Salty's Forum
General Category => Plug / Lure Building Forum => Topic started by: Salty on August 05, 2010, 11:02:03 AM
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So I got this bug in my rear about making my Vega lathe into a cnc. I spent alot of time thinking about this and how I want to set this up. Took any drawbacks of my first lathe into consideration and came up with a plan. It's all in my head.
I'm going to post here and show you guys what I like to do....this to me is what makes plug making fun.
When this is done this will be a dual computer 5 axis machine with auto forward and reverse, it will rough and finish in one pass....stay tuned.
Here's a shot of before...the existing Vega duplicator is now off. Second picture shows one side of the base. All precisely machined so that it will be perfectly aligned with the head and tail stock.
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Here's a shot of about 4 hours worth of work. One side of the base all machined.
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You guys should be very afraid.
I'm showing you the inside of Salty's head. You should be more than afraid.
RUN
:)
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Second section of the base done. Time for lunch :fart:
amazing how much faster a second one goes
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this shit impresses me. I couldn't do this for my life.
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YOU AINT SEEN NUTHIN YET
this is the boring stuff
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I'm also impressed - my mechanical ability is pretty much limited to turning the handle on a bench vise. Still, one has to wonder about what's behind those Photoshop eraser marks. Human heads and assorted body parts? Moonshine whiskey, bottled and ready for pickup? Stacks of counterfeit twenties? Ah, the mysteries of life.....
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nice salty..............your a craftsman .........and a good one at that
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no i'm a HACK with a bridgeport
maybe a bit of a raving mad scientist hack LOL
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you souping up another lathe...
i can only freaking imagine what u up to...
always re-inventing the wheel you are....
lookin good Scott...
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forget about the mechanical part, think about the electrical part.
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well at least your humble salty
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i see those recycle bins are full of all your mistakes and heading for the shredder and to be made into 4x8x1/2 chip board for sheathing :) :) :laugh: :laugh: :D
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the chipboard guy disappeared a few years ago. He used to come by once in a while and don't anymore. maybe i scared him away :)
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Day 2 I mounted the second side to the lathe today. Cut the motion bases and have started milling. These will take a day or so apiece of solid work. There's about 100 holes to be drilled and tapped here. These started out as a 1x8x12' aluminum bar. Cut on the chop saw.
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you can do all this but ya can't fix my wifes friggin chair
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YOU GO SALTY NICE! HELL OF A PIECE OF ALUMINUM
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YOU NEVER SENT ME THE CHAIR TO FIX i told you i could fix it
you can do all this but ya can't fix my wifes friggin chair
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oh it's comin you can count on that. :)
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it's too late now your extended warranty has expired
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tell your wife i said that :D
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:-[
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Ok enough riff raff here back to work you slackers
Way bed is test mounted. Picking out the linear motion stuff right now out of Salty's drawers of goodies. Bought these for short money. They're worth about $500 each to buy new. Heavy duty will take about 1000 lbs of force per car.
I even turned the picture so Jimmy don't hurt his neck LOL
At this point I am 4" below my centerline. Less an inch and a half for tables...leaves me 2.5" to ba able to fit another set of rails, cars, and hopefully have enough left over for a tool holder...
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I'm lost already
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here i'll hold your hand :)
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:bhappy:
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Who wants to tap all THESE holes :wink:
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well salty i think you made 1 plug to many................and you've gone mad :sofa:
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Worked on the rear rail base today and it's test fit.
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you know what that erase mark looks like .............lets keep it clean...............things are looking good ........cant wait for the ending :lurk:
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OH! i get it.... that erase mark in that pic is like an ink plot test and we'r supose to guess what it is ;D
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Got quite a bit done today. Transition table is milled with spacers and have test fit all the rails.
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from the mind of booger....
that thing gonna be able to travel in so many directions, ya gonna need a traffic cop!!!
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sweet..............i see the B word is getting around :)
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B asstids :P
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I got alot done today. Everything is test fit together up to the x axis cross slide table. Tomorrow I will make the ball screw nut adaptor, and will work on mounting the front z axis ball screw.
I'm doing stuff in between everything else.
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James I would appreciate it if you left my good friend Salty alone. He's helped me touch my inner feelings.
