CNC Mills

FabLab
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I have been working on getting the CNC machines up and running on the East wall. I have the Black Mill and the D&M4 setup.

Can anyone shed any light on these:
Emco PC Mill 50: It fires up just fine, but I assume there is some computer that is required to run it? I gather we don’t have one, and the plan was to build something?

Fireball V90: I know it was listed as not working on the ERP Wiki, but I also know it was working at one time. Looking at the guts, I was able to get the monitor to come up, I assume there is some computer missing, because it said no video signal.

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IIRC, on the Fireball, one of the drivers for the steppers burned up, and there is no replacement available. I’m guessing that we could just replace the entire driver board to drive all of the steppers. IOW, approach it as a home-built project, using the frame and motors, and just use our own driver board. @Christian and @jameslancaster, is that an accurate recollection and reasonable solution?

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Actually, I think @whyameye also looked at it at the time. What do you think/recall, John?

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Behold… the saga of the fireball.

The old man’s face was cracked with wrinkles which were accented in the fire light. A small noise beyond the light, perhaps a opossum, cat or mimic or something. He was unconcerned.
“The fireball cnc my young lad” the old man started “is a story longer than drazzles tail.”

He told this tale…

The poor thing suffered damage when someone broke a bit and blew a driver or two. We ordered some "replacement " but they weren’t exact and didn’t work. A decision was made to move this to gerble… garble… gryndol…
Arduino
And parts were ordered. Makers git distracted

Squirrel!

And someone somewhere didn’t like the arduino idea and started in a different direction.

I’m not sure what that direction was, I was on sabbatical from the makerspace at the time.

There was a speed controller issue too I think… i think it got resolved i think.

They got distracted and then… the move… plague… wiring… building upgrades…

So that’s where it’s at. We can define the PC that part isn’t hard. The question now is, what direction are we going with it.

Last I knew we had what we needed to bring it up on the arduino.

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I kinda lost track of the fireball when @Christian and co. took over repair of it. I never looked into repair. I can only say it worked well for a long time and I’m the one it died on. :slight_smile: When I was using the V90 it had a cabinet with a computer and spindle speed controller in it below the monitor, wireless keyboard and wireless mouse.

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My daughter’s fiance, Trey, plans to attend MakerMonday next week. He took a tour and plans to become a MakeICT member. He and his dad do a little racing and he would like to do some metal CNC work for his car.
Of all the stuff I am interested in at MakeICT, CNC ranks really low. I know nothing about it. I looked around on the calendar for an authorization class, but it appears from this thread that the machines may not be functioning? Does he need to start with the Metal Safety class to get authorized?
Who is the resident expert (Rustin? Christian?) and will he/she/they be at MakerMonday on the 26th? Of course Trey is anxious to jump in and get started, so I’m trying to see if there’s a way to jumpstart the process. Thanks for any advice.

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Yes you will need metalshop safety 1st
I believe Jimmy is doing the cnc plasma cutters class keep an eye out for them on the website under calender events

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Keep in mind that there is CNC and there is “CNC”. The little CNC lathe and mills will do work but the Tormach CNC mill is able to make bigger pieces of scrap way faster than the little ones in the ERP lab. I don’t actually know what authorization the little machines require, but the Tormach has its own class and restrictions.

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Tormach is also taught by Jimmy

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I will be down there on maker Monday, most likely wrapping up a class on manual milling on the old ENCO mill drill (hopefully with a DRO magically installed on the quill)

Steve was looking into a process to approve use of the mini-mills, but I would recommend taking the manual milling and lathe classes first if it’s been a while since he’s done some machining.

We’re also working on getting a copy mill up and running for those who are less tech savvy. (Place a wood/plastic/foam/metal pattern on one side, and a metal version is slowly machined out on the other side).

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Hey Rustin, Is it ok to use the dekel as just a jus a manual mill? I mean, I havent felt the condition of the lead screws… but half of the dekel is just a nice manual mill. Super cool to have.

Bill

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Once we get the handles for the x and y feeds, it should make for a decent manual mill as well.

I just got in a basic DRO to help with the horrible back lash on the ENCO’s quill while using the fine adjustment wheel, but have not tried mounting the ‘milling plate’ to the deckel to see how well that works.

With the ratchets on the x and y as well as the power knee, it would be fun to try conventional milling on the deckel.

-Rustin Atkeisson
MakeICT Metalshop lead

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I posted an update on the black mill in a separate thread: Black Sherline Mini Mill

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There have been a few suggestions batted around regarding the mini-mills and I’d like to discuss some options with @rustin.atkeisson and Jimmy as well as @Christian and whoever else might be interested. One suggestion that was made is that perhaps the mini-mill could be a stepping stone to the bigger and better Tormach. As to whether manual milling should be a prerequisite, I am open to talking about that as well. I plan to be at MakerMonday on the 26th and would welcome a discussion then. Or we can schedule something separate.

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Here’s a status of everything as I knew it before the move:

Pretty much everything should be there for the fireball. The plan was to convert it to GRBL.

Things that needed to be done last I knew:

  • RPM sensor/controller/enable? (I think that’s what it got hung up on.)
  • Hook up Limit switches?

As I recall, though I could be wrong, the only issue was the spindle control and it was moving?

Things that were done (I think)

  • Rewiring the motors from unipolar to bipolar (Which has a number of advantages)
  • Setting up GRBL for motion. (I believe it was moving.)

Going forward.
It was using DRV8825s, which have a limit of 2.5 Amps max while the motors could handle more, can’t remember how much, 3A rms? It might be good to go ahead and get something like TMC5160 based ones, which can do 4/5A max/3A (or more depending on board, it uses external transistors/mosfets), and aren’t quite drop in, but are close to it. They use SPI, which GRBL 1.1 doesn’t handle. Looks like the GRBLHal does. As the TMCs provide for things like overcurrent, stall detection, and other things. For comparison, most of the lack of limit switches and things on the Prusa M3 is because of the same things, but I think they use the TMC2209s.

I’ve got a laptop* (IBM Thinkpad A31) setup for the mini cnc lathe and LinuxCNC. It will enable basic operation, and with a sensor, enable threading. (GRBL 1x isn’t fast enough/designed to handle that. Some of the ports may) Assuming nothing got lost in the move, it should be mostly connecting a few things.

*I’ve tested the latency a few times over the past year, probably 2 months, and it doesn’t suffer from the main issue, of a latency spike, except for about once or twice a week (to ~85us). Otherwise it’s pretty good. <15us max. (And I’ll have to look up my notes, but as I recall, a spike to 13 about once a day.)

No idea on the blue Sherline mill, which was supposed to go LinuxCNC. It was supposed to have all the hardware.

@ssaner I’ll try to plan on making the Maker Monday, if you want to meet after that? Along with @mjenney 's soon to be family member.

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What if your going to wsutech to learn machining Technology which includes manual milling lol
I’m cool with any training req.
Seriously though if we’re gonna start a program with steps it should start with precision measuring and blueprint reading

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The precision measuring is on my future class list.

Though, I’d like to get the mills and lathes into a condition where trying to get precision dimensions is achievable first…

I.e… putting DROs on the mill and lathes… Which unfortunately cost a few hundred dollars each, which is where a large chunk of the class fees is going.

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Rustin, you might check out https://www.yuriystoys.com/ for DROs. I have installed one on a manual mill and like it very much, especially the display which is blue tooth to a cheap Amazon Fire tablet.

Gene White

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Which scales did you use? My current mitutoyo dro is old and lacks most features that new ones have but the scales aren’t compatible with newer dros.

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I used the iGaging Absolute DRO Plus from Anytime Tools.
Gene