thibaultron

Well, I finally got the routine for skimming the top surface of the spoil board to work. Unfortunately, the bit left slight groves on the surface, which means my machine is slightly out of true! I don't know if I assembled it wrong, or when I took the spindle assembly apart I got it back together out of square. I'm going to have to get my surface plate out, and go "Full Metal Machinist" on it.

Welcome!

I used to have subscriptions to Popular Science and Popular Mechanics when I was young, took about a months allowance for each one. Stopped then in my 20s when they switched from "Take your hammer, and build this house, car etc." to "This is a hammer, and this is what you do with it" type articles.

In the Winter months, all skipjacks had this protection. I'll look for my skipjack books today, and post a picture, if I can find them (my shop is a terrible mess right now). The protection was basically sheet metal rectangles, nailed along the waterline with equal height above and below the water. If I remember correctly the sheets were 2 foot X 4 foot, with the nails in a pattern like two dice placed next to each other with the "5" sides facing you. I believe the sheets were overlapped at each end. I'll try to find the info for you today.

Just as a note to us USA members: At Home Depot, at least, the 1/2" nominal MDF is 13mm thick, not 12.7mm, and the 1/4" nominal MDF is 6mm, not 6.35mm.

I've turned all that off, already, the laptop still wants attention, regularly. Its old, and I guess lonely. Seriously, yes, I've corrected all those settings, but my laptop still needs me to move the mouse now and then. Thanks though!