Tim S
[This post modified by Tim S 08/12/2010 7:11pm]
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:sofa:
James I would appreciate it if you left my good friend Salty alone. He's helped me touch my inner feelings.
Tim S
[This post modified by Tim S 08/12/2010 7:11pm]
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keep in touch with yerself there big fella
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hey salt nice work i like the greese fittings............do a video when the thing is done........i gotta see that thing fly.............. :)
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2 hours for this piece. Mounts to the ball screw nut to attach to the table. All metric. A pic of where this goes. You'll never see this piece again unless something breaks. Is not fun to break a machine down to this point later. Do it once do it right.
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Z axis is done except for the motor mount under the table and home switch mounts. That has been off the machine 4 times now. :fart:
No endplay or backlash on the table at all :bhappy:
21 inches of travel
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NICE! ;)
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spent part of today working on this. Got x and z motor mounts for the front ways done. :bhappy:
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looks good salty...........cant wait for show time :lurk:
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Few more hours. Roughed out where the stuff is mounted for the rear z axis, fabbed ball screw transition plate. That was not easy in metric keeping track of where everything goes so it bolts up with a 3mm offset.
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And where it goes...
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Another piece done this morning. 3 hours start to finish. There are bearings captivated inside there. I'm going with one bearing support on the roughing axis z ballscrew. Quicker and don't need precision there. An additional shot of where it goes.
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Have to make a 15mm nut now.
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woohoo I just found a new german ball screw for $40. Will have to cut it down but it will fit the x axis on the front table. nh guy will ship it for $10 nice!
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white arrows are the pieces I got done today, plus have the z axis ball screw setup now too. Pink X is a screwup hole. ugh I forgot I had to offset the rails to clear a screw hole :-[ :-[
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What do you do when you need a 15mm metric nut for a ball screw bearing...
you make one.
Find a nut in your junk box. Mill it out and tap it, then machine the end so it only contacts the bearing center not the shield.
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Going back onto this tomorrow. The x axis ball screw I got came in today. Wish that guy had another. $800 ball screw for $59. Brand new.
:)
Should have one fully moveable X and Z cross slide table tomorrow and be able to start getting small things like belts measured and ordered. Now can make guards and tooling fixtures when finished height is known.
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WOW.... You are GOOD! Did you do an apprenticeship as a machinist, now one by trade...Self taught? Then on to "Plug Making and Design"? I can open a beer bottle without an opener...Picked that up in the Army. I'm happy with that. :dance:
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NEVER done any machining work ever
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DAM!!! salty nice!!!!............i like the fact you made the nut.........i tell u one thing......my sun is building a skateboard press...he builds his own skateboards........hes still setting up the press....he just has to weld a few parts togeather but he did alot of drilling on the drill press ........working with wood is one thing and you get splinters but.... working with metals those splinter are not forgiving..........any way nice pics........cant wait to see the video of that machine working :lurk: .........call that thing THE RAPTURE........like the dinosaure
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guys very talented and highly intelligent, don't let booger fool you.
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Thanks,
Funny...
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jimmy i keep telling you i'm a hack with a bridgeport ;)
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So yesterday was just one of those days where everything went to shit. It seemed like it. I made the bearing block twice. ugh. I frigged up on the first one. Had alot of problems logistically getting this screw installed...there's alot to do to make this happen. Everything has to be just right or it will bind at either end of travel. No binding front to back. Had to make another nut too, that's a drill stop in there :)
Finished this up this morning. This is the x axis for the roughing side.
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A shot of what the whole thing looks like today. Am going to work on the guards for this side today. Hoping to have this installed completely on the machine later today or tomorrow. This side will be done with the exception of mounting motors and installing the proximity sensors.
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Got the entire roughing axis cross slide assembly done. Guards mounted and all. Ordered the pulleys and calculated the belts etc. Have to setup the encoders on the servo motors and mount those and this will be done complete ready to hook up.
Mounting this on the lathe today if some bolts show up I need.
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mounted
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So I did a bunch of little stuff on this yesterday and some today. Fabricated clear dust guards yesterday. Decided they were too clear and were going to get broken every time someone hit them so I added safety yellow and black today. Have to start hunting around for another large box. There's going to be alot of wires in this thing.
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LOOKIN GOOD
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Roughing axis is done and I'm moving the machine back against the wall today. Motors are mounted, guards are on, pulleys and belts all on, had two optical encoders that I mounted on the motors, that side is all ready to power up when it gets to that stage.
