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Look What I Got!!!!
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Author:  Sprockett [ Mon Aug 21, 2006 4:32 pm ]
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A Big Yellow truck showed up today and delivered this to the shop:





Hmmmmmmm wonder what it can be???

Let's get the drill and find out......



I can't believe it, it's FINALLY here!!!

Stupid box, where's that hammer....



That's better, now we can load it onto the table and take stock....



That looks good, thank god I made the table a little bigger than I needed, this thing is heavy...

Here are all the parts:



There's no instructions but I pretty much know what needs to be done, so off I go... Didn't really run into any big problems, everything was tight. I just had to lift the Z-Axis bar and bolt it in and then bolt in the wire track, total time about 30 minutes.

So here's where this gets funny (well kind of)..... I start hooking up the controller for testing, I ask some questions and K2 is very responsive. I finally go to plug it into the Dell and guess what?? NO FLIPPIN PARALLEL PORT!!!

Dang Dell morons (sorry Dell lovers), they can't even put a standard IEEE parallel port on the flippin computer so I call a bunch of shops and finally find one that carries a high speed port that has all the right features, $23 bucks later and I'm ready to.

Here's what it looks like:



They have instructions but to be honest they are for people who have done this before so I'm a little lost but I putter through and finally I can run the one demo program and the machine works. I figured out how to set the Zero for X,Y and Z...

So now for the experienced around here I have a couple of questions.....

1. For the Z axis, should positive be down and negative be up? so for instance if I set it at Z0 (which is up against the limit switch) then should positive numbers make it go down??

2. Are there any good reference books or courses on doing machining with CNC? I'm really winging this, I'm pretty sure with some tweaking I can make flat jigs and do inlays but the more I know the better I can work with the machine.

3. I guess the same question about the Z Axis could apply to the X and Y but it seems obvious to me that positive would be away from the limit switches..

I'm overall very happy with the machine, my only real complaint is that for a newbie like me it's a little over-whelming, I'd love to see a good set of starter instructions written for people new to this. I told them that they would get more customers doing this so doing a little extra work for beginners would be a great help.

I have not hooked up the router just yet, I want to make sure I understand and can control the machine first, if I can make a drawing and not destroy the pencil then I'll be ready, little steps . I also want to hook up a little control panel so I can kick on router, and dust collector from the keyboard. Not sure how to do that just yet but I'll figure out something. I also need to play with the quick change chuck I bought for the router, there's just so much to figure out on this, it's going to keep me busy for a while

They provide MachII for the controller software and once I figure it out I'm going to go up to MachIII as it has some nicer features. They do have scripting in this version so I'll do some things like add a home button to home the machine and little things like that. I spent a week in Seattle last week taking a Rhino Cad class at their headquarters, it was money well spent, now I just need to figure the machine end out and I'll be jommin mon!!!

I promised a bunch of people updates as I worked my way through this adventure so consider this the opening chapter, the $700 for the Rhino class was the best money I've spent in a while. I'm confident of my abilities in it now, Rhino-Cam... well that's another story

Cheers

-Paul-
Author:  Serge Poirier [ Mon Aug 21, 2006 9:44 pm ]
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Congrats Paul, you got yourself a fancy toy there!

it will be very interesting to follow as it develops it's full potential!
Author:  John Watkins [ Mon Aug 21, 2006 10:46 pm ]
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Paul, very nice looking machine. Welcome to the club!   

Z+ is up. Z- is down. The top of your part is zero, so when you tell RhinoCAM to cut a depth of .25, it's going to go to Z-.25

X should be left/right as you face the machine with X+ to the right and home to the left.

Y should forward/back with Y+ going away from you and Y- coming toward you.

Your machine is probably setup by default to have you face it from the end, so the opposite of what I said is probably how it's setup now.

I'll help however I can as you move forward with this. Have fun!
Author:  Serge Poirier [ Mon Aug 21, 2006 11:28 pm ]
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Guys, what's the price range of such a toy? Just curious!
Author:  L. Presnall [ Mon Aug 21, 2006 11:42 pm ]
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And by the looks of that computer monitor, you're all set up to make a fine amoeba! Seriously tho, you are gonna have a LOAD of fun with that particular toy!! Good on ya!
Author:  Michael McBroom [ Tue Aug 22, 2006 2:05 am ]
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Ooh nice one, Paul! What's the Z-axis travel on that puppy?

