Stop the CLOCK!!!!!!!!

34 : 23 : 33 : 33 Day Hr Min Sec

That's it! I have met my goal. I am almost a full 34 days past due but I'm finally there. A lot has gone on in the last two weeks so let me hit the highlights of that real quick.
I got the new hardware in not last Friday but the Friday before. As you can see I took a shot of the new motor vs. the old one. Its almost twice as large. I got all the hardware hooked up and installed the latest version of Linux CNC ( formerly Linux EMC) and did what anyone would do in their right mind. I found some double sided tape and a Sharpie and hit play. It came out twice as large as it should and reversed in the X-axis. Both easy fixes in EMC. I kept the rev per inch on the rod at the default of 20 in order to keep things nice and big since I had a whole poster board to work with







I played with a couple other test files including a couple spiral patterns and a snow flake. It was the greatest feeling on earth to see this thing run.


I spent several hours just going through the software and getting acclimated to the controls and which direction was what on the screen as opposed to on the table. My dad hung the posters from the wall in the garage like I was in kindergarten. It awesome. My parents weren't my parents during that period of my life so its fair game now. That was all the excitement I could handle last weekend.


I spent the entirety of last week thinking about the CNC. It was so bad I had dreams about it. I kept looking at parts from my small engines class and thinking if I could draw them up in AutoCAD. I picked up a copy of MasterCAM and installed it. Sadly there is almost no information on how to use it. There are two or three books on Amazon, a couple online classes you can pay for, and a couple DVDs you can buy but nothing for the person that's not sure what sources of information are really good and which ones are garbage. I finally came across this site;

http://www.cudacountry.net/html/mastercamx_toc.html

Those are free PDFs and are extremely well documented. They have window screen shots, button screen shots. Its simple to follow. I cant imagine how long it took to create them but man am I glad that I found them. I ran through a couple of the first CAM guides and waited for the weekend to roll around.

Once it did, we built a mount for a supercharged Dremel looking tool. Its made by Bosch but I didn't thing it was going to handle this job. I was glad to be wrong and another moment even better than what I mentioned came about. I crossed the line that I set for myself shortly after starting this blog. I cut a tangible object.  I cut an EMC logo in the double size and then recalibrated to cut a logo in a one-to-one scale. The one-to-one scale is sitting in front of me as I type. I may sleep with it under my pillow. The larger one stayed with my dad and I wouldn't be surprised to find it hanging on a wall somewhere the next time I go over to my parents place.

Here's a video just to show off. Enjoy the screaching sounds. I wanted to cut the sound and have it be a silent film but apparently that's not an option. YouTube should get one that but until then turn the volume down.

Where to now that I've met this goal? Well I'm going to take it all apart and sell it for scrap....Nope. Not even funny. Even as I look at the screen I'm not laughing. Well I've got some ideas. I'm thinking about making an enclosure to hold all my air ride equipment and sound equipment for the Blazer. Im also thinking about guitar bodies, and missing dashboard buttons, and signage, and random small engine parts.

Short Update!

 
23:14:07:13 passed the deadline

I'm now five hundred bucks poorer! Why am I sooo excited about that you ask? If you'll take a look at the nice picture on the right ----------------------------->

You will see that the money will soon be converted into a set of three high torque stepper motors, a Gecko g540 motor driver, and a matched power supply to get this party started! Hell yeah I'm excited. This should make getting up and running a lot easier. No more dealing with the Arduino and those tiny tiny stepper motors I was playing with. On a side note I will most likely be building a 3d printed or something smaller when I get the CNC up and running. So in the end those stepper motors will have a home....even if I end up selling the whole thing.

For those wondering, I got the job at ORNL and that's the main reason I have the excess financial funding needed to acquire these final pieces. There are upsides and downsides to this deal though. The upside is that I have a job and am being paid good money. The downside is that this is only a spring term internship with the possibility of extension. So the hunt is still on for a permanent job once I graduate. I've got some leads but nothing solid at this point. Fortunately my resume is getting full of all kinds of different and important acronyms that make me a strong candidate for many positions.

Tip for those looking for a job in the science/research field. Mention specific instruments you have worked with in your resume. HPLC, GC, NIR, Bioflo reactors, Fermentors,  Mills, etc, etc. It tells the reader what kinds of things you can already do and also says that someone trusted you with high dollar research equipment.

More to come when it unfolds.

23:14:20:37 passed the deadline

IT'S ALIVE!!!!

