Messages

1

Members Machines / Re: BF20 Mill conversion

« on: February 14, 2025, 13:42:06 pm »

When doing the design trades on my next machine, the sheer mass of N34s was a bit eye watering.

No not really in this case, it's just the gravity thing, If I had an air spring or counterbalance system then the Nema 24's would be fine for the Z axis

I could easily incorporate an air spring, but but the router is fairly light compared to a larger spindle and......

If the motors are on the machine frame, the mass of the motors is not so important. I think that with your use case, fast light cuts with not a of cutting forces the Nema 24's would be ok for the Z, on the millright they would be overkill, every kilogram you strip from the Z axis lets you up the acceleration rates.

Yes, and the MR is R&P drive with two motors on the gantry. I modified/increased the Z-Axis stroke on the MR. It was a an easy mod. Doing so decreased the urgency for completing my next machine. The reason: all the things that make the hobby grade MR less attractive for more challenging duty actually make it pretty good for cutting foam.....it's very low mass makes for low inertial loads and it's quite fast, and since cutting forces are essentially nil for foam, I pay no penalty for the lower rigidity.

On the other hand, the  alternate machine with steel beams and superior motion control components, though much more rigid, is also much more massive, especially with N34s. I'm considering reducing the work envelope and having it dedicated to harder up to soft metals....like machining my castings....

It's the old chestnut....-Jack of all trades master of none.

The problem is the availability of shop space for both machines or it would be done.

Best,
Kelly

2

Members Machines / Re: BF20 Mill conversion

« on: February 13, 2025, 15:43:13 pm »

..........Kelly for the drives and power supplies I used Leadshine motors and drives and power supplies. The motors are smooth and quiet, XY axis motors nema24 at 48 volt, the Z Axis nema34 at 60 volt.

Dave

Based upon our previous conversations I figured that to be the case. Is the reason for the N34 on Z mass or need for additional accel/speed?

Best,
Kelly

3

Members Machines / Re: BF20 Mill conversion

« on: February 10, 2025, 13:56:45 pm »

.......I have the Drives and power supplies and need to organise a control cabinet. Dave

Hey Dave. Progress! What did you end up going with for drives and PS?

Best,
Kelly

4

Latest News / Re: Forum Back Up and Running

« on: January 29, 2025, 23:59:06 pm »

Thanks David for all you do for the forum. Much appreciated.

Best,
Kelly

5

CamBam help (General usage) / Re: Measuring Polyline Length

« on: December 30, 2024, 22:31:33 pm »

Windows or Linux version ? Works well for me on W7 with both CB0.98 and CB1.0
++
David

Windows 10. I shut down and rebooted. Same result.

Best,
Kelly

6

CamBam help (General usage) / Re: Measuring Polyline Length

« on: December 30, 2024, 21:42:49 pm »

I downloaded CBubble and read the instruction. I changed the administrative settings of the.dll to enable its use.

As I understand it, CBubble doesn't appear in any menu, but is supposed to be activated by depressing the i-key and then mousing over the object.

When I depress and hold the i key it disables my mouse control so I cannot move the cursor. Releasing the i key restores the function.

Best,
Kelly

7

CamBam help (General usage) / Measuring Polyline Length

« on: December 30, 2024, 17:17:09 pm »

Is there a method to measure the linear length of an open polyline? The area/perimeter plugin requires a closed shape. I suppose I could close the polyline with straight lines of known length and subtract the additions. Would be convenient to know path length.

Best,
Kelly

8

Latest News / Re: Forum Back Up and Running

« on: December 10, 2024, 14:10:15 pm »

+2!

Best,
Kelly

9

Members Projects / Re: Automotive Scoop Adapter

« on: November 16, 2024, 17:25:46 pm »

Kelly, Depending upon the relative humidity when you're cutting, even wood will do that. 

For sure. As a long-time wood worker, I'm quite aware. In addition to the static, wood fines are more highly combustible and the combination of the two significantly raises the risk of a powder explosion, which is why I wouldn't use plastic duct work except where needed for flexible connections. When it comes to the amount of static generated, I find cutting and collecting polystyrene foam to be much, much, worse.