Part 13 Finished the first spoil board for the 3020. It was a long road with a lot of learning curve (software design and cutting, as well as hardware). I used the 30 day Easel CNC Pro trial version to design the spoil board, which I’ll detail later. The only Pro feature I used was the Ramped Cutting one. This starts the cut at the level of the finish of the last step and ramps the cut down at either 5 or 20 degrees, to get to the next cut depth. Most of the cutting bits available for these machines cannot do plunge cuts (drilling type). The ramp allows the bit to cut down at an angle, reducing the stresses over just cutting directly down to the next depth. I’ll have to redo the design in CarveCo, once I learn how to use it. I’ve found the best way for me to learn such software, is to just go ahead and design something, so that is not a problem. At least I know that all the holes are in the right spot. One thing I will have to change is the depth of the cuts for the through holes. I’m using ½” MDF, so I set the depth at 12.7mm. Unlike modern plywood in the US, which runs 1/32” thinner than the standard old dimensions, my ½” MDF seems to be slightly thicker than ½”, and the holes did not penetrate all the way through. The standard design for spoil boards for this size machine is one ¼” thick, held in place with the Blue Tape and Superglue method. That method has you put a complete layer of Blue Painter’s Tape on the bed and bottom of the work piece. The tape strips are placed as close to each other as possible, without the edges overlapping. You then run a bead of superglue down the center of each strip, on the bed, and spray glue accelerator on the tape on the work piece. Then you carefully align the work piece and press it down. The tape holds well enough to both parts to provide a good attachment for most cuts. After you are done, you pry up one corner of the workpiece with a chisel or screwdriver. This breaks the tape’s hold, and you can pull off the workpiece. Then you peal the two superglued layers of tape off of the bed. The picture below shows a quick example of a layer of tape applied to the finished spoil board. Normally I would not have that exposed section on the right, and I would have trimmed the loose ends. Next time I will buy thick superglue, not the Gel type shown. The gel type is very hard to get to the tip of the bottle. I have to bang the tip (with the cap on, of course) on the table several times to get the glue to fall into the tip area. I like this method for work pieces, but would prefer to bolt the spoil board to the bed. I’m not going to be using the machine as someone would for a business, so the spoil board will not be changed as often as if I was running it 8 or so hours each day. Thus if I used the tape method it might have to survive months between board changes, not weeks. I don’t trust the tape bond over a long time span. Thus to allow for the bolt heads, I went with the ½” MDF. Anyway, the design is for a ½” thick MDF spoil board held down with 6 recessed screws, one in each corner and two in the center, with 30 holes drilled to match those in the bed. The corner holes and the two center holes are not that useful as hold downs for the type of clamps supplied with the router, so the bolts occupying them should not greatly affect the clamping ability of the spoil board. Below is a picture of the finished spoil board to this point (milling it flat, later, will be the final step). I found that the software limit settings did play an important role in cutting this board. The Easel CNC software defaults to the origin being the lower left corner, rather than the machine’s upper right, so I ran the tool to the bottom left corner, using the limits to set that location. There may be a way to change this in Easel, but I decided to just “Go with the flow.”, for this first design. I’ll detail the design process in a later post, as well as when I redo it in CarveCo. I designed it using the 30 day trial version of Easel Pro. Unfortunately due to preparing for, going on a weeklong Thanksgiving vacation, and doing all the normal activities skipped at home during same, I was delayed in starting the board for 3 weeks. I finished cutting the boards below and making the last correction 6 hours after the trial expired! This means that the ramp function was removed from my final version of the files, thus the need to redo it in CarveCo. I started with the design cut into a piece of ¾” plywood. This gave me some added margin of error, if I accidentally set some cuts too deep, or some other problem cropped up. I ran the spindle to the lower left with a “V” bit installed to show me were that “0” location was, and placed tape along the edge of the bed to help me align the work piece. I clamped the plywood using the blue tape method (above), and started the machining. There were a number of problems I ran into: 1. My first laptop developed a severe heat problem, and eventually died. Luckily I had an older laptop, and was able to switch my hard drive over to it, and continue. 2. I have not built a case for the machine, and the laptop is sitting next to the router. This was depositing a fair amount of sawdust onto the computer! 3. Vacuuming the sawdust off the computer while you are cutting, is a pain, especially if you accidentally hit the power button, while doing so, shutting down the computer in the middle of the job! 4. Pausing the job in the middle, due to the Admiral calling you off to do something else, doesn’t work, at least with my laptop! The job was locked up both times I tried it. 5. You have to babysit the router the whole time it is cutting, as Murphy dictates that bad things will happen as soon as you step away. 6. You have to periodically vacuum up the sawdust/shavings, anyway. 7. Don’t accidentally hit the power switch on your power strip with the vacuum cleaner hose while the job is running, either! 8. Having to restart an hour or two long job, halfway through due to any of the above problems, is really aggravating!!!! 9. Enclosure needed! Cutting MDF left me covered in a layer of MDF dust, even with regular vacuuming! 10. It is safer to move the mouse every few minutes to make sure that the laptop is not turning anything off. 11. Don’t try doing anything else on the computer (at least an older one like this), as the G-Code program may crash! It apparently uses a lot of computer resources! I did find that returning the machine to the starting point (sometimes several times) was reliable, at least. I set the cutting speeds very conservatively, so the jobs probably could have been run in shorter times. I read that the router should be creating chips not sawdust, otherwise you can overheat the wood or the cutter. My settings were mostly making sawdust. I checked after the finish of each job, and the bit was not heating up, though. I cut the clearance holes first. The first solution I tried to keep the sawdust off the computer, was to place a storage tub top between the machine and the laptop. This worked, but blocked my view of the computer screen, and access to the mouse. I found an old box and cut it to use as a block. This worked well as a temporary measure. After the clearance holes were finished, I cut the through holes. I had cut the through holes in the plywood 12mm deep, planning to drill them the rest of the way through, using the existing holes, as a guide. This would have worked, if my drill press was not presently buried, trying to do this by hand allowed the holes to wonder, and many of them did not clear the bed holes. This did show some errors in the design, that I was able to correct for the final design, though. Another problem I found was that the screw heads were thicker than I had thought, and I deepened the clearance holes by another 4mm, to give more clearance for miscuts, during regular use. In the future I will grind the tops of the bolts down some, for added clearance. Presently I have about 5/32nds” (4mm) of clearance between the top of the screw and the surface of the spoil board. I’d like to get that up to ¼” (6mm). This is a shot of the first version of the finished plywood board, I later cut the clearance holes deeper, for the added clearance. The black marks indicate where the drill holes wandered off center, blocking the bed holes. This is one of the screws installed. I used a “V” bit and ran the machine by “hand” from the computer, to mark the limits of where the tool bits can cut. See the lines by the screw head above. Using the lines on the ¾” plywood, for alignment of both the “0” position, and getting the board square, I mounted a piece of ½” MDF and cut my first spoil board. As I said above, the through holes did not go all the way through, but I only had to drill out a thin skin to complete them. After sanding the top and using a large flat file to get rid of some slight existing ridges around the holes (top and bottom), I mounted it, with 12mm long 6mm screws. The final step will be to use a 24mm flat bit to mill the spoil board surface flat and parallel to the bed and spindle. I found a canned program to do this, but it runs into problems with the software limits. I’ll have to investigate this further, or design my own program.