Yeah that title is cliché as all get out but deal with it. :-) Currently I'm excited that the projects not dead. That sentence needs a little back story. Last week (that time I should have been studying for finals) I got everything hooked up and ready to go with the motor drivers and Boarduino sled I constructed to hook all those motors up in a cleaner manner. I eventually got enough spare time to get it all hooked up to the CNC and with bated breath to see if it would work. Yeah I spelled that right too! I googled it. Anyway, the whole thing went to hell as soon as I gave it the command to move any of the axes. The motor were skipping steps like crazy. There just wasn't anything that was going to make it all work.

I didn't throw anything. I didn't even get super upset. This project has been going on for years. Literally. Its just another hurdle in the road I told myself. So I left the garage and started looking for the solution. The Gecko g540 is probably the most recommended motor driver  over on CNCzone.com so thats where I started. Ahren over at CNCRP has a kit that comes with everything to fit the need I was having.

http://www.cncrouterparts.com/3-axis-electronics-kit-p-74.html?cPath=22

For the small price of $520 the quick and easy solution could be mine. Right? Well no. Since Ive spent the majority of my project fund on the table itself I don't have enough left over to purchase such a fine piece of equipment. More on that later though.

Back to the drawing board I went. (another cliché phrase, is this guy kidding?)  The RepRap stepper driver V2.3 that I've built and am using is built around the Allegro A3982. Not much information is out there about the max specs of the v2.3 driver boards but Allegro provides specs for their chips so I just assumed that the circuit was built to utilize its capabilities.

"The A3982 is a complete stepper motor driver with built in translator for easy operation. It is designed to operate bipolar stepper motors in full- and half-step modes, with an output drive capacity of up to 35 V and ±2 A. The A3982 includes a fixed off-time current regulator which has the ability to operate in slow or mixed decay modes."

Hey I've got four, count them four, of these little drivers and I planned on frying one in the process anyway. After frying a HobbyCNC driver back in the first days of this project Ive come to expect to break a few things from time to time. So I scrounged up the biggest laptop supply I could find, cut the end off of it, found another old ATX power supply, cut the end off that too. Then I wired it all together and gave it a go.

After all that you're wanting me to say it ran perfect and I went on to cut something out or anything spectacular. Well not exactly. It bound up but it did have moments where it ran like it should. Even after cleaning the screw, the rails, and a light WD-40ing, it still bound in places going at the G0 rapid linear motion speed. At the slower G1 speed it did much better. This signifies that the motors are at the edge of their performance curve. Fortunately, Im still only running them at a fraction of what their capable of. Currently Ive got a 20v 6A power supply. Meaning that if I can get a hold of one closer to 35V it should make enough difference to get back on track to hit that dead line.

 

For now, enjoy this video of my latest Rube Godlberg project that knocks over a can of WD-40

A home of its own.

Well, I finally got the spare cash flow to order the rest of the power train components for the CNC. I picked up the couplers, shafts, and collars from Ahren at CNCrouterParts. That dude is fast. I emailed him a question and within the hour he had replied. I ordered the gear from him and it was at my house 2 days later. He is legit and a great person to do business with. I also got some astounding service from McMaster. I ordered the ACME rods from them and they were on my door step the next day. Crazy stuff compared to some of the other troubles I've had in the past from other companies.







I went over to my Dads shop to get to work on the power train and ended up building a rolling cart from random scrap pieces of building materials he had laying around the shop! As you can see I've found out you can post pictures beside text. So enjoy this new feature! Any way. There it is. Its held together with what I would call sewing needles (air-gun "nails") and glue. ;-) Its on wheels so its easily movable and once I cut some slots out in the faces of the cart it will be able to hold the electronics pretty well. Unfortunately, building this also means that I didn't even touch the CNC other than to pick it up and put it on the cart.  With classes coming to an end I'm going to have to hit it hard to make some free time to finish this up.  As I sit here and type this post Ive got 52 days 10 hours 40 minutes and 5 seconds...4 seconds...3 seconds... Its coming up on the CNC deadline.

That brings me to my next point. What is finished? Where is the line? I'd like to define that. The end goal is to have a working CNC machine....and something cut from said machine. I want to start the 2012 with a working tool that can be used to take a drawing and translate it into a physical piece you can hold in your hand. With the current hardware I think I'm going to be limited to circuit boards and 2 dimensional objects  due to some of the limitations of my driver setup and the gcode interpreter. We'll have to start there.

