Thread: My Chinese CNC Saga (continued)

i edited my last post , look there to check your BOB and stepper driver board

Sorry the picture's blurry, but I think you can see all the lights as per your description, and some more flashed on & off when first powered up. When powered off again, there's a small one on the main board that stays lit up until I assume the capacitors discharge.

I let it run for about a minute, and nothing adverse seems to have happened.

So, opinions?

good news then , your bob and stepper board probably survived , please unplug the white cable with "Spindle' next to it , on the brake out board , i know its glued

Originally Posted by SawDustSniffer

good news then , your bob and stepper board probably survived , please unplug the white cable with "Spindle' next to it , on the brake out board , i know its glued

I assume you mean the 2-wire cable going to the VFD board (the big main board is the VFD board, isn't it?) and not the 10-wire axis controller ones?

Originally Posted by BoomerangInfo

I assume you mean the 2-wire cable going to the VFD board (the big main board is the VFD board, isn't it?)

yes

see if you can get your steppers to move , when your PC runs again

Well my replacement graphics card arrived today, so I have a new PC (or should I say, old PC working again) ready to go. Tomorrow is D-Day MkII.

SawDustSniffer, I've been meaning to ask. Attached is a picture of the connections on my E-Stop button. Are you able to confirm whether they look correct or not? My BIL did suggest that if they didn't work, i might swap them around.

Thanks.

same as mine

the "normally open" is so that it waists power , the power is always going through the button , its a lot safer that way , when the power is broken , the computer takes it as "button pressed " , if the wire brakes , or other failure that puts the switch out of action , will be as if the button is pressed , safety first

a lot of medical stuff , and planes are wired up this way ( backwards ) for the safty side of it , all is good , you can just tick or cross the "active low" boxes to change the state , no need to rewire

load up your software , and dont forget to run that test program first , if it crashes and shuts down , it has loaded the driver , run it again
my spare PC turned up today , a 1mm and 8mm spindle doflacky (ER11 collet )to go with the 2mm-7mm china ones , and packs of 10 of a variety of carbide bits , gotta love the net , wouldn't know where to bye them in Darwin , dont think you can

do you have a UPS ( battery back up for the PC ) if your power go's out , 1/2 way through a job , you have to start from scratch , with a UPS , your pc will keep running , was going to wire the controller up with 2 plugs , 1 plug only for the spindle , 1 plug for the rest ,
the 1.5kw spindle is way too much for my 1.6kw UPS ( 1 do have 2 of them ( UPS) )
if i rewire the spindle and put a censer board that detects when one line is down , and activates a mach3 input to pause the operation , once the power comes back on , just hit start

my power drops out 3 times a day here , split second brown outs

on a test the 1600watt hour UPS ran my PC for 3 hours, (handy to keep intouch with family after a cyclone as well ) , if i connect up the spindle to my second UPS ( same ) it should run for 1 hour

having 3.2kw/h of 240volts will make your life easyer after a cyclone , keep them turned off and you can recharge battery's , watch 15min headlines of the news , run a 1600watt kettle for 2 hours ,jump on the net and let your family know your all-right on facebook , ect

No I don't have a UPS. We do lose power occassionally, but it hasn't caused any problems to date, and we have a generator if needed, but that's no use for losing work and potential blow-outs of gear I guess.

Anyway, I got everything hookedup again, put in your settings as per the screenshots, and we have partial success. The axes a controllable fine, from within Mach3 and via the pendant. EStop works on the pendant, but the hardware switch on the CNC conoller still does nothing. I did get a warning when I started Mach3 about the EStop being active, so I had to toggle the active setting on it, but that doesn't change that the hardware button is not responding either way.

great your axis are moving ,
runs quick doesn't it , it surprised me how quick these little steppers move , running smooth? , my x asxis makes a bit more noise in the middle than the ends ,I might have a tiny bend in my ballscrew on the x axis , but it works fine

i gave the hole lot a squirt of " inox " and it sounded a lot smoother after that


the E-button ? , if the power to the controller is off , you cant clear the e-botton , make sure the E-button is up and the power to the controller is on , if you still have problems , unplug the e-stop wire of the BOB , and run a multi meter over it , would be easy to brake a wire when moving the lid around ?

if you have toggled the E-Stop in software ( the screen that comes up ) , dose it "e-stop" when the button is up ? if not id say you have a broken E-stop wire
on the " Input " page of set up , select Auto Setup , scroll down to "E_stop" and see if mach3 can pick up what pin the e-stop is on , if nothing > back to broken wire

i used to go through 4 power supply's a year on my PC , all in the wet season , since i got my UPS's 2 years ago , have not had one PC power supply blow up ( was told by the local PC shop to get one ,or he wont get them fixed under warranty ) , i think the brown outs were killing them , when the voltage drops from 240volt down to 150volts and your lights dim for 3 seconds

Right well, after nearly breaking the BoB getting the E-stop connection out to test it ( i pulled the bottom plastic shield off the pins on the BoB, but it seems they just push on & off with no harm?), the button seems to work fine. When I chuck the multimeter on each of the connector pins, there is no circuit. When I push the button, the circuit completes.

I did also check the unwired pin on the E-stop button, and it works too, in reverse. It's live when hooked across the ground wire, and open circuit shen the button is pressed.

Could I have different pin-outs for the E-stop than yours? Will putting the multimeter across the pins on the BoB tell me anything useful?

Swapping the active hi/lo within Mach3 just errors saying the active hi/lo has to be toggled due to a device error, and won't let me continue until I fix it. Strange thing about this is, I wasn't getting this error window on the old PC before the burn-out, but the end result is the same as what I've been getting the whole time (i.e. the button doesn't work when active is high or low)

Originally Posted by SawDustSniffer

great your axis are moving ,
runs quick doesn't it , it surprised me how quick these little steppers move , running smooth? , my x asxis makes a bit more noise in the middle than the ends ,I might have a tiny bend in my ballscrew on the x axis , but it works fine

i gave the hole lot a squirt of " inox " and it sounded a lot smoother after

As for the running, well I don't have a point of reference to measure it against, so it's a bit hard to tell. The Y and Z are very smooth and quiet. The X seems smooth, but sounds rougher. i assume this is because it's moving a lot more weight than the other axes.

Oh, I just realised I didn't try the automatic calibration of the E-stop. I'll go plug it all in and try again.

*EDIT*

OK, tested the automatic setup, and it doesnt recognise the button. the raw port data stays at 0. I also ied with 2 different cables, and as i'm on a new PC with a new parallel port, the only link in the chain left is the BoB and it's connector, isn't it?

If that's faulty, I'm sort of stuffed. Given the E-stop is working on the Pendant, can I live without it? I know a software button isn't as safe as a hardware one.

yer , you can live with out it , as you say the pendent has one , as for the software , the controllers e-stop uses software as well , an e stop on the power cable would be best but over kill

yes x is louder than y&z

hope to get the time today to set up my spindle and see if i can let the excess smoke out of my VFD

edit : i just raised the x axis motor velocity to 4600 , and it runs fine , a lot faster(the 25000 PPM limit )