I'll post more later, but I just finished cutting my first Spoil Board today! Has all 30 holes for the clamps with 6 of them recessed for machine screws to hold it down. I still have to create a program to mill the top flat, but have been struggling with Software Limit issues. Even a canned routine will not run. More to figure out. The board is 1/2" MDF, rather than the standard 1/4", to allow for the screws. I don't like the idea of holding the board down with blue tape for long periods, as even Blue Tape will leave deposits after an extended period.

Easel CNC assumes the 0,0 point is at the bottom left corner (like regular Cartian Coordinates). So I always have to move the 0 when using Easel. I'm just starting with CarveCo, and haven't drawn anything in it yet.

Thistle, your limit switches should have stopped the travel, before the mechanical limits were reached. My problem was only with the software limits. Any G-code software problems should not effect the hardware limit switches! Run the table by hand and test that the switches, actually activate, before the mechanical limits are reached. Also make sure that you have at least a few mm of clearance after the switch activates, to allow the whole system to physically stop, when running full out, and for the fact that switches have a tolerance for activation. The limit switches that are supplied with the 3020, have about a + 0.008" tolerance.

Part 12 OK, the single X and Y-Axis limit switches are not enough! I have to contact SainSmart again about getting a set of matching limit switches and mounts. It turns out that the Software Limits are only effective, if you never change the “0” positions of the axis. You have to do this for most jobs, as you have to set the axis “0” to some position over whatever chunk of workpiece you want to carve. Once the “0” position is changed the soft limits go out the window, and the machine will happily go past the mechanical limits, as the total available travel is no longer “X”, it is now “X- however much you moved the origin.”

Years ago I worked in a computer lab, with a raised floor with removable 2X2 foot "Tiles". You lifted the tiles to run cabling underneath the floor. The tiles had blue carpet squares glued on top. Over the years many carpet squares came loose, making the floor look bad. Our boss convinced the company to replaced them. They choose a multi colored earth tone "Where the h..l did did that part go!" pattern for the new carpet squares! After they finished we and the boss wished we had just kept quite about the floor!

Yes, I've used mine for that more times than I care to admit to!

Be careful of that heater plugged into the power strip! My friends had the cord to their's catch fire 2 weeks ago! Thankfully they caught it in time.

Part 11 Ran into a problem yesterday. The Z-Axis mechanism was locking up during the "Homing" operation. It was mechanically locking before it contacted the upper limit switch. The stepper motor was buzzing loudly as it was still trying to turn the feedscrew. I couldn’t see any debris in the slot at the top back of the feedscrew nut. Then I noticed that the coupling nut looked like it was lower than it had been. The other coupling nuts sit in a depression in the frame that puts the set screw for tightening the servo end of the coupler partially below the frame surface. Thinking that the nut for the Z-Axis was the same, I took the assembly apart. Nope! It turns out that the coupler hits the top of the seated feeds crew, before the nut gets that deep into the upper frame/motor mount! ###....####. While putting everything back together was not difficult, and the parts seem to slot nicely together, I hope that nothing is just slightly out of factory alignment. After running the feedscrew, by hand, until the slide was mostly at the bottom (being careful to hold it off the limit switch), I Then slid the coupler back onto the servo shaft as far as it would go, and tightened the clamp setscrew. The slide now cycles correctly. I also had removed the spindle motor during the disassembly, and I had noticed that the wires had sagged and were touching the frame, during cutting. So I turned the motor to put the wires from the motor to exiting from the right, as shown in the instructions. This seems to help. I have been using an old piece of Particle Board (as opposed to MDF) for my trial cuts, and I have broken 2 20 degree “V” bits in short order. This is a very old chunk of material (at least 25 years old) and may be of different composition to modern stock. In any case I would not recommend using Particle Board on this machine with “V” bits. I’ve purchased both ¼” and ½” MDF boards, and will use these from now on. I’ve also found that the “V” bits stick into the aluminum top surface of the Z-Probe when using it (deep enough that the probe will raise off the workpiece when the slide is lifted back up). This gives a false height, naturally, and mars the probe surface. It use the slip of paper method for setting the “V” bit height now. I have not used any of the other types of bits, and will report on them, when I do.