What's my hardware setup? Fair question. I think I may have alluded to it in the past. Its another DIY project I did in the past. Its troublesome...its unreliable, Its even ugly but I built it. Its a trio of reprap driver boards that I learned to make using solder paste, surface mount components, and an electric skillet. Yeah it worked great. Really. Anyway the thing is that there's a bunch of wires coming and going from each of the drivers to a boarduino (also a DIY project. First thing I ever soldered). It needs to be cleaned up and wire managed. Currently its all mounted in an old PC case. It ran one of the previous CNC machines I attempted. When I say "ran" I mean that very...very...very loosely. I was able to feed the boarduino a single gcode command through a terminal and it would execute it. Above that things would go wrong instantly. There were timing issues, wiring issues, and above all the screws were just that. They were threaded rods from lowes. The would bind and get all kinds of messed up. Ill try to pull a picture of the one thing I cut with it. Its just a couple of lines in a piece of MDF. I use it as the picture for my Dad when he calls my phone. He takes time out of his life to help me with these projects so I figure he deserves that.

Moving on past that learning experience. This time I have real ACME rods and legit hardware. Things such as helical couplers and thrust bearings.  Things that I couldn't afford back in the first two iterations of this project. Ill end the post with this.

Precision isn't cheap and no amount of engineering and creativity can be substituted for a well designed part. Sometimes you have to bite the bullet and buy the $20 dollar couplers or the $30 dollar carriages rather than trying to engineer your own.

Steve-O

Competition motivates me!

I wasn't planning on working on the machine today but I was inspired by one of the other members on CNCzone. KriegKuts is in the process of building a FLA-100 as well. Dude's Build Thread can be found at the link provided! The rail system I set up to drill the holes for the X rail needed to be modified for the 6 inch Y rail. Basically instead of the small bolts and wing nuts I had to use a C clamp. Not as elegant but it worked. Today I didnt have the help of my dad so having a plethra (<---Nice word huh?) of C clamps of all shapes and sizes to hold the rail as I drilled it. I skipped the mid size bit this time and went straight from the center bit to the 3/8 bit.

 

I was going to stop here for the day but then I realized that the Z axis only needed 6 holes to be mounted. I didnt trim the rail or the supporting 8020 extrusion so pretend you don't see that. As for going straight to the 3/8 bit.

 

 

You can see it turned out fine. Im sure it shortened the life of the bit but after today Im done with it and its paid for itself. I bought 2 and only needed 1. That means Lowes gets to have one of their nice $11 kick ass bits back Im am so amazed that Im able to work with raw steel and get precise enough results to even slide the rail into the extrusion. 

Without adjustment of anything I checked the height of the bottom of the Z rail on both sides. Less than 1/16th of an inch different. Thats nuts. Now Im off to check my bank account and see what I need to do to pick up the power components.

$310 plus shipping. Ouch. But that's all that stands between me and moving on to the electronics....which Ill be salvaging from my last build. Arduino + DIY Reprap drivers + some creative thinking. Thats the teaser of the day.

X Rails and Ganty assembly

Its days like this that make me proud to be a DIYer. Drilling the holes for the rails was much simpler than I had anticipated! I also noticed that CNCRouterParts just put out a jig to help people do the drilling. My dad owns a lower end drill press from Harbor freight. It works pretty well but you can tell it has a noticeable amount of play in the chuck so every hole has a small amount of variation in it.

In order to avoid compounding the variability I took extra precautions to ensure each hole was as close as possible. It worked out really well this time and I saved a good amount of cash by drilling the holes myself rather than buying the rails pre-drilled from FLA (not to mention the time I would have spent waiting for them to be shipped and get here )

For those of you willing to take the venture into making your own rails heres what I did.

Set up a guide to make sure your at least the same distance from the edge each time. I used a small piece of aluminum angle I picked up from Lowes  Use a center bit or a counter bore bit to start a small pilot  hole. Use some cutting fluid with every hole you drill. It makes things go so much better...like butter. lol not really but it did make a big difference. After you have each of the holes started, move up to a drill bit about half the size of the final 3/8 bit your going to use. Any thing will do, just make sure you use the cutting oil. With this bit you can either go all the way through or only partially. Both are good but we found that not going all the way through helped to hold the cutting fluid when you move up to the final 3/8 bit.

Here's a couple pictures of the setup I had going on the drill press. It worked really well.