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ya little fukker u
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DAM! that thing is lookin good..........wireing it up is yet to come
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here's where he shorts out the whole dam block ::)
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yea all of uxbridge mass will be in the dark............he'll knock out a grid..........ya think.............na not salty :)
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built this yesterday afternoon. Mounted it up this morning. This will house all the elektric thinga majiggies
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I haven't touched this in over a month now YIKES
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Well it's been too busy to get back to this for a while and money has been tight. I got a day in this weekend working on the x axis which is all I needed to finish. Installed the ball screw on there with pulleys etc and it's now at the point where it's ready to start installing switches for home and limits, and I can start wiring now too.
Ordered the encoder wiring today and hope to jump into wiring this next week.
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sounds good salt :)
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Here is the X axis for the finish side of the machine, also a shot of the backplane of the elec box. Those connectors will be individual plug ins for each motor/encoder/limit/home switches.
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nice!! lot of aluminum there
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Scott,
Looks great! First Class Millwright...
Tom C.
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I'm a hack with a bridgeport LOL
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I'm working on this again.......
Will see some power within the next two weeks :bhappy:
Yesterday I setup all the home and limit switches, Moved the electronics box, installed dust collection pickups.
Today I fabricated the last pulley guard and have one of the tooling holders almost done.
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nice scott...........i was wondering what happend............cant wait to see it in action
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like alot of things sometimes they sit til I get a big enough bug in my butt about it.....
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i hear that salt.......sometimes ya gota be in the mood
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Finished wiring the backplane for all the i/o stuff. 4 motors, 4 encoders, 4 sets switch input/output.
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closeup of backplane
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Finished wiring the backplane for all the i/o stuff. 4 motors, 4 encoders, 4 sets switch input/output.
Huh.
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LOL right now a big pile of wire shat :)
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Some of the inside wiring. All the servo drives are wired now. Waiting for power supply. Working on outside wiring today. :bhappy:
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What the rest looks like today. A friggin mess right now.
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nice scott .................lookin good
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roughing axis tool holder
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Finish axis tool holder. I think I last posted a pic of this with no guard over the pully.
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sweet!!!! :)
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IT'S ALIIIIIIIIIIIVE
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Front and Rear motors all powered and dithering. (means the encoder / servo drive is holding the motor in perfect stopped position)
No computer or switches hooked up yet but that's easy stuff now. The hardest part is making the rotary encoders talk to everything so the servo drives will work....SWEET
:bhappy:
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your da man!! :)
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Got the computer mounted today on the back of the box, got it wired and running to the board. I was able to command one axis right out of the gate. Other axis are dead but no worries I haven't set the ports and pins yet.
Got 4 switch lead input wires prepped to start hooking up. Still alot of wiring to do and troubleshoot. Probably another months worth of work at this rate.
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4 switch leads is 5 wires each with a shield so 24 wires total of home, start, emergency, limit switch inputs to wire. The diagram is in my head. I have only looked at mfg spec sheets for pinouts so far and that's it. This is a nice breakout board too. I'll be able to command the variable speed spindle forward or backward and set the speed via computer in the program. That's not something I've ever been able to do even on the big backnife lathe. I'll be able to put a reverse trip lutz longdooey routine in there and have it spit the plug out into the bin :)
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Huh... you got a dipsy-doozy... is it contagious
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you might want to start that antibiotic prescription right away Bruce :)
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can this thing fix chairs by any chance?
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:P
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Vega CNC (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=F1fn4w35hF8#)
I've had this running for over 1 hour now and no loss of position so far. This is just a quick program I threw together to exercise the finish axis. This is running at ~300" per minute speed. It will run faster but would probably lose step/direction pulses. This is plenty quick enough. The roughing axis are still not ready, found a bad servo drive yesterday.
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That machine ran like that non stop for 2 hours. No failures. That is friggin flying. Amazing what you can do if you put your mind to it :)
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That was moving 9" of Z and 5" of X travel. These are rapid positions. Tomorrow I'll interface the spindle drive so it will go forward and reverse :bhappy:
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WOW very nice salty
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wow i was getting hipnotized..........nice scott......i kept watching the thing go back and forth plus the safty lines on the plexi glass and that little noise from the X+y+Z axis to the tenth power.of E=MC2.............plus i hit replay...........my son had to wake me up.........i was mezzmerised ^-^
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Four Axis. Ran this for about 40 minutes this morning. Still working on the spindle.