I was having errant servo drive faults which ended up being due to static in the vacuum pickup hose. The hose had (presumably-grounded) spiral-steel spring in it, but there were two 'unobserved' splices in the hose, with no connectivity between the wires of the sections of hoses! Proper bonding fixed it. Lloyd

In my case, the static was corrupting my machine controller and causing random, inexplicable, and violent crashes. Although it did serve as a means to ground between the metal components, I found the wire reinforcement in the hose did very little to reduce the static build up on the surface of the corrugated flexible hose. It was easy to see problem areas on the machine because they would collect foam on their surfaces. In addition to all the additional bonding/grounding I installed statically conductive hose and this was greatly reduced....but did not eliminate the gremlins.

It was so bad, the touch pad on my computer wouldn't respond properly or at all. I tried everything, with grounding, shielding, shielded cables, etc. and one day I noticed there were never any problems when I had my external monitor connected. The monitor was an old TV connected via HDMI cable...........and I concluded the TV monitor had a robust ground plane and grounded 120v plug and my laptop did not and this was likely the route for the EMI to reach the machine controller via conduction through USB. No problems since. I always connect the laptop to the monitor via HDMI cable whether I use the monitor or not. 

Best,
Kelly

10

Members Projects / Re: Automotive Scoop Adapter

« on: November 16, 2024, 00:05:13 am »

Kelly-  I watch most of your videos and wanted to thank you for all the good info on lost foam contained in them.

Glad you found the videos useful. Yes, good dust collection is important for machining foam and so is good grounding because machining and collecting the foam creates a lot of static electricity and potential discharge and EMI havoc.....

Best,
Kelly

11

Members Projects / Re: Back in the Shop

« on: November 14, 2024, 22:55:38 pm »

............The new shop has been built and I was allowed to move in a couple of weeks ago........... Dave

Hey Dave, glad to hear you're getting down the road to recovery. Must feel good to be back in the shop.

Best,
Kelly

12

Latest News / Re: Forum Back Up and Running

« on: November 12, 2024, 03:11:07 am »

Wow, that was a long outage. I've been worried. Glad the main page and forum are back up and running. Thanks to all involved in the revival.

Best,
Kelly

13

CamBam help (General usage) / Re: Automatic dimensioning. adding text and arrow on the drawing.

« on: June 18, 2024, 14:46:27 pm »

BTW, David,

The DimArrow plugin works on 9.8.  Arrows work, but I haven't figured out how to do dimensions yet.
On 1.0, it fails to load due to a .NET framework violation of CAS policy.

Do you know how to circumvent that?

Lloyd

Works fine for me on 1.0

Best,
Kelly

14

Scripts and Plugins / Re: Drag-Knife Plugin

« on: April 18, 2024, 22:54:51 pm »

I was also wondering about this observation commented in my post.

As aside, on the attached file, if I examine the DK profile polylines, I expected to see a different Z-heights at the lead out moves driven by the retract depth and angles selected, and the engrave MOP would follow accordingly, but all Z coordinates are at the depth of cut. Why?

I noticed the same was true in the amended file.

Maybe I'm misinterpreting the meaning of the drag knife settings in the documentation for retract height and angle, but isn't the retract height supposed to establish the depth at which the knife point is initially engaged in the stock and the angle dictates the ramp at which it climbs out through the (re)positioning curl? If so, shouldn't that portion of the drag knife paths have changing z height for the engrave MOP to follow?

I suppose being able to place these knife positioning moves in the waste stock makes this less important since it is inconsequential if the waste stock is scarred by the move.

Best,
Kelly

15

Scripts and Plugins / Re: Drag-Knife Plugin

« on: April 18, 2024, 20:26:23 pm »

Hello kelly, Look at the picture ; is this what you want ?

Yes!!

To get this result ; for each polyline circle, I rotate them 180° around Z, so the first point of the polyline is at is left side instead right side. (a circle always has it start point at 3h00)

Ah-hah! Very clever. Also I didnt know that circles always start at 3 O'Clock. Thank you.

for the external shape, I add a new point to the polyline, at the right, them I define this point as the polyline start point. the pink points show where the polyline start points are.

use Eddy's Cbbule plugin to check where is the start point.

http://www.atelier-des-fougeres.fr/Cambam/Aide/Plugins/CBubble.html

I'll go away and play with this a bit to make sure I understand it.

Seems that the positioning arc is always done at the right side of the polyline start point.

This along with the rest of your reply should give me what I need. Still trying to get my head around if that preserves the proper starting position of the blade but looks like indeed it does.

Thank you,

Best,
Kelly