Work on the mill as been progressing really well.
First the rules that I had to follow for the build.
1. No buying parts unless I earned the money off the table per the GF. -Not really going to complain about this one. She is better with money than I am and it will cause me less stress. In no way do I make alot of money off the table but I do have a full time engineering job.
2. Still need to spend some time with her on the weekends. - Propane garage heater to the rescue. Garage is a palmy 70-75 degrees so she can read her book in the garage or chat with me.
Control system.
Here were the systems I was debating about for the control system. Rough pricing listed for anyone that is having the same issues
PDMX (can use linuxcnc or mach3) Limited I/O points
$174 PDMX-126 Breakout board
$57 PDMX-107 Isolated spindle control (controls VFD)
$200 Ethernet smoothstepper (Can be omitted) Way to avoid using the parallel port
$200 Mach3 License (Already own a copy for my plasma table.)
Mesa Card setup (Linuxcnc only)
5i25 PCI card
7i76 breakout board (controls 5 steppers, spindle encoder, isolated analog spindle speed control, 48 I/O points.)
$200 for plug-in-play setup.
I went with the mesa card setup for the massive amount of I/O points and the option to run 5 axis's from one card. Plus later on I may decide to add a encoder to the spindle to allow for rigid tapping. The PDMX can be expanded to that many I/O points with another card.
Linuxcnc can be a little scary at first but is fairly easy to get started with the new GUI setups that are included for the Mesa cards.
Geckos 203v mounted to a 1/2 slab of Aluminum which is bolted to one of the original heat seaks. The wiring is little bit of a mess at this time but should be cleaned up after this weekend. Later on I will mill a new slab that will include fins on the bottom for the geckos. Sounds like a good starter project.
The wiring TB's were pulled from the original wirig to save on costs. Also reused alot of the original wiring for connecting stuff. Tons of 20, 18, 14, 12ga wires. I would say this saved at least $100.
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Cabinet
Top left space reserved for Hitachi WJ200-015LF VFD
Top right - Fuses and a 40amp contactor
Middle - Transformer for the 70volts dc and the caps are sitting off to the left. I will make a new shelf this weekend to mount the caps.
Computer is mounted to a custom made shelf. A shuttle PC fit in the cabinet really well. Computer is not fully setted on the shelf during pictures.
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Z limits caused some issues. I was wiring the top switch as the home, middle as upper limit and bottom switch as lower limit. This was all fine and dandy till I screwed up the config for the Z travel and managed to crush the home switch. I forgot the Z has a -5.0in travel and not a positive +5.0in like I programed in the config. I was pissed that I needed to buy a new switch till I researched the switch in the manual and found it be not needed. In the original configuration of the Z switches, the 2 were limits and one was a deacceleration switch before it hit the top switch. With modern controls I dont need one of the switches. In linuxcnc I can set the top switch to home and a limit.
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Sunday night I had the table and quill moving by computer. VFD should be on the way after this weekend if CL goes correct.