Vega 4 axis testing (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jiDyBhlgNUg#)
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Spindle now under complete computer control forward and reverse :bhappy:
Almost time to finish the cutter stuff.
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question......is it gona run two cutting heads..........you should be proud of your self salty
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yes one cutter on front and one on rear.
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I roughed and cut a plug without a cutter bit this morning in 18 seconds :)
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Got the finished cut tool holder done today. Is mounted and locked down. Will be working on the rough cut tomorrow. Now that everything is all calibrated I may see some wood chips this weekend...
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CUTTERS :sofa:
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Indexable cutter mount
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say at the end of the two cutting block......mount a spring loaded concave sanding block use hook and loop sponge 150 grit.............looks good salty.............carve away
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First chips. This is an old needle program I pulled up. 70 inch per minute. 3 axis.
Vega 2 axis first chips (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mVCisII8Bhc#)
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First shot at 5 axis
Vega chips 5 axis (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dv-PhgDcyuU#)
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VERY VERY nice
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Scott,
That new machine looks great. Good luck with it.
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hey john tnx much!
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Now THAT - is a real man's toy! Dual cutters, coordinated efforts.... Really cool stufff
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This machine has now taken over alot of the turning work in the shop. I'm down two axis right now from drive failures (bad drives) I looked at the maintenance hours today it's run for a total of 162 hours and traveled 1,450,000 inches in the Z axis and 630,000 in the X axis.
It's turned out to be incredibly accurate and only one or two minor crashes the entire time it's ran. Working on a special project with this in the spring and going to do some face turning for part of it. Dust collection has been an issue. That thing makes alot of sawdust real quick.
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Jeremy if your ever in the area I'll give you .05 tour you wear my special pink safety glasses though :)
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LOL Karl those safety glasses are still there :)
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i feed it to people who ask too many questions
:)
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Scott,
That is a work of art........you have skills my friend !!!
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I'm a hack.
175/hour today. Going to RISAAAA
We'll have some boxes of bodies there....
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This machine went BONKERS today. Holy crap the thing was moving by itself. it became THE TERMINATOR
I hit estop immediately. Assessed what just happened. Holy crap the x axis is taking off while the Z axis is moving. But never on it's own. Only when Z moving. WTF. When Z gets to a certain point wham X starts flying. Shut it down and turns out there was a broken wire on the X encoder that tells the compooter where it is. Lucky find. Every time it traveled past the break it reconnected and made it go beserk jittering and twerking more than Miley Cyrus LOL
Will have to remember to look at machine hours tomorrow.
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HEY JIMMY I'M STILL WAITING FOR THE CHAIR :D :D :D :D :D
oh it's comin you can count on that. :)
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Was looking at this today, machine has now moved more than 1.57 million inches. Still holds a .004 tolerance. Several hiccups since it was built, most all attributed to sawdust. Gee I wonder why LOL
This machine went BONKERS today. Holy crap the thing was moving by itself. it became THE TERMINATOR
I hit estop immediately. Assessed what just happened. Holy crap the x axis is taking off while the Z axis is moving. But never on it's own. Only when Z moving. WTF. When Z gets to a certain point wham X starts flying. Shut it down and turns out there was a broken wire on the X encoder that tells the compooter where it is. Lucky find. Every time it traveled past the break it reconnected and made it go beserk jittering and twerking more than Miley Cyrus LOL
Will have to remember to look at machine hours tomorrow.
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Computer spit up it's hard drive today. Can't understand why when it took me 20 minutes to get all the dust out LOL! Full backup means just a new hard disk and reload all the files and back in business!
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My first post on here this morning and happened to spot this wonderful piece of engineering ---------WOW.
That's a beautiful thing Salty, soooo fast and accurate, I do appreciate the hours you have put into, not only the machine but also posts and videos.
Pete
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Glad you like the stuff Hazmail. I've enabled alot of people to fish lures that have been gone for 50 years and more. Alot of fun. Usual headaches. :fart: bananalama
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Here is to hoping that every tap stays in one piece.
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Hi Bowfin Happy New Year.