2+2+3 More Plasma builds, double the joy ! 3X2M and 2.5X1.5M cnc plasma build.

Grotius wrote:

Hi Tom,

If i look at your value i suggest it could be a calculaled value of -97?

Yes, but on 3 meters of travel, that small difference is noticeable.

Yup that is quite close.

At 60 or 80mm the small errors are not noticeable, i check at the full machine travel, several times to make sure.

Smaller machine update:
- Alu gantry, mounted,
- rails, mounted and aligned,
- X axis motor and belt, mounted and adjusted for tension,
- X axis home and both limits sensor, mounted, no limits set yet,
- Z axis assembly, mounted and aligned,
- Cross laser mounted to the Z axis body,
- Wiring for Y axis from one side to the other routed through the aluminium,
- Wiring of the Z and X axis sensors, motors, floating switch, laser and LED's done,
Remains:
- Wiring from the gantry to the Z and X assembly,
- Wiring all the stuff together at one side of the machine,
- Putting the electronics and power and relays in a box and bolting it to the gantry,
- Bolting front and back panels in place,
- Making a plastic cap for the Z axis,
waiting for the drag chain till Saturday, hopefully.
Got a new helper today, or nuisance, depending on how you look at it :

And the current state of the Z axis on the smaller machine:

Going to drill some holes on the gantry and route the wiring now.
Regards,
Tom.

Drag chains are here, the electronics for the smaller one are nearly finished, so all in all the finish line is close, very close.

This is the last line filter i have, and it's round so mounting it only by zip ties, mounting it by the screw as it is supposed to leaves it blocking 1/4 of electronics:

Also got bit by that small fluffy dog today while playing with it, has bloody sharp teeth, literally bloody !

On to wiring and testing and tuning .... and i have no more 7i92M so this one is going to be used with a parallel port or Mesa 5i25 ( have 1) or Mesa 6i25 (have 2) for now. Last time i tried using Mesa 6i25 and 7i92 with software encoder something was not right, must have missed something in hal, so will have to try that again as using hardware encoder works perfectly, but it locks 3 input pins forcing me to use the second IO port on them for limit switches and using 2 thick cables is not very elegant for the 6i25. 7i92 on the other hand is no problem as it is inside the same case, so adding 3 more wire to the header is simple enough. I did order another 7i92 but to late, so again waiting .......
Regards,
Tom.

Got the electronics sorted and mounted inside the case, did some test with a plain config to set the motion and limits/home properly, some fine tuning is needed, so should be finished in a day or two, well both of them should be finished as the bigger one needs just the drag chain and the water table, but water tables will have to wait as if i build them inside the shop i will not be able to get them out !
Here is a boring video of it moving on it's own attached to a parallel port for now:

Hmmm Note 9 camera making some jumps while recording, did not see those on the Note 8. not even at 4K recordings! Strange ....
Regards,
Tom.

tommylight wrote:

Remains:
- Wiring from the gantry to the Z and X assembly,
- Wiring all the stuff together at one side of the machine,
- Putting the electronics and power and relays in a box and bolting it to the gantry,
- Bolting front and back panels in place, Not done yet
- Making a plastic cap for the Z axis,
waiting for the drag chain till Saturday, hopefully.

Everything is done, except for the orange marked line.
Tomorrow my brother comes with some of his employees to do some video shootings and some pictures that will look better than the Note 8/9 ones i do. Too bad i do not have the tables to do some cutting while at it, would have been much better as people like sparks, something to do with genetics and our predecessors looking at fire a lot !??