Once all the holes are cut it all goes together like seen in the drawings. An interesting side note is that the assembly forum post that I mentioned

http://www.overclock.net/case-mod-work-logs/755828-complete-2-x-3-custom-cnc.html

Yeah that one. It shows him placing the carriage bolts on the 8020 and then tring to get the rail to go on it. That seems really difficult so I just put a bolt and nut in each of the holes and slid the rail into place. It only took a couple minutes. One of the legs was a wee-bit (sp?) close but in the end it all worked out.

That's all I had planned on doing today but I finished pretty early in the day so I got to throw the gantry together. That was much more complicated. The 3030 extrusion is extremely hard to drill through in a straight line. Even when using a jig made from another piece of 8020 I was typically not perpendicular to the piece.

Getting to this point never loses its appeal. Being able to push the gantry along that x-rail is the first pay off you get in a CNC build like this. This time I plan on cutting something. The original machine I tried to construct out of MDF never made it past the gantry push stage.

This machine is without a doubt the most sturdy machine I've attempted to construct so far. I feel confident that it will withstand the abuse were going to put it through.

Ok so whats next? Next I need to drill the holes for the Y rail. Mount that and the associated bearings. Drill the Z axis rail and mount that plate.. Then comes the hard part.... Finishing. Ive got some power train parts I need to order but that going to wait until I get the table assembled.

One step closer - Base Assembled

Here is a couple pictures of one of the more beautiful things I have made. Alright alright. I didn't really make that. I assembled it. A lot of work went into it to get it from the raw t-slot to its current state. Its incredible how many times you have to take that thing apart in order to fit everything and then you realize that something else needed to go on there so you have to take it all apart again

Extruded Aluminum CNC frame

Extruded Aluminum CNC frame

Next task is to drill the hole in the x-axis rails. That's going to be a long hard task to do in a steel rail.

Whew...

 Alright! As stated at CNCzone, the goods did finally arrive. Albeit a tad beat up. UPS bears one part of that blame but FLA bears the other part for shipping it in such a flimsy box in the first place. Non the less its here!













I literally felt like I just got a box of legos. All I wanted to do was sit down and put everything together. Unfortunately I didn't have time so I put it back in the box.












Last bit of news is that Nate, from FLA, finally contacted me. Here's what he had to say.

"Sorry for the delay.  The past 2 weeks we have been dealing with the damage from Hurricane Irene and then major flooding last week.  The shop as well as individual homes were flooded and we are finally done with the cleanup effort.  I had to replace a computer and haven't had access to email all week.

Regards,

Nate"

Its better late than never as far as I'm concerned. Once he shipped the parts they got here pretty quick but getting to that point was a pain. My advise for you Nate is to get a good friend that you can call and tell to post a message on your website letting everyone know if your having problems and can't get to the emails or UPS store...or hop on over to the library for a couple minutes and set up an auto reply on your email telling people who email you whats up. I'm not faulting you for taking care of you and yours. I would have done the same but give the world a heads up if your going to be gone for an extended period of time so people like me, who don't know your situation, don't freak out.

One small step for my CNC....Apparently one giant leap for FLA

Its not much but the little status on my order changed from "to ship" on over to "Shipped". Its only took 7 business days (11 normal days due to the holiday, geeze feels like forever ago), 2 separate unreplied emails, a unreplied PM, and a post on CNCzone warning others of the time frame its taken so far for the fine staff over at FLA to casually place this order in the mail.

I'm giving this guy a hard time but all I care about is the parts showing up. I really wouldn't have minded it taking so long if I would have been kept in the loop. I once waited 2 months for a set of compressors to ship from California. The guy emailed me pretty soon after I placed the order to let me know the warehouse was out and there was a wait but that he would keep me informed.

With that said I don't know Nate (presumably the owner and operator of FLA). I've never talked to him so I don't know whats "on his plate" as someone on CNCzone put it. My only suggestion is put some warning on your site to let people know its going to take a couple weeks for it to ship. Maybe a little note by the price.

Something like this.

Price 370.00
Qty. 1
***Note: Due to high demand. Products may take up to 7 business days to ship***

This performs two tasks. First, it informs the customer that there is a wait and second it makes people want to go ahead and place the order if they're thinking about it since it sounds like the product in high demand. In reality its your time that's in high demand but that's the sales side of me coming out.

;-)

Free advice.

Respond to emails. It takes 2 minutes of your day and everyone has a phone that's capable of getting email these days. (If you don't, odds are you shouldn't be selling stuff online)