Indexer Going IN! #20 - Abu Dhabi, UAE
 

I have started the fabrication of my MechMate in Abu Dhabi, all the electronic stuffs, racks& pinions has been bought and is in a container bopping on the ocean between USA and Abu Dhabi, all the necessary steel is on my trailer ready to be transformed into a good looking MechMate.
The first cut in a piece of wood should be by the end of September, would want it sooner but we need to maintain a balance in life with work, social life and MechMate.
Thank you Gerald, thank you for making the plans available to us, for the time that you devote to make sure we all smile at the end of the day and for paying our school fees, this can be a expensive learning curve. I take my hat of for all the shared knowledge and support that is available from all the members, nice to know in this day that people are so willing to help, thank you guys.

Welcome aboard & best of luck in you built. When time permits, show us some photos of your progress / built !
Amicelement, Robert ;)

Maybe you can just leave the pieces of steel outside in the desert...the heat could fuse it together somedays ;)
Good luck with the build and YES we need proof...lots and lots of pictures

Rails drilled, cut and grind
 

Thank you for the welcome words.
I made this adaption for my Makita grinder form offcut MDF and a few screws, the grinder fits snug into the MDF supports, I made sure that no high squeezing pressure is exerted onto the housing of the grinder body. It worked well for me, the cutting and grinding is off to a great start and completed, the temperature is not of the cutting disc, it is our 11h00 morning temperature in full shade.

nice grinder attachment though!

thanks for grinder attachment

This past few weeks the MM was moved to the side, August was a month of illness in our household. My wife was admitted to hospital to drain a Spontaneous Pneumo-thorax, while she was in hospital I took my two girls for ice skating, the youngest one fell end fractured her right Ulna bone. The oldest developed a nasty middle ear infection and I had a nasty flew with the change of the season. We are all on good track again and the building has started again this past weekend
I have received the Y-car from the water jet cutters and the bending is also completed.
All the cross bearers is cut and drilled, X rails cut to size, pre assembly will start by this weekend.

"Sterkte ou maat! Hoop dit gaan beter."Don`t fall of your bike and get into hospital yourself then you won`t be able to build your machine.:)

Koning,
Hope all improves for your family. :) Isnt it hard to keep ice at 44.4 C? :eek:;)

Cross Bearers drilled
 

Baie dankie manne dit gaan baie goed by die huis, thank you it is all much better at home at this moment, My girls make sure that my glass stay full with new ice all day long:D.
This how I made sure all the holes in the cross bearers are 100% perfect to layout according to the drawings,
i used the same clamp strip principle that is used on the gantry tubes, took flatbar and measured the hole locations to spec, centre punched and drilled them with 3 mm drill bit, marked all the cross beares on the same side and also the flatbar template is marked on one side to make sure the top side is top and right side is right before copying the holes. Used a scribe clock to centre the template on the C-chanel and clamped the template along the length, on all of the cross bearers is only one pencil mark for the 1st hole location.

Regards
Koning

Hennie
I had my share of bike falls, now I try to stay ontop of a quad bike, the wife is the driver of the Honda crf 450, I had serious facial surgery in November last year, note all the retaining plates and nails,, not because of bike fall but repair to cleft pallet and anatomical reconstruction, so yes! I do take it slow these days

Amazing scan.Do you have the 3D file of your skull ? Sorry about all that happen

Hi Normand
I have this scan, and then one from the left and front view, I can actually make it rotate on various degrees, the surgery took 9 hrs, recovery 6 weeks and it was a walk in the park- no lies, good surgeon he was
Enjoy your day

Welding completed
 

I have made progress this weekend, all welding is done and a little snag, one of the corners of the X channel was not 90 degrees, I had to cut a groove the whole length of the both channels and had it bend to the correct position, I have welded supports in the corner and multiple short runs along the cut. If all go well it will be painted this weekend.

Ran into the same problem with Nils machine.
I was able to use the bolted together construction to "TOE" the machine base like an automotive suspension to the the top flanges in plane.
The channel was out 3.5 degrees. To much to depend on shimming and such.

I am back, had to go to Kazahstan for more than 2 weeks, I am happy to say that while I was away my project did not stand still, my wife arranged for sand blasting and paint primer to be done, all my goodies that I ordered from the States arrived three days before my departure to Kazahstan, the spindle and VFD (same make and model as Wayne from White Salmon) exception to PMDX 106 for spindle control also arrived while I was away.
Yes I am a happy man,

You have a great wife....mine only works in the house and do the garden....I better get that whip out again...:p

Mine works on how to supervise and she`s getting a degree soon:D

"I am happy to say that while I was away my project did not stand still, my wife arranged for sand blasting and paint primer to be done"

Koning is she for sale :eek: ........... that's what I say is 'a woman worth her weight in gold' ...... I hope she is a small woman ;)

I am impressed, not that she got the sandblasting and primer done but that she knew what sandblasting and primer actually was! :eek::)

Amen Heath. Mine thinks everything mechanical runs on magic dust. If I can't fix something, it's because I just don't want to. When I finished my MM, her comment was, "Well isn't that nice."

Let your wife post something on the work that she did on the thread just for the other half.

Doug,

How is it we are married to the same woman?

