Thread: Rebuilding Chinese Machine

Exciting to me Chris.
We get to see the inards of the import machines and it looks impressive from the photos.
Is that a cast frame for the table support?

Originally Posted by rodm

Exciting to me Chris.
We get to see the inards of the import machines and it looks impressive from the photos.
Is that a cast frame for the table support?

Yea its a shocking sand casting (worst I've seen) but the important bits have been machined flat so its a good base, I'll get some more pictures tommorow.

{EDIT}
http://www.xylotex.com/PowerAmp.htm

Just read a little info as to why a smaller Switching PSU can be used for the motors, still leaves me confused after reading that

Is it going to be put on wheels?

Originally Posted by John H

Is it going to be put on wheels?

Yea for sure picked up some 100kg wheels from Freds Tappings for ~$6.60 each. I've moved it a few times and its not easy as it weighs ~220kg when fully assembled.

Not much done just drilling holes, and got some extra pics of the frame for rod

Coming together, just need to set up a PC and wire up the spindle, and see if the spindle still works, the electrical enclosure is inside the machine because the VDF will be attached to the side, (It has a detachable control panel)

Cant wait to get it done as I have plans to get my other machine moving along.

Its in its final position now and the concrete is almost as uneven as the machine so I probably wont worry about the wheels.


BTW just noticed the post dates, 3/4 of a month flies by.

Hi Chris,
Good to see it coming together for you. It certainly looks the part.

Good work there Chris,

Q. Where does the unit come from or atleast is it a known brand machine?
I assume it came with some electronics and you opted to do a refit?


/M

Originally Posted by seafurymike

Good work there Chris,

Q. Where does the unit come from or atleast is it a known brand machine?
I assume it came with some electronics and you opted to do a refit?


/M

Original Brand was Excitech, I removed all their markings.

* They never wired up a ground on the machine, meaning my DSP got fried when something went wrong. I also got a little shock from the DSP Metal Housing

* Main steel frame was covered in a bad case of surface rust reason why its a darker blue as I used left over paint from when I painted my forklift. Originally it looked good as it had a thick coat of white but the paint was flaking. One customer who came by suggested that they used used steel to save money which is probably what they have done.

* There were shavings all over the place, reason for the complete rebuild as some places are hard to get to, + I wanted to give the rails ect. a proper clean (They had a substance on the ballscrews ect to stop rusting)

* Wiring was completely replaced, added limit switches on all axis's because I'm not a fan of the proxy switches.


I was originally going to buy the machine without any drivers, PSU's, DSP but they were only willing to take like ~$300 USD off the machine to which the parts alone when resold would be worth more than that so I just got them to do the wiring.

There are a couple of horror stories from people over at cnczone who got a worse deal than myself, right now anyone who is thinking of buying a cnc router ignore Excitech and go with Quick CNC.

Not to digress but check this out

CNC Engraving machine - GS (China Manufacturer) - Products

There has to be something dodgy going on with this listing - this is way too cheap

They also have the 6090 on this site for $3K

Advertising CNC Router LX-6090A - Lenxan (China Manufacturer) - Products

Originally Posted by seafurymike

Not to digress but check this out

CNC Engraving machine - GS (China Manufacturer) - Products

There has to be something dodgy going on with this listing - this is way too cheap

They also have the 6090 on this site for $3K

Advertising CNC Router LX-6090A - Lenxan (China Manufacturer) - Products

Yea the competition brings the price down but also the quality, seems like everyone in china is jumping on the bandwagon to make the cnc machines. First one doesnt look right should be more like $4500 atleast.

If I had to do it again I would probably buy a ton of extruded aluminium and build something, at the time I had plenty of cash saved up and was feeling lazy.




Just setup a pc today and not setting something right on the latest version of mach 3, I will be troubleshooting tomorrow and hopefully have a moving machine tomorrow.

Ok, got my X axis and Y axis Jogging (Strange thing is mach 3 switched them around "Y controls move X axis")

Z axis wont jog but I can get it to move.

Randomly mach 3 will just not work at all, no jogging of motors ect. but I gather this is due to playing with the motor setups.

Just having a problem with my limit switch setup, I am running a closed circuit to all my switches, the circuit itself is perfect and closed, the limit switches work great when the drivers are off but as soon as I turn the stepper motors on the limit switches trigger, longest I can get without it triggering is something like 5 seconds max.

I am using AWG 24, 2 core, braid shielded ie. microphone cable.

Shield has not been grounded anywhere but I would have thought it would still work but trigger randomly, am I doing something wrong or is it normal for it to trigger so easily from motors standing still? On my other machine I ran a open circuit with wire which was not shielded (motor wire was) and it never triggered randomly on me.

Any help is much appreciated.

Hi Chris,
Sounds like a grounding problem. Earth the shield back to your main earth and make sure the machine is earthed as well. If you still have issues increase the debounce interval (general config) in Mach3 to 20,000 then reduce it until it is the lowest setting without false trigering.
Are you running a smoothstepper?

Originally Posted by rodm

Hi Chris,
Sounds like a grounding problem. Earth the shield back to your main earth and make sure the machine is earthed as well. If you still have issues increase the debounce interval (general config) in Mach3 to 20,000 then reduce it until it is the lowest setting without false trigering.
Are you running a smoothstepper?

Na just running through the parallel port.

I'll give it a go tomorrow and see how I go, control box was removed from the machine so the machine itself is not grounded but all the shields from the motors are grounded to the control box.

Hi, rod it was a grounding issue with the control box and the machine, I bolted the enclosure back in and got a good ground to the machine. (When I had it off the machine I ran a light gauge wire to the control box but I guess it wasn't good enough)

In the 20 Minutes or so I was playing with it, no false triggers. Thanks for the help.

Should be some more progress this weekend, hoping for the spindle to be attached.