On Thursday 20 March 2008, Gary Fixler wrote:
>> >It's also just occurred to me that I could leave the PC, and driver box
>>
>> on,
>>
>> >and just unplug the motors until I'm ready to go again. I'm not sure how
>>
>> bad
>>
>> >that would be for the system. My thoughts turned toward things like
>> >back-EMF.
[...]
>> And that will u$ually break the mirror and let the $moke out of the
>> driver$.
>> The motors must be connected with dependable, solid, no intermittents
>> allowed
>> cabling as long as the drivers are powered up.
>
>Alright, that's two people spreading caution. Thanks for the warnings! Point
>taken - I definitely don't want to burn out a $600 box.
>
>> I have left it running, turned out the lights and gone to bed, not coming
>> back
>> till noonish the next day on a couple of projects and have gotten away
>> with
>> it.
>
>I've done it once so far, with a really complicated (for me, as a newb)
>setup that I didn't want to have to redo. In the morning, however, I
>couldn't take it anymore, and shut it all down before heading off to work. I
>was right, too - it was nearly impossible to get it back to the right
>location later. I had essentially nothing off of which to key.
One of the reasons I often drill a useless hole someplace at the start of the
project, and write my code with that as the 0,0,0 point. That makes getting
back to within a couple thou a bit easier.
>> The box is a long cube, long enough to
>> hold a 4 axis board, 3.5" square, with a 12 volt ex psu fan in each end,
>> one
>> blowing in, the other out, and they are running on about 18 volts. Not
>> all
>> of those fans will take that sort of abuse, but its been my experience
>> here
>> that if it lasts an hour, it will last for years, one of them is probably
>> 10
>> years old now! They are noisy at that speed though. And zero chance of my
>> drivers overheating which is the real criteria. :)
>
>Wow, I didn't realize they were so rugged. I'll definitely keep them in mind
>now, for all manner of projects.
Definitley test the ones you are going to use, & if its not up to that sort of
music, there's always that 45 gallon roughneck cannister just outside the
door to store it in till the truck comes by. I'd run these on a bit less,
but that is what happened to be available.
>>Are you thinking emc uses a serial port? Not normally since there is little
>>that is real-time about serial. Most use a parport interface.
>
>I was indeed thinking that, having forgotten (blocked out?) all of the
>annoyance of tracking down the parport 'upgrade' for my Shuttle XPC, and
>waiting for it to arrive. I used to turn my nose up at parports, as they
>were so large, and 'old-fashioned,' but having multiple, simultaneous I/O
>lines, and dead-simple communications I admit has enough appeal to draw me
>back in. I've wired up cables, and even ran a custom serial port to my
>electronics bench from my PC across the room, so I could program
>microcontrollers in places without constantly bringing the setup back over
>to the PC, so I'm thinking I should just rig up an inline box that provides
>me with headers for all these helpful extras I'm missing. Even though it's
>completely unnecessary fluff for me, I'd love to see the spindle stop itself
>when it's done making the part for once. I'd have to break into the mill's
>power box for that, but that's easy enough (he said, confidently).
>
>emc does have the inputs. If your box doesn't have them available due to a
>
>> lack of breakouts, thats fixable. All 17 usable pins on a parport are
>> either
>> used by xylotex, or are present as passive terminals on the edge of the
>> xylotex board, take 'em wherever. I'm running 4 axis's & the spindle ATM,
>> and still have about 5 pins I could use for other things leftover, but I
>> don't have home/limit switches setup yet either.
>
>I've been convinced for probably a year now (while busy with other things,
>and procrastinating on getting my machine bench set up finally) that I had
>no easy option for getting more inputs to emc, so this is exciting news,
>indeed. I'm pretty eager to figure out a homing solution, too, though it's
>much lower priority than ATM about 20 other projects.
Watch your store bought cabling for the parport, make sure the cable you use
actually has all 25 wires in it.
>There's never nearly
>enough time in a day, or a weekend.
Chuckle, heck, I'd be happy to have enough time to get what I want to do done
before I fall over. I suspect my plans will outlast me, diabetis beginning
to slow me down, darnit. I hate unfinished business. :)
>Thanks, Gene!
>-Gary
--
Cheers, Gene
"There are four boxes to be used in defense of liberty:
soap, ballot, jury, and ammo. Please use in that order."
-Ed Howdershelt (Author)
"I gained nothing at all from Supreme Enlightenment, and for that very
reason it is called Supreme Enlightenment."
-- Gotama Buddha
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