Shipping Pallet patent November 1939, so it would be correct for 1940.

Metal Lathe - 1. A device for throwing chuck keys at your face. 2. A device for throwing large semi round workpieces at your body, because you forgot to completely tighten the chuck (reason chuck key was still in the chuck). 3. A device with a lot of heavy chucks that fall on your feet, during changing.

Thanks!

As you can see in the last picture of Part 11, I was incorrect about UGS having Jog buttons! The "Jog Controller" button opens the Jog button window, unless of course, you've accidentally clicked the "X" in the Jog Controller window! In that case it disappears, and I haven't been able to figure out how to get it back! ***,,,****! jog

Clare, what is your stain formula?

Part 010 With the bin directory open select which of the two program .EXE files you will be using, then “OK”. This window will open. Select “Next” and this window will be displayed. You can leave it as shown and select “Finish”, but the name “ugsplatform64.exe” (in the example above), will be the name displayed under the icon. I typed in “UGS” instead. Select “Finish”. This is what the icon looks like on my Desktop. I was mistaken in an earlier post. UGS does not have a “keypad” that allows you to move the various axis back and forth, like Grblcontrol does. It does allow you to “Home” the machine though, so you can make sure you are connected. Turn on your machine. When you start UGS, this window will be displayed while it is loading. Once loaded this screen is shown. The program was already installed, so you see it after I had set the Com Port. The first time you run the program you will have to setup the Com Port. Select the “Port:” button and the software will search for available ports. Select the port you recorded earlier. Next Select the “Machine” menu item, and then “Setup Wizard..”. When the Wizard opens, check the port setting, and select “Connect”. You should get this acknowledgement. Select “Next”, and the Wizard will go to this step. I was unable to find any configuration files on the SainSmart thumb drive, so I selected “Next” to skip this step. The next window checks that the Axis move in the correct directions. Follow the instructions. My machine behaved correctly. After checking your machine, select “Next”, and you will go to this step. As I was not ready to do the following steps yet, I selected “Cancel” and went back to the program. I selected the “Home Machine” button, and the router went through the Home routine correctly. I stopped at this point, as I don’t have any scrap to test any of the files on right now, but at least I know the software talks to the router. When you start the program after this, you have to open the “Machine” tab and select “Connect” to connect to the machine, before running anything. Part 11 will be about the GRBL Candle program included with the SainSmart software.

Part 009 Installation of Universal G-Code Sender “UGS” Before installing either of the G-Code programs, follow the directions in the start-up manual and install the SainSmart drivers from the USB Thumb drive, and find out which Com Port to use (plug in the machine using the USB cable first). Record it. The next two parts will be a detailed installation of UGS. Some of the steps will be familiar to most Windows Users, but I included them for any who may not have done them before. UGS is a free Open Source software program, that is used to take a G-Code (a type of machine control software) file and send the steps to a CNC machine. The G-Code is created by a Design software program , like Easel, Carbide Create, CarveCo, The Professional Version of Fusion, etc. The free version of Fusion will not generate G-Code. Using a web browser (these screens are from FireFox), search for USG software (searching for just USG will bring up several businesses, and at least one university). Yes, my search was just for USG in the screen shot. For this shot I selected USG - Github. Then I selected “Download”. Then I selected “Windows” Then “Save File” and “OK” While the file was downloading, to monitor the progress, in my browser, I selected “Tools” and then “Downloads”. When the download was finished I opened the Downloads Folder in my User directory. The file is shown circled below. The site’s directions say to extract the compressed .ZIP file from here. I use PeaZip, and I don’t know where the un-Zipped files ended up, but I couldn’t find them! So I created a folder labeled “UGS” on my Desktop and copied the file there. Opening the folder I Right Clicked on it and selected PeaZip, then “Extract”. PeaZip opens this window. I selected “OK” and waited for the process to finish. When it was finished this new directory had been created. Opening the directory you will see this. Open the “bin” folder. Ugsplatform.exe (for a 32bit system), or ugsplatform64.exe are the programs that run UGS. You can either go through this and click on the appropriate file, to start the program each time, or create a shortcut icon on your desktop to run the program from. To declutter my Desktop I copied the UGS directory to the 😄 drive, and then deleted it from the Desktop. To create the Icon, Right Click on the Desktop and select “New” and then “Shortcut”. This window will open. Select “Browse”, and this window will open. Select “This PC”, then “Local Disk C” and then select the “UGS” directory, then the “bin” directory. Continued in Part 10.

