tested code. Would be cool to also add a buttons for manual axis control. Or perhaps a little touch-screen
Hmm, if only I did not have so many pots on the fire

Fred

 

You could look at a controller such as the RAMPS or RAMBO they have sc card readers and lcd display available, you then stick in the sd card with your gcode and select it from the LCD.

You don't have to use the little plug in drivers either you can break out the connections to whatever sized driver you want.

Ben

 

Hi! Can you tell us what type of Garolite you used for your machine and where you purchased it. Also what did you use to cut it?

Thanks!
-Patrick

 

@ Mark, have this odd thing going on with Sketchucam, see screenshot of the gcode in CNC USB Controller. On the right upper corner you will see that the mill descents slowly at every pass, instead of plunging in and start milling. Had a tricky surprise this morning with milling because of it. Any idea what causes this code?

 

@ David, opened a conversation with the files attached.