We've mounted a 500 cpr encoder on the spindle-motor which means it's possible to do rigid tapping. Above some spot-drilling, then a 2.5 mm drill, and then an M3 tap at 500 RPM and 0.5 mm Z-feed per revolution. Below the same thing but with a 5 mm drill and an M6 tap (1 mm … Continue reading Rigid Tapping
As a first serious test-run for our now servo-controlled cnc mill we decided to make an IOM bulb out of steel. It ends up a bit bigger in volume when made out of steel compared to lead, but the difference isn't huge. Making it with a cnc mill allows designing almost any reasonable 3D shape … Continue reading Bulbs of Steel
Got the XYZ servos mounted and tuned. The first video shows a test program with some drilling G-codes. Rapids are set at 5000mm/min with around 400 mm/s^2 accelerations. Following errors stay below 0.02 mm. The second video shows a 40 mm face-mill at 3000 rpm cutting a 20 mm wide aluminium bar with 1 mm … Continue reading First cut with servo-mill
The servos are now almost ready to go on the mill. Some dry-running of EMC2, the servo electronics, and the VFD today. I've made this pyVCP panel for AXIS which displays the commanded and actual spindle RPM, the spindle current (in some uncalibrated unit), the PID outputs and following errors for X/Y/Z. The jog-pendant box … Continue reading EMC2 test run
FinnTec is an annual show for metalworking, toolmaking, CAD/CAM etc. Some video shot with my latest toy, an N95 8Gb. 0:00 5-axis machining on a mazak. 0:35 coordinate measurement machine 0:55 Haas Toolroom lathe. Something to copy or take ideas from if I'm going to build a lathe? 1:27 another lathe 1:45 Hexapod (makes you … Continue reading FinnTec '08
For a few weekends now I have been 'dry-running' the servo electronics that are going to replace stepper motors on the cnc mill. So far the servos are working in closed loop, I can control the VFD forward/reverse and set the RPM, I can read in a spindle-encoder to verify the RPM and also do … Continue reading PID Tunig
This small PCB is going to sit between the M5i20 optoisolators and the VFD that runs the spindle on the mill. Starting from the lower edge of the card there are three outputs that drive optoisolators on the VFD through BC337 transistors. On the VFD they are wired to Forward Start/Stop, Reverse Start/Stop, and External … Continue reading VFD control board
Some good steps towards driving our cnc-mill with DC-servos taken today. I got the pico-systems servodrives wired correctly, the new 50 kHz PWM m5i20 configuration loaded onto the fpga, and updated my pyvcp test panel a bit. I'm using three 19" rack enclosures. The lower one has a 1.8 kVA transformer, the middle one houses … Continue reading Spinning the DC Servos
Jari upgraded the spindle motor to 1.5 kW and shot a few more milling videos. movie 1: movie 2: movie 3: movie 4: Finished parts:
Jari has made an enclosure around our cnc-mill, and that allows us to use a liberal amount of flood coolant. Here's a short video with some tests in aluminium. Before you run to the shop and get an Opti-BF20 of your own please remember that our machine is seriously modified. We put a new table … Continue reading Opti-BF20 in action