I have a couple questions on the water cooled spindle.

Corey_Perez · April 30, 2017, 1:19am

I purchased my R7 May 24th (2016) and I’ve just tooled up the spindle (for the first time, ridiculous I know). When I turned it on I noticed a obvious wobble to the ball mill I had inserted (3mm). I removed tension and reapplied. While better, there was an obvious wobble still. I’m using a 3mm collet and I tried another 3mm ball mill I purchased. Is this normal?

I’m going to try and cut into a piece of pine, just to give this something to try. I looked at the speeds/feeds and didn’t see anything specific for this. Anybody have any other specifics they can offer? I figured the 3mm ball would be a decent option to start with cutting a “sign”.

Thanks,

Corey

Eclsnowman · April 30, 2017, 2:02am

You have any other sized bits you could try, to put in a different collet size. Then you might be able to trace it back to a bad 3mm collet.

Also are you sure you have a 3mm collet, and not a 1/8" collet (3.175mm).

Brandon_Satterfield · April 30, 2017, 3:11am

@Corey_Perez that is beautiful machine set up brother. A man after my own heart, hobbies include guns, bikes, and CNCs. Double 3/4" bed, well lit, away from traffic, just ideal set up!
@Eclsnowman hit the nail on the head. I was going to ask if this was a 3mm collet or a 3.175. The spindle comes stock with a 3.175. Rest assured the spindle is no EBay junk, these are built special for this machine. 4 quality bearings, balanced, and pushed by a 1.5kW inverter the spindle will run true for you and power through most for years. I’ll be happy to take a look at it if you want to send it to me.

Corey_Perez · May 1, 2017, 5:51am

Well I ran 3 projects through it this weekend. The first two were a “Success” only in that I learned a few valuable lessons. I was about 1/2 way through a large project and Chilipeppr froze. I ended up resetting to home, and when it restarted it jumped to a random location on the project board and jumped about lines. I then restarted the project again. This time after about 800 lines (it had crashed at 20k) I realized I could “jump” ahead using the “airplane” icon. I really thought it would retract and move ahead, plunge and continue. Nope, nice 45deg line right through the work piece.

Sunday I Tried a military logo using PhotoVCarve. I felt that 4 hours was a ridiculous amount of time, but let it have at it anyway. Well 6 hrs late, 2 freezes (which I learned just hitting the “pause” button would continue the process) and at only half way on the cut, I killed the process. The gcode was doing individual plunges, and “drawing” the logo like that. Not to mention, it looked terrible.

Using PhotoVCarve I tried to make a photo cut and while it actually finished the project, it wasn’t exactly “clear” what the photo was supposed to be. I believe it has to do with using the wrong mill (ones I got from SMW3D weren’t labeled, I had to guess what I was using).

Well, long story short, 1 start to finish project and a few lessons learned. Close enough to a win for my first 24 hours!

A couple annoyances I hope somebody can help me with. When I freeze/Cancel a process, I send back to home, and restart the next cut starts in an entirely different location, but the same initial cuts. Sometimes I don’t get an actual lift/plunge of the Z. CP just drags the mill across the work piece. I think I got it right with a couple “resets” / erasing the buffer. Once I had to re-load the gcode. On that note…

I had started a project and it was cutting very slowly. I went back into vcarve and made a more aggressive tool profile. I then loaded the “new” gcode (same name). I tried no fewer than 10 times but there was no change in the cut speed/depth. It wasn’t until I changed the name of the file, cleared the “recent history” loaded a different gcode (visual representation to confirm the buffer dumped) and then went back to what was the old name, edited and changed the name and loaded that gcode did I actually get a result.

All the issues I’ve been having were mostly stemmed through Chilipeppr. It got me thinking that I wanted to use Mach4. But M4 won’t work with the TinyG (I’m sure you all know that). Now I’m trying to figure out what replacement I would need to move away from the TinyG/Chilipeppr.

(I just seen Jerry Monger asking about TinyG. That will be my next read.

Thanks for any assistance!

Corey

Brandon_Satterfield · May 1, 2017, 2:30pm

Corey turn off the 3D visualizer in CP, that should resolve the freezing. At the top of the screen click the settings wheel.

Lessons learned - the machine will only do what the program tells it. If your Gcode tells it to peck, it pecks. If you tell it to raise it raises. Where you are starting the job is there a G1 or G0 Z5 or Z10? If not the machine won’t raise, it is not told to. If you tell it to process a 4 hour job, it processes a 4 hour job minus any freezes in CP/SPJS. Turning off the visualizer will eliminate that.

TinyG will also run on CNCJS. I have not tried it but being told it is offline and does not have a limit on file size.

Corey_Perez · May 2, 2017, 5:00am

I gave CNCJS a try tonight. I don’t think I would recommend it. I was trying to travel the X to machine zero and it went about 6" and shuddered and stopped. Once I let go of the arrow key the machine went the opposite way! Almost like winding up a spool on a rubber band. It did this on both the X and Y. I tried a few things but despite the annoyances with Chilipeppr, I think its a better option at this point.

I tried zeroing out the machine footprint thinking it was hitting an artificial wall and trying to get back into its “safe place”. But this interface doesn’t stop when you let off the arrow keys. It will still travel for the amount of input it has buffered vs. being real time input/response. I had to make panic motions towards the freehold a few times trying to use CNCJS.

Keep in mind I’m a complete noob. I just beyond learning how to plug this thing into a wall socket.

Corey

Corey_Perez · May 21, 2017, 5:18pm

I finally got my beams from 80/20. I couldn’t believe the level of attention to detail these guys provide! I ordered black beams, I fully expected the ends to be regular alum (as well as holes), but they actually did the work and THEN anodized the alum. The ends are black, the holes drilled and anodized. It was amazing! All of the beam shield (stuff, the yellow fill) worked. One fits more flush vs. the other (wider)). Now to drill the pilot holes and screw the beams through the bed and start this puppy up!