My problem? I don't know what I'm doing. I need some help. I have a D&M4s mini mill that a friend and I have refurbished into full parallel control with a board from Campbell Designs. Works pretty well, but I'm seeing some idiosyncrasies with the current setup.
It runs what looks like a Sherline mini mill with an older style (not atlas) stepper motors.. (they're in a round case, and have no markings except for the D&M label that has no information on it). The stepper controller boards are L297/8 chopper driver boards. I'm thinking of upgrading the steppers at some point to something with a bit more torque/speed but that'll have to come later. I've been reading in parts of the documentation and troubleshooting pages that some of these issues could be due to step length and such being set up incorrectly. Is anyone else working this (or a similar) setup? 1) Here's the axis information from the .ini file: [AXIS_0] TYPE = LINEAR HOME = 0.25 MAX_VELOCITY = 0.15 MAX_ACCELERATION = 0.5 STEPGEN_MAXACCEL = 1.250 SCALE = 8000.0 FERROR = 0.05 MIN_FERROR = 0.01 MIN_LIMIT = 0.0 MAX_LIMIT = 7.325 HOME_OFFSET = 7.325000 HOME_SEARCH_VEL = 0.075000 HOME_LATCH_VEL = 0.062500 HOME_IGNORE_LIMITS = YES HOME_SEQUENCE = 1 BACKLASH = 0.008 [AXIS_1] TYPE = LINEAR HOME = 0.25 MAX_VELOCITY = 0.15 MAX_ACCELERATION = 0.5 STEPGEN_MAXACCEL = 1.250