I'd also like to know how much it set you back. CAD is/has been one of my eventual machining goals. And I think that, for guitars, a flat-bed setup like yours makes the most sense.

Best,

Michael
Author:  Sprockett [ Tue Aug 22, 2006 3:37 am ]
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Thanks John...

That makes sense, Z0 is a relative position then. Part of the issue is that MachII only has like 9 Gajillion options, I'll see if I can set a virtual Z0 that would put the router about halfway up (something I could tell MachII to run to for safety). Without a machinists background it's easy to get run over doing this, I understand the basics but the devil is in the details.

I'll also double check the X and Y, am I correct in assuming that the limit switches are the home positions for those? That's what confused me on the Z, it has a Positive limit switch......

I'm going to make a little drop in piece today that will allow me to run a marking pen so I can work on getting everything adjusted. One thing I don't like is that I have servo's and you have to hit an 'Engage' button to pull them online, it means the control box has to go somewhere I can easily reach it.

Michael the Z axis travel is 5"

Ok so everyone wants to know cost, this in not going to be pretty so let me break it down for you....

Rhino Software And Rhino Cam was $1800

K2 KG3925 with Upgraded Ballscrews and Servos, T-Lock Table, Porter Cable router holder and dust collector: $6000

Dell XPS computer (WITHOUT PARALLEL PORT!!) and 19" monitor: $900

There are lots of other little things in that cost I didn't toss in, I built a table for it with storage, a new router with a quick change bit system. We are well in over $10k at this point, it's a good bit of dough to be sure and this is not a learning curve it's a learning nightmare. Mostly I think because CNC even though being around for a while is not a consumer grade toy, there are no 'CNC For Dummies' books so you have to wade through lots of technical data.

And of course my real job is in crunch mode right now so spending time playing is going to be hard to find

Cheers

-Paul-
Author:  1bordeaux [ Tue Aug 22, 2006 7:32 am ]
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Very nice, Paul!

I too am having a tough go of learning my machine, mostly due to a lack of repetitive time to do so!
A year from now hopefully it will seem much easier than it appears!

Paul
Author:  Don Williams [ Tue Aug 22, 2006 8:22 am ]
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What? No Colombo spindle?   

I'm going to go the "build it yourself" route. Can't afford buying one like that, so I'll slowly collect parts and build one.
Piece by slower-than-I-can-stand-it piece.



That looks like a really sweet unit...

Congratulations on the "new addition to the family".

Don Williams38951.7244675926
Author:  Serge Poirier [ Tue Aug 22, 2006 4:05 pm ]
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Thanks Paul!
Author:  Rand Kennedy [ Wed Aug 23, 2006 5:50 am ]
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I hope you have a "touchpad" to set your zero Z axis position. The Techno unit is a 3/8" aluminum block with a wire that connects it to the controller. In their controller (not Mach) they have a touch-off Z zero button that makes the machine slowly lower the Z axis until the bit (in router) makes contact (electrical continuity) with the touchpad. The controller subtracts the 3/8" block thickness and sets your Z zero position. Depending on what I'm machining I may set my Z zero to the stock or to the fixture and of course the program must match.

You'll want to learn about offsets and Mach's offset registers. They help you setup specific locations for fixtures and the X and Y distance from the machine's home position. Until you have made fixtures you'll zero your X and Y manually with the software after jogging the axis to where you want them and not use offsets. I use a master fixture base to which I attach stuff to be machined and also other sub-fixtures like vacuum neck/FB fixture, headstock fixture etc, and use offsets to tell it where the X,Y zero reference is for each type of work.

Your limit switches should be on the opposite end of home position. This gives the controller a hardstop indication on each end of travel so a program booboo can't rack the machine.

I'm also happy to help with questions etc. I think there is a lot of support for Mach over on cnczone for questions etc. The Mecsoft forum is good too for the Visual Mill CAM side of Rhinocam.
Author:  Sprockett [ Wed Aug 23, 2006 6:33 am ]
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No touchpad yet, K2 was working on one, have not seen the Techno stuff, do you have a link? I think you can do offsets like that in MachII, I printed out the whole manual and have been reading it, it's actually very good and they have great explanations of how things are setup.
I am going to move up to MachIII once I have MachII all figured out, I think K2 does it because it's a know variable for their customers.

