Bridgeport Torq-Cut TC4G Retrofit

I have se questions about your paint choice.
1 Have you used this before?
2 How does it hold up to coolant?
3 Did you use the recommended hardner?
4 Did you go down to bare metal?
5 If not what prep did you do?
6 Cost of the paint and amount used

Thank you

andypugh wrote:

That should work.

One possible issue is that we have had trouble with the docs build inserting dashes "–" in the docs rather than hyphens "-", so perhaps if you copy-pasted that would cause the problem.
Otherwise, I am puzzled.

I was trying to sets spindle-index-enable before net spindle-index-enable <=> hm2_[HOSTMOT2](BOARD).0.encoder.05.index-enable
net spindle-index-enable <=> spindle.0.index-enable

When you mentioned that the signal needs created first is what prompted me to rearrange the position of the sets. Which I then remembered that I have ran into issues in the past when creating my HAL files due to arrangement orders. Once rearranged, it worked fine.

That's what happens when you only get to do this every couple years. I need to do it more often...

Michael wrote:

Mind sharing your hal and ini up to this point? Curious what your tool change looks like.

Clean machine you have there. I am disassembling my enclousre and cleaning/prepping for paint while I wait for my spindle to get back. Mine is pretty beat though.

Well... I got excited and started to go to town on the config and forgot to save a master copy of the working one. Now I am in the process of redoing it as I made a bunch of changes and nothing works right now. I forgot to follow my own rule and that is to save a copy when a milestone is reached so I could always revert back.

I will get it redone this week and post it. Well post the working unfinished config anyway.

Sorry about that!

My toolchange.ngc file is attached though

Michael wrote:

I have se questions about your paint choice.
1 Have you used this before?
2 How does it hold up to coolant?
3 Did you use the recommended hardner?
4 Did you go down to bare metal?
5 If not what prep did you do?
6 Cost of the paint and amount used

Thank you

1) Never used this type of paint before. But based on research and recommendation I chose to try it.
2) Not sure, but seems like it will be fine.
3) No hardener (Air dry and is rock hard after a couple days, but could add a hardener)
4) Bare metal where I could which was most of it (This paint is a direct to metal product. does fine on old paint also as long as it is clean and not loose)
5) Cleaned with simple green, then acetone, then sanded, then acetone, then paint. (Not been able to chip it with finger nails and no chips when I dropped a hammer on it. Grease and oil wipe right of with no issue.)
6) $80/gal and I purchased (2) gallon. Wasted 1/2 of first gallon as I did not use if fast enough and the lid was cracked. If everything was prepped then 2-3 gals would do the whole machine easy.

I applied with a brush and a fine roller. I will probably spray the enclosure, but then again may just roll it as the paint levels great.

Finding the HAL file hard to keep up with. Going to look at doing a component to handle all this stuff. I might call it vmc.comp and it will handle the orientation and transmission/gearbox items. Might even try my hand at adding tool change in it as well. Passing in and out of multiple components is making me crazy. We will see what kind of weird stuff I come up with, if anything...

This will test my lack of C knowledge to the max.

Attached is my current HAL and INI per request.

These are by no means finished so ignore the commented out items or if anything is laid out funny. The config works well excluding orientation which is where everything went bad on me (orientation items are incomplete).

I was going to use the VFD orientation but found that when I switched gears on the transmission the orientation never would line back up at the appropriate angle (No way to know where the gears lined up so no way to use the VFD orientation).

This prompted me to start on the orientation side of things. Using the orient component worked for me but the PID for the orient does not know what to do in low gear vs high gear. The angle always was correct though, but in high gear the spindle would vibrate badly and in low gear it is perfect.

Thought about making it only allow orientation in low gear, but then that causes time and part wear issues. Having to switch to low gear every time I tool changed or oriented the spindle means cycling the valves a lot more. Still working on this part as of now... May be able to do something so that if the spindle is in high gear then divide PID value by transmission ratio. Might have to try it using a scale of some sort.

Thank you for sharing the files!

You have to get rid of that transmission. Unless you plan on doing a lot of tapping or steel work. My spindle is out for repair and I had them check to see what max rpm could be for the stock bearings. I was happy to find out it's a bit over 11k rpm. So I am having them bed the bearings at 10k, check for heat issues and plan to run the motor with a 56t pulley to get 10k out of it. I do almost exclusively aluminum so speed is my friend.

I attached a picture of the spindle motor adapter plate that the 8k spindles use in place of the transmission if you have any interest or need to ditch it some day. It's a simple part to make. Only critical tolerance would be parallelism.

I may remove the transmission one day, but I plan on doing steel and cast iron along with aluminum. Right now I will keep pushing forward with the transmission.