I have been together with my wife almost 30 years. The other day, I was up to my ears in a repair job and I asked her to please grab a tool for me that I set on my table saw. She asked me which one was the table saw. After 30 years, I simply couldn't believe it.

Marc, can you name every container on her dressing table? After 30 years? ;)

I know I'D be hard pressed to name some of the items in my wife's dressing room. She does however do a great job understanding all my crazy tool obsessions.:)

Probably a good thing that the women aren't reading these posts or I'm sure there would be a few here destined for a night in the dog house.:eek:

She is an excellent all-rounder
 

Elbie has always been interested with what men do to keep themselves busy, Fashion designer and fitness trainer by profession; she would rather ride her Honda CRF 450 than be at a tea party.
The grey color is the primer paint, she painted the bolts and also the …… springs, she helped to assemble the table, the base is now leveled (used a water tube level method) and square,
Attachment 2650

Attachment 2651

Attachment 2652

Attachment 2653

Attachment 2654

Attachment 2655

Attachment 2656

Looks good! Are you assembling it on a balcony? Like the fabricated channel on the one side :)

Thank you Gerald, the fabricated channel refer back to post #14, location is a "stoep" unfortunately will the MM be outside exposed to high temperatures and humidity in summer

Aah, now I understand where that cut/bend/brace was happening!

For the high rust environment, I cannot recommend the acrylic filler too highly. That detail in post #14 is crying out to get the filler, to keep the moisture out. See post #4 of:
http://www.mechmate.com/forums/showthread.php?t=484

Surprised that you didn't get zinc-plated bolts?

I am familiar with Painters Mate, will bring some from the Republic, the zinck coated bolts and nuts available here is not of greatest quality and I would have painted that aswell.
I have started with the control box lay out, obviously more questions will be posted about the electrics.
Ragards

My control box
 

Need some wire and paint, all in good time

Hi Koning,
Does the second pc board at the top work with your spindle?
I see that you will have to use shielded signal wire like me as well.:)
Looking good!

Hallo Lex
Yes the second pc board is for the spindel control, shielded is the way to go, I can only follow the advice from my friends here in the forum, they have the experience.

Hi to all
I am back at working on my MM, work kept me away for a long time, I have done most of the control wires and some of the this and that things, tomorrow will be testing day to find out if all is working or not, The steppers is connected, Andeli VFd is connected, watercooled Spindel mounted and so on, pictures will follow with the questions of "why or how do I get the motors to turn,

Progress on the stoep
 

The kitchen table process is in progress, 3 of the steppers is moving and Y axis gecko error, When i power the control pannel all 4 Geckos green LEDs is on, as soon as i connect the cabel and motor to the gecko the red and green led lights up, according to gecko trouble shoot this indicate a short to ground. here follow my actions of fault finding:
1)Disconnected the motor and cabel from gecko - reset power= green Led
2)Connect only stepmotor cabel to gecko = red/green Led
3)Connect cable and motor to gecko = red/green Led
3)Complete elimination of short circuit in cable and motor winding with fluke multi meter = nothing found
4)Connect cable and motor from 100% working drive = red/green Led
5)Comlete gecko swap from Y drive circuit to fully function X circuit with no motor and cable connected = green Led
6)Connect any motor and cable to this gecko = red/green Led
7)Tested and swapped current set resistor = red/green Led

Any sudgestions on how to get rid of the Red led, can it be that the Gecko is "kapoet"

I had better success with the Chinese spindel, programmed the Andeli VFD, Spindel is turning nicely without the PMDX 106, have done the connetions for the Pmdx106spindel control card, now I need to find out how to configure Mach 3.

The water system to cool the spindel is in place, for now I will use a standard water bucket with a fish tank water pump, I have soldered bigger fittings to the inlet and outlet at the spindel to be abel to use a larger diameter tubing.

Thats all friends

Koning,
An easy way to find out if the drive is bad and you have exhausted all the wiring options, is to swap a known good drive for the suspected bad one. Or just swap a known good motor connection to the suspected bad drive to isolate bad drive or bad motor wiring.

The proof of progress
 

The MechMate Logo will be on the next set of Pictures

Hi Heath
I have done that in point (4) and (5), i wonderif should open the gecko to see if there is a piece of copper wire offcut stuck in there?

It's not clear in (6) if this was a good gecko in the bad circuit, or the bad gecko in a good circuit.

If it's good gecko in bad circuit, then something may be funny with the mounting or power supply to this one gecko. if it's the other way, then I would suspect a bad drive.

There is always the possibility that you have a defective G203v, but I'm guessing that the problem is improper grounding of the heat-sink. According to Mariss, who designed the G203v, the power FETs used in the G203v are grounded to the G203v's case, but the case is insulated from the heat-sink by its hard-anodized coating. If a screw cuts through the hard-anodizing, you might have a problem - unless the heat-sink is properly grounded to the power supply ground. So, verify with a meter that the G203v's heat sink is grounded properly to the power supply's ground connection.

There is quite a bit of discussion about the insulating properties of the hard-anodizing that Gecko uses on the geckodrive forum at Yahoo.com. Several people have had similar problems over the years.

(Grounding is often misunderstood and often done incorrectly. Gerald has posted photos and diagrams showing the proper methods to use when grounding.)