Mod woke up and gave #115 - Sacramento CA USA

[MetalHead]

PM me and I can help on electrics parts

[Zouave]

I'm not so worried about the parts, I just want to understand how and why something works, not just that it does. So I spend too much time worrying about little things. Thus why I am 2 years into this. :-)

[MetalHead]

Yeah divide the system by 4 and it helps. Do the kitchen table project and start with only one motor.

[Johannescnc]

Hi John, glad to hear your making progress! I hope it's going well!

[Zouave]

And lo', there were parts inside! Now if I can just figure out how to post pictures!

[jhiggins7]

Eric,

See this thread by Gerald on how to attach photos.

[Zouave]

Well, here is the progress from 2 years ago. I have some other pictures lying around, as in reality, the entire body has been together for almost a year and a half. I still need to add some angled bracing to improve the rigidity. Not that I can move it at all as is, but I'm sure the router zipping back and forth will generate some very small flexing. But hey, we like pictures, right?

[Zouave]

And here we have some more recent progress pictures! As you can see, gantry is all welded up and in place, rails are done (I have pictures of them somewhere) and it rolls great. I had planned on doing Al rails (in one of the pictures, you can see the blanks lying there) but as time has passed, I am considering more and more just going with steel rails for the Y. I need to decide that this week.
So, we have the gantry being primed and painted, with the assistance of my friend Clinton (not me in the picture). And the cable chain supports attached.

And I just got a package of stuff from McMaster Carr. If anyone needs VHB tape, I have it! 36 yds of it... Let me know through a PM and we'll work something out.

[Zouave]

Started assembling my control panel. Making good progress on that and haven't shocked myself a single time even! Will post pictures when I am back from the US Open.

[Zouave]

got the last of my electrical parts today. Tomorrow, I begin wiring in earnest.

[darren salyer]

Thats exciting.
For me, when I began wiring was the tipping point toward seeing the light at the end of the tunnel.

[Zouave]

Finally got wire from Helukabel on Friday! :-)

Am having some issues with the Y-car. It seems it got torqued at some point (pretty sure I welded it square way back when...) so one of my wheels is not sitting down on the rail. Rather frustrated with it. Need to figure out where the issue is.

Out of curiosity, has anyone ever thought about putting a cam on those wheels so they can be rotated till they're at the right level, then, say, tack-weld the cam in place, grind the weld flush and off you go, with it perfectly (or close enough) level.

[KenC]

Your y-car might be twisted or you have not spend enough time to adjust the v-wheel height.
Mechanical alighment/setting take time & if you started with a twisted Y-car, it can be frustrating...

Gerald already designed a cam in the wheel assembly...

[Johannescnc]

I was thinking the same thing Zouave... The radial adjustment of the wheels may not be enough. It's not even .125" if I remember right.
Have noticed that others have had similar issues. I guess a frame bend is in order.

[KenC]

Or you can start making long slot holes for adjustment to make the twisted gantry or Y-car V-wheel yo sit on the rails & cheat yourself in believing the gantry & y_car are perfectly square & straight.

[domino11]

I think Ken is on the money here. Make sure the Gantry and Y car are straight first. Make adjustments there to get things right. I would check the gantry first for propeller twist. There is a procedure for getting this fixed on the forum.

[Zouave]

Y-car issues are being resolved, I think its simply a matter of the bolts I am using being too thick. Am going to mill them down 2mm and use shim washers to bring it up to where it needs to be.

In other news... I got my first motor turning this morning. Out of shame for how atrocious my kitchen table project looks right now, I'm not putting up a picture just yet. Once I have things a bit more clean, I'll snap some shots. Don't want to set a bad example for future people. :-D

[KenC]

We love messy kitchen table project pix!!! What fun when everything is tidy up...

[Zouave]

Well, my kitchen table test is under way. So far, all my wiring has been, as nearly as I can tell, going correctly. This is before I wired up the first motor, gecko and the temporary assembly of my power supply (waiting for a friend of mine to bend the bracket the power supply will mount to. At the moment, I have an uncomfortably large capacitor mounted in an uncomfortably small prototyping board to get a good electrical connection. (Alligator clips just seemed too sketchy to attach to a capacitor, plus having exposed wiring, not making me happy... So bread-board it is. Motors are turning, working on wiring up the rest of the circuits to get the e-stops all tied into Mach3, getting the Prox sensors working, etc. So lots to do!

But here you go, Ken, messy board! (It looks worse now, will get a picture this afternoon)

[KenC]

AND you call that messy???
Nice blue glow under the drive, I LIKE!

[domino11]

It even has a socket for a work light!

[danilom]

You could get burns from a bulb inside a small box, place a small neon light instead, I'we seen it in lots of control boxes.

or is that light on the outside, like an indicator

[Zouave]

The light is my simulated router. The blue backlight is a led lit fan blowing on the back side of the heat sink.

[danilom]

do you have some fins behind the plate? fan blowing in a plate won't help much but will work if he has enough space behind to pull air

[Zouave]

Back plate will be 1" off the case, with a hole cut in it to match the diameter of the fan. If temps get high, will add a finned sink below each drive. Not expecting that to be a major issue.

[KenC]

I did it differently, I just mount the drivers on panel's mounting plate because tht is about the biggest plate that can go into the panel as heat sink. Use fan to create air circulation to assist heat transfer from the mounting plate to the panel itself. I reckon if the panel is large enough, it will have enough surface area to dissipate heat to the atmosphere to keep the electronics alive. If it doesn't, create a hurricane inside the panel with more fans
As you can see in my built, I mount the fans on the control panel door.

[Red_boards]

I mounted the Geckos directly onto a finned base and put the fan under that. So my arrangement is similar to what you have, but the base itself is finned.

cooling fan with LED . I like that!

[Zouave]

Well, after a bit of a break, in which I went to England for 3 weeks, and have been swamped with work, finally back at it! Ended up mounting my control panel to the side of the Mechmate, near where the wires leave the cable chain. This should make things a little easier to manage. My main consideration, at this point, as I get ready to wire up everything, is how to attach the motors to the shielded cables. I would very much like to have a connector that I wire into, that can be plugged and unplugged, if I need to move this at some point. Any suggestions with that? I'm just going to run the cable through grommets in the side of the control box for now, I can pull the wire back and add a plug later if I feel like it, I think.

Pictures forthcoming....? :-)

[Alan_c]

see here: http://www.mechmate.com/forums/showt...&postcount=129
and here: http://www.mechmate.com/forums/showt...&postcount=203

These are GEWIS connectors.

[Zouave]

Wow, those look great. Thanks for the link, going to check those out and see if I can get them locally.