Yes, UGS is free. Search UGS software or UGS download.

Part 008 With everything ready, I plugged the Standalone Control Box to the router controller and ran all the axis back and forth. The picture shows a piece of paper on the router table showing the directions the + travel commands run the spindle and table. When homed to 0,0,0 the spindle is positioned all the way to the right, the table is all the way forward, and the spindle is all the way up. This positions the spindle at the far right, and at the back of the table. So any commands to move are all –X, -Y, and –Z from the home position. One thing to note, if the system is run (except during the “Home” operation) to the point that one of the limit switches is activated the system stops and no further commands are accepted, even those to move away from that position. You have to manually move that axis away from the switch, using the knobs. You can use the knobs with the system on, no damage will occur from back driving the servos by hand. Moving the servo shaft by hand causes it to act like a generator, and some devices can be damaged if not correctly protected, this system is protected. Don’t, however, grab one of the knobs when the table or spindle are moving! The manual says to have either the Offline Controller plugged in, or the USB cable plugged into the router Controller box, but not both at the same time! With the Offline Controller hooked up, this screen comes up when the powered is turned on. Push the “OK/Spindle” button, and you will be taken to the manual control screen. Pushing the “Exit/Step” button will change the distance the axis will move when one of the axis +/- buttons are pressed (lower right value). The default that first comes up is 0.1mm, then it rotates through 1mm, 5mm, and 10mm, then back to 0.1mm. The value in the “sp:” box it the percentage of full speed the spindle rotation is set to. The default is 10%. You can also step the spindle speed up from the default 10%, up to 100%, from the control box, but I forget the combination of buttons needed. After testing the router with the offline controller, I unplugged it and plugged in the USB cable between it and the computer. I then installed the G-Code software provided by SainSmart that drives the machine. G-Code is the set of instructions created by the design software, that gives the direct instructions to the router control board (i.e. go right 10mm, then down 5mm, and lower the spindle 2mm, etc.). I’ll detail installing the software in a later post, when I can get some screen shots of the process. I really wanted to play with the new toy, and didn’t want to take the time to properly record all the steps. This software also has control “buttons” to run the servos back and forth, as well as manually “Home” the spindle, use the Z-Axis probe etc. I was able to control all the axis from the computer. Once again, activating one of the limit switches (except during “Home”) kills all control of the machine, until the offending axis is manually moved away from the switch. The G-code software provided by SainSmart is alright, but I also installed the “Hobby Standard” “Universal G-Code Sender” program "UGS". It too has a control buttons panel. It has a detailed setup wizard that I have to work my way through, before I can use it though. This wizard provides a lot of customization of things like setting software limits for axis travel (which is needed without the second limit switches on the X and Y axis, and a general good idea, in any case. You can scale commanded travel distance, to what the actual distanced moved was (for example you commanded the spindle to move 200mm, but it actually moved 203mm), etc. Doing this will take a bit of effort, but is why this program is better than the one SainSmart provides. I haven’t loaded the free Easel design program. You can’t just load the Free version of Easel , you have to install the trial version which after 30 days reverts to the free one. So, I wait until I’m ready to actually design something to install this or the CarveCo program. That will come soon, but not right now. I will be trying the sample carving files SainSmart provided, but need to buy some MDF stock to practice on. As a side note, the tapped holes in the table, for attaching the clamps are 6mm threads. I will be mapping the hole spacing, and hopefully designing a program for making a spoil board. A spoil board is basically a sacrificial board mounted to the table, so that any miss cuts, or designs that pierce the work piece will cut into the spoil board rather than the aluminum table surface. This would be easier if the holes were all equally spaced, but my initial measurements indicate that there is some misalignment to them. Today I bought some 6mm cap screws that may be more precise than the supplied flat head clamp screws. When I installed one of the 20 degree bits, there was a fair gap between the tip and the table surface, so a spoil board will not seriously affect the cutting depth of the spindle.