What do you really get for a $350 desk top engraver ?

i have a bunch of mechanical mico switches and double shielded cable with all wire connectors needed for that i just need to order some M3 screws so i can mount them. plus i need to do something with cable management and do have some drag chain on hand as well. the one thing i did not care for with the motor and driver kits i got was how bulky the cable ends are. the aviation connectors are not bad the encoder connection is a different story. the shield grounding on the factory encoder cables is not the greatest since i think it is a pigtail of some sort? i hooked them up regardless. one other issue with the kits is the cables are pretty short so by the time you run it you don't have much to work with at the enclosure end. i might have to get some connectors for there so i have some extra wiggle room.

as for the VFD i have a separate enclosure to isolate any EMI that comes from it. double shield cable pretty much everywhere there. the rest of the system is just some commonsense layout keeping power wires away from signal wires and from what i have seen out there anything below 50V DC (I'M RUNNING AT 36V) is not to much of an issue with EMI but i avoided running signal wire near those as well.

i have a problem with my tandem Y axis but i know what the problem is i just don't know how to fix it my motors are going in different directions meaning one has to spin the opposite direction in order to move in the same direction as the other because of how the machine is built Tommy i figured you would have seen this one a mile away since you are the master of belt drives

i'm thinking you can just invert something in the software but could use a little help to get pointed in the right direction so i can fumble my way through this over here

Change the STEP_SCALE to negative on one drive in your ini file

that was an easy enough fix and all is working good now. i think i have everything dialed in about as good as it's going to get with this old computer. everything seems happy at 400 IPM on the X and Y and at 250 IPM on the Z. i don't get any warnings at these settings.

just something to share with everyone it looks like i got the cables under control pretty well. i have power to the VFD but no control with Linuxcnc at the moment. i have my home switches mounted but have to get them wired in at the enclosure side.
CNC first real test of movement (youtube.com)

 

this machine needs an enclosure. i did a little bit of cut testing and had to stop because i was getting peppered that much aluminum machining is not going to be an issue at all i had it pulling cuts at 250IPM and was nowhere near any limits.  

i was not doing anything exciting enough to bother and honestly this thing could destroy some material and make a huge mess with out some way to keep it contained sorry more prep is needed before i let her rip full blast i have some flashing that i can skin a frame up with i probably won't have any time to get into anything serious till this weekend.

since i have linear scales around and a spare DRO i wanted to try this opposed to a dial indicator reading over a small distance. it worked really well. i was really curious about how accurate a belt is over the rolled ball screws everyone uses. over a 10" distance i was able to dial things in really close and test to see what is going on in the middle as well. i think if memory serves me well a rolled ball screw are only accurate to .003 to ,007 per foot as far as lead accuracy goes. these belts float around between 0.000 to .002 over 10" and i don't need any backlash comp either. the glass scales worked well for all this.