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  1. #16
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    Nov 2004
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    Redlands area, Brisbane
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    Great minds etc...

    I had the same thought about using a stepper motor to create a router lift. I've not looked into it yet so you are way ahead of me.

    I've been a software developer for over 30 years (including C/C++ development) and recently did quite a bit of fiddling with Arduino for another personal project. It would not be of interest here.

    Anyway, I have a Triton router in the table. I thought of driving the router's inbuilt through table "cranking pin"; that Triton apparently no longer can provide the accessory to manually turn. That's as far as my thinking has gone on this. Assuming this is possible, the only thing needed is the physical connection for the stepper motor to the cranking pin.

    I've got a number of projects to work on before I get to this.

    One of the things I would like is a rapid up/down triggered by a foot pedal/button. Arcade buttons would work fine for this. One use-case in particular is for using the router table to cut a blind slot.

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  3. #17
    Join Date
    Jan 2014
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    Sydney Upper North Shore
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    I actually bought a small geared stepper to go into the micro adjustment from under the table
    7FB43ED7-C245-47FB-A0D4-32FDD1F2C372.jpg


    Haven’t tried it yet as I got carried away with the lift idea. I’m not sure how the plastic gears would stand up without using the router lock. If you have to under the router to lock the router you may as well manually turn the micro adjustment.
    Look forward to seeing some of your ideas.

  4. #18
    Join Date
    Nov 2004
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    Redlands area, Brisbane
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    Have a servo to actuate the router lock between adjustment. Problem solved!

  5. #19
    Join Date
    Jul 2005
    Location
    Oberon, NSW
    Age
    63
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    13,354

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    Are you working straight off the Arduino, or are you using a shield?

    Even for projects that can be run direct off the Arduino I like to use a prototyping shield. (About $AUS20) That way if I need extra in/outputs or different supply voltages I can simply & easily modify the circuit w/out touching the core system. The few times I haven't used one have always seemed to end in regret.

    Edit: Never mind. Just spotted post #9. D'Oh!

    Quote Originally Posted by Lappa View Post
    Another carefully delivered package by Australia Post]
    Just be thankful it didn't end up in Greece...
    I may be weird, but I'm saving up to become eccentric.

    - Andy Mc

  6. #20
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    I’m now using these for the Arduinos. Makes connections and circuit changes much easier.

    516D2CAC-9660-4546-9C01-3E8AA3FE259A.jpg

  7. #21
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    Nov 2004
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    Redlands area, Brisbane
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    For prototyping, they're fine. For the finished item, I solder directly to the board. I don't want anything getting loose even accidentally.

    If you can remember this far back; there was a BOAC (I'm thinking before they became BA) advertisement that was featured on billboards (IIRC) for Concorde that went:

    Breakfast in London, Dinner in New York

    Some wag was painting underneath: Baggage in Beirut.

    So the story goes anyway. I just checked the Googles but can't find supporting evidence.

    But, having been that guy standing at the baggage carousel when it stopped (in Taipei); I find it eminently believable!

    Luckily in my case, baggage was only in Hong Kong!

  8. #22
    Join Date
    May 2013
    Location
    Braunschweig
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    4

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    Hi Lappa,

    that looks great! I did something comparable half a year ago. I also use an Arduino/Stepper combination to lift my router, I use a control dial. The dial has a push-button to switch between 0.1mm and 0.5mm steps. The lift uses the spindle of my router (Casals 3000) directly. And I think I use the same display.

    I use four different modes for operation:
    INIT - When starting the hardware, the software automatically searches a position where both end switches (limitting the router movements) are open. Thus, it goes to a center position.
    SET - The actual height can be put into the system using the control dial. After SET, all heights are absolute.
    WORK - Use the control dial to adjust the height. There is a digital readout for actual and target position.
    LOCK - The control box is located below my table at the front side. Pressing the control dial for at least 2 seconds locks the system, doing that again releases the system.

    System is in operation half a year now - and works fine!

