Bridgeport Torq-Cut TC4G Retrofit

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.

chopper79 wrote: 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.

You almost certainly need different PID gains in each gear.
I would suggest a set of mux components to choose P and I (and maybe D) according to gear.

andypugh wrote: You almost certainly need different PID gains in each gear.
I would suggest a set of mux components to choose P and I (and maybe D) according to gear.

This was direction I was going to go for now. About 1/2 way done with it currently. Taking multiple mux2 to patch it all together using (2) PID sections. Created a low and high gear PID so just mux2 the enables, commands, feedback, and position of each PID group. Have to take that and mux2 the spindle PID so mux2 sel(s) can chose the right path based on certain bits going true.

Its a maze... Maybe I am just muxing it up and do not need so many.

Update

The machine now has spindle orientation with both high and low gear. Took a bit to figure out how to piece it all together, but figured it out. Using (2) orient PIDs and a few or2, mux2, and other misc. items.

Now need to tune the PID on both gear as they both oscillate when oriented. The low gear is not as noticeable due to the 4:1 ratio, but it is there.

Currently both PIDs are only using Pgain and FF1. ( Just messing around with these)

Andy you mentioned P, I, and maybe some D. I tried to put some values in to see what happened and never got any decent results. Any recommendation on how to go about this? I have looked over briefly the PID tuning pages, but not deep enough yet.

Also finished up the following:

1) Manual tool release (Tied in with air pressure and spindle stop)
2) Manual carousel index (Tied in with spindle stop)
3) Air pressure tied with estop (No air pressure = No estop clear)
4) Transmission component tied with air pressure and orientation (No air pressure = No gear change)
5) Finished tool change (No air pressure = No tool change)

Getting closer...

chopper79 wrote: Currently both PIDs are only using Pgain and FF1. ( Just messing around with these)

I wouldn't expect FF1 to be helpful. The commanded position is a static value so none of the FF terms will be any help, and probably the opposite.

It will mainly need P, but I would expect a little I to help pull out the last bit of static error. But the I-term will be 100 to 1000x smaller than the P.