Retrofit of Precix 5x10 CNC

tommylight,

Just realized I am following your servo tuning guide, which is awesome by the way, thanks for that as well!!!

Thanks again tommylight!

While it was powered off I removed the jumper for enable. I powered it up and got a different message saying inhibited. I manually connected pin 7 to 9/10 and came up ready just like before. I was thinking about holding a batter to pins 1 and 2 to give it some voltage to maybe spin the spindle. Before I could test it I had to answer someone's question and when I got back the display was blank. Flipped the disconnect to off, but it appears like this VFD is dying? Could I be doing something that is causing it to die out?
Checked continuity from VFD to spindle, looks good. Getting ~120V on each leg of the VFD, power to spindle from VFD was like 3v oddly.

Anyone have any thoughts, or is it time for a new one?

Any suggestions for a good/inexpensive/mesa/linuxCNC compatible VFD that can power a 5.5hp spindle would love to hear them.

Well, I will get back to servo tuning...

thanks

Long story short, found a spark on board of VFD, attempted solder repair, VFD turns on and was responding normally. Who knows for how long. So excited to see the spindle spin, was exhilarating...

Connected it to MESA 7i77 5th PWM connection per previous post.

Ran through PNCCONF just to see if would fire up, and enabled spindle and changed speed, it was spinning!!!
Upped speed, went fast, all good!
Upped speed again, got a trip error on VFD.
AC instantaneous over currnet trip - Insufficient ramp times / phase to phase or phase to earth short circuit at the drive output
I am hoping it's just because I was screwing with it and didn't have parameters correct on control side.

Going to look into setting up the spindle properly in INI/HAL now.

Just wanted to keep you posted, thanks for all the help!!!

Still planning on replacing VFD when I get some funds available.

I should start a new thread, this is mostly not driver board related, but it's so cool to have it all in one thread. See my progress like a dairy of sorts. Hopefully it can help somebody start to finish retrofit a similar machine?

Anyway, I have been trying to 'tune' my spindle with not much success.

I read through tommylights servo tuning, is there something else for setting up a spindle/vfd?

Let me know if anyone knows a good thread to follow, thanks!

Spindle tuning is completely different because:

Velocity mode axis tuning:

command/feeback=position
control output = velocity
Main FF term = FF1 == 1.0 (iff velocity output of PID is scaled in machine units per second)
Main feedback term = P

Spindle tuning

command/feedback=velocity
control output=usually velocity
Main FF term = FF0 ==1.0
Main feedback terms P,I

For spindle tuning, I would start with open loop (FF0 = 1.0 all other terms 0) and then gradually add P to add feedback
Note the the feedback velocity from the encoder is in RPS not RPM so this either needs to be scaled (or use the latest
LinuxCNC master that provides RPM velocity pins from the encoder module)

I would not even call what he needs to do tuning. He just needs to reconfigure the parameters of his VFD for his router spindle after he mucked around with the settings. Most of the big routers I have worked with came with a paper copy of those settings included with the documentation (if you have it. )

Thanks Todd/PCW,

As far as the VFD setting go, I didn't change anything. I did go through them to make sure they weren't defaults. Everything appears to be set for the spindle I have. The items I could see matched the nameplate on the spindle.

I didn't get any paperwork with the spindle, and having difficulty finding a manual.
Colombo Site
That's similar, but this one is 220V RC90.22 I believe,.
I have yet to contact them.

Do you think my problem is with the VFD settings?

Thanks PCW, I guess I figured this spindle setup didn't have feedback of any sort. Shows what I don't know...
I know there is some wires coming from spindle for the ATC, do you think there would be some sort of velocity sensor wire in that bundle? I know there is a wire, that show when the spindle is not moving so you can initiate the ATC.

I figured you set up the VFD, then the MESA card would output 5V and the VFD would translate that to 50% power/speed. and it would just go from there?


Thanks guys!

apologies Todd,

I thought I would try it just with the VFD which seemed to be working before, well it wasn't. So I was going through the settings on the VFD and the "Rated Speed" was set to "1" and it states if the RPM is greater than 9999 to use a value of "0" so I changed it to 0 and it's behaving much better. Thanks for pointing me in that direction! I must have accidentally changed it when I was changing the input mode from panel to the mesa input.

Now with the spindle again performing properly, I will reconnect it to MESA and try it again.

Thanks again!

As always thanks for all the help from the forum, clearly I couldn't have done this without you guys.

Been reading about Tool Changers on the forum and the various ways to accomplish this.
Sounds like G-code remap is the easiest method for using a tool changer with a rack system?
I checked out this demo:
sim->axis->remap->racktoolchanger

Would I be able to check my sensors with this method?

Here is some psuedo code I came up when I first started thinking about a tool changer:
probably not even close to the correct ideology.

Couldn't find much info on these proximity sensors, I am guessing I would apply my 12V field power to one leg and would normally closed, open when it was active? Anyone got any experience with these colombo sensors. Also having a hard time tracking down the wires, since they appear to be sealed and then shrink tubed so I might have to remove some of the insulation to track down the wire going into my controller.

photos.app.goo.gl/KLZ2nPuCTjw1sw4r9
photos.app.goo.gl/owjzTMWsv3HBuu6U9