    I wrote a short blog about my changes, including a part-list. Unfortunately, it's all German, however there are many pictures inside:
    Höhenverstellung Frästisch

  9. #23
    Join Date
    Jan 2014
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    Sydney Upper North Shore
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    Default Update of problems

    Everything is on hold as I have other priorities but i’ve Had two major problems with my router lift.

    Problem 1 - Crap driver

    All looked roses until I decided to actually measure the movement using a dial indicator. One side note is that the stepper has always been “noisy” (you could hear it stepping) which may have been a warning sign but as I’ve never used large steppers before, it didn’t twig.

    When programmed to move forward eg. 1 mm, it only moved 0.72mm. When asked to move another 1mm in the same direction it moved 1.0mm.
    ie. it was always 0.28mm short on the first movement but O/K after that but still short of where it should actually be.
    However, if you reversed direction, the first movement was short 0.28mm then O/K after that. So it would start from 0.00 and end back at 0.00 but the in-between measurements were out by 0.28mm
    I could move it 6mm on the first step in one go and it would end up at 5.72mm.
    After speaking to the guys from Stepperonline (fabulous guys - helpful and quick to answer emails) and using some very simple programming, we arrived at the conclusion it was the driver. BTW the driver was NOT theirs and I’ve since found out I’m not the only one having problems with is brand driver.
    They sent out another driver and what a difference - quiet as a church mouse (in fact I didn’t think it was working at first) and within the stated accuracy for steppers (which is approx. 0.6 degrees for a 200 step unit).

    2) Inaccurate Igaging DRO.

    While all this was happening, I hooked up my DRO. The problem with this was that it wouldn’t start to register any measurement until the dial indicator had moved 0.14mm. After that it was O/K. Change direction and the dial indicator would move 0.14mm before the DRO started to count back down.
    I spoke to the Igaging guys in the USA by phone and they said - “sounds faulty - send it back”. I found out that one retailer had three back on the bench with problems.
    Maybe a bad batch?? but I haven’t bought another one to retest after sorting out the driver.

    You can see both problems in this video - you can also hear the stepper.

    The program is a simple one with no libraries. It’s designed to move the stepper up 1mm, stop for a second, move up another 1mm then stop and then reverse 1mm, stop, move down another 1mm and end at 0.00.
    So the dial indicator and DRO should go 0, 1mm, 2mm, 1mm, 0.

    https://youtu.be/x1ziipcyY1s

    Additional
    i bought three of the drivers back in April. All drivers are crap. Following an article on the WEB, I’ve modified one driver with new high speed opto-couplers and some other changes but am yet to try it.
    Last edited by Lappa; 24th September 2018 at 07:50 PM. Reason: Additional infoo

  10. #24
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    Default Driver problems

    The drivers I had problems with are sold as HY-DIV268N- 5A.

    However not all HY-DIV268N- 5A unit’s are equal - there are at least two builds available. One appears to be fine, the other has problems. I bought the latter

    The good unit uses 6N137 opto couplers which are high speed. The crap one uses 4N25 slower speed opto couplers and that appears to be one of the problems. Unfortunately, the only way to tell the difference, as far as I can see, is to remove the cover and look inside.

    This is the good one. Note the two opto couplers are 8 pin ICs on tne right

    CE008B8E-DD50-48AE-9310-DBFEECD53B27.jpg

    This is the crap one. Notice the optocouplers are 6 pin ICs on the right.

    0F0557E6-2742-48B9-BD67-FFDA30CBE017.jpg

    Theres a site on the WEB that details the problems and the fixes. It involves replacing the 4N25 ICs with 6N137 ICs and IC sockets, connecting two filter capacitors and supplying a 5V supply to the new ICs and removing two surface mount resistors. The new ICs have two extra legs one which is left floating and the other connected to the 5v supply and capacitor.

    Heres a photo of mine modified.

    1D19C5F9-E782-48CA-9157-3CD69C0290EB.jpg

    I’m on holidays next week so I’ll give it a run and see how it goes. The guy on the WEB reckons it fixes the problems I experienced.