I've been reading about their offsets, it makes a ton of sense and the fog is slowly starting to lift , I have not yet figured out how I'm going to set my offsets. They have a touchpad button in MachII and apparently you can get a keyboard emulator and hook things up to it, that would allow me to do a touchpad or other things.

Now for the Limit Switches, what I was going to do was to use them for the home-ref positioning, that way I can zero x,y,z mechanically. MachII allows you to set a software limit for your machine so I was going to set it up so that it would never let the machine roll out past that point. In fact they will E-Stop if that happens, and before you can run a program they validate that it's within limits.

I wish they had added a second set for the limit points. you can run them in parallel and MachII will figure it out, that seems like a bad idea to me personally. I'm going to inquire about K2's touchpad today and Talk to artsoft about the keyboard emulater and how it works.

Thanks for the advice, I need it

-Paul-
Author:  John Watkins [ Wed Aug 23, 2006 7:38 am ]
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The touchpad is nice (I use mine every day), but it's certainly not necessary.

A quick (and extremely accurate) way to do it is to get the cutter really close to the top of the part and then move it down in .001" increments while moving a piece of paper back and forth in between. When the paper catches and won't move anymore, back it off one increment and set your Z height for the thickness of that paper; usually about .002".

There's also the method of bringing the router down with a loose collet while the cutter rests on the part and then tightening it down. This is not an accurate way to do it. Not only will the weight of the cutter dig in to the part a little bit, but the collet will also pull the cutter up when tightened.
John Watkins38952.6951041667
Author:  Sprockett [ Wed Aug 23, 2006 8:07 am ]
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That's a good idea John...

I contaced K2 about the touchpad to get an update, I also contacted ArtSoft to see what was possible, you could easily do a small touchpad using a keyboard emulator and running a script do what Rand is doing.

I also posed Rands comment to them on the limit switches to get their input (no offense Rand, I just want to see what they will say).

I rigged up a marker last night and was drawing things, but I need to find a better way to make it float without wiggling...

Thanks

-Paul-
Author:  Sprockett [ Wed Aug 23, 2006 8:21 am ]
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Well Artsoft is fast with support, I was thinking of doing a keyboard emulator and using one key off that for the touchpad, they told me it was too time critical to use an emulator.. Bummer...

I'm still going to get one so I can make a control panel for basic things... the nerd in me loves that idea :)

-Paul-
Author:  Rand Kennedy [ Wed Aug 23, 2006 9:40 am ]
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When I was trying to decide on machines, they all had home switches but some offered sometimes expensive hardware limit switch options. That's where I was coming from, I assume everybody uses a hard switch for home but I haven't looked much at K2's stuff.

I use a wireless keyboard and mouse on my machine so I can pick it up and walk around if needed. Most of the time I just keep it on the desk next to the machine. I'm surprised somebody in the universe of Mach users hasn't figured out the remote control panel.

John's got it covered on the Z zeroing. I use option 2 for one small operation and have the inaccuracies he mentioned. For cutting it might be fine, but for surfacing operations you're going to see it and have to sand it out If mach will do the touchpad then you just need to figure out how to wire it up to the controller. You'll need a touchpad block of aluminum that has been milled to an accurate thickness on the business end. Again I'm surprised somebody doesn't just offer that kit.
Author:  Sprockett [ Wed Aug 23, 2006 9:54 am ]
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K2's response was that they only provide the home limit switches at this time, to be honest I could add some if I needed to. But they suggested I use the software limits as I was thinking so for now I'll do that, they also said since the machine is using servo's as opposed to steppers when it loads up it stops. I ran it into the end last night and didn't wrack the macine

I orderd a keyboard that's fully wireless and has a touchpad built in, just waiting for it to arrive (everything seems to be on back order these days. )

Apparently I have to use MachIII to do what I really want, so I'm going to upgrade to that. It's actually pretty cheap, I may look at other packages as well. I took the controller apart and they are using a Gecko 320 to drive the servo's so the control software can be anything I want...

I'd love to see a kit for some of these things, your right it's amazing how little there is out for these things...

-Paul-
Author:  Anthony Z [ Thu Aug 24, 2006 12:31 pm ]
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Paul - congratulations on your new arrival. The learning curve on one of those sure has me scared off.

You must have felt like a kid on Christmas morning opening the dreamed of gift only to read the parentally dreaded "some assembly required."

So do tell -- what wonders of CNC'ing will you be fabricating?
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