    Heres a link to his site.

    TB6600 / HY-DIV268N-5A Problems, and possible solutions

  11. #25
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    All back together again and tested. Big difference Accurate to within 0.02/0.025mm or about 0.001” over the first mm and still accurate to close on 0.025/0.03mm as you increase the distance. So it’s still loosing on the first step but a huge improvement.

  12. #26
    Join Date
    Nov 2013
    Location
    Caboolture QLD AU
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    Hi Lappa, I’ve been having a closer look at the clock and read period generated by the iGaging DRO factory head unit.

    Hopefully when you get a chance you may be able to confirm your unit as I thought the OEM units were faster than the results below – unless my CRO is playing up or I’m out of my mind – or both.

    OEM unit, one clock period is 400us which is only around 2.5 kHz, it takes 8.3 ms to clock in 21 bits of data and repeats (reads) every 3 ms.

    The 120 MHz microchip device I initially developed this on has a clock period of 490 us (2 kHz), it takes 20 ms to clock and read 21 bits.

    Unlike the OEM head unit it has a lot more to do, full graphic display, Touch screen, monitoring lots of control signals etc. So it reads every 40 ms. However it’s way faster to display position changes than the OEM unit, I can only put this down to the processing time with display refresh and updates in the OEM head unit? It’s certainly not oversampling.

    As the Microchip devices is getting harder to find and now quite expensive – and you have to build the dam thing (solder a 140 pin SMD) I decided to switch to a recent device that is a fully assembled development board for around $36 in AU.

    It’s based on the STM32 Nucleo-144 board the NUCLEO-H743ZI, an ARM Cortex-M7 running at 400 MHz, I spend the past week getting everything set up and ported to the NUCLEO and the results are below.

    At 400 MHz, the clock period is 129 ms which is around 7.2 kHz. It takes 4 ms to clock / read 21 bits, and repeats every 16ms – again complete program overhead.

    One thing I noticed with the faster read speeds is that it can stop the fence running at full speed within 0.005 mm of travel after the optical fence home position sensor is sensed, so automatic back track and micro step adjustment to zero is not even noticed, it’s dam fast. NOTE that read speed and stepper control are extremely fast when setting HOME or going to a requested position as the control loops bypass 80% of the the main program in doing so.

    The second thing is - very little jitter, three times sample and it’s as smooth as, display update following the slide movement is amazing – makes the OEM head unit look like it’s in slow - slow motion, and again not a single glitch running in the router table.

  13. #27
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    Thanks for that. I haven’t got an Igaging unit anymore. Sent it back as it was inaccurate and not fit for purpose. I got another one but it was destroyed by Australia Post (see earlier post) and I haven’t bothered to get a new one.
    I’ve got stacks of studies and a course to do at the moment for work, so everything fun is on the back burner

  14. #28
    Join Date
    Nov 2013
    Location
    Caboolture QLD AU
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    Nothing like work and study to spoil the fun, good luck with the studies. Catch up when / if you get back to project.

  15. #29
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    It’s not as though the course was an option - thousands have to get the qual. or no job next year. They certainly know how to get you motivated

    i was talking to my BIL last night re your post on the Nucleo board and he suggested I get one that is compatible with Arduino shields/devices (as I have some) so I ordered the F401RE as a present for me being so studious

    i’ll have a play in my spare time - thanks for the heads up - they look like an interesting unit.

  16. #30
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    Caboolture QLD AU
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    I needed the 400 MHz version as I'm programming in a powerful specially written version of embedded Basic that has been ported to the NUCLEO-H743ZI hardware. So there are interpreter overheads - but the ease of programming and development outweighs the overhead and at 400 MHz it has speed to burn.

    Except for changing the 27 I/O pin number definitions. I was able to take the code unchanged from the Microchip based controller over to the ARM based NUCLEO.

    If you are writing in C for for the F402RE (runs around 80 MHz I think?) and generating compiled native code from an IDE then you still have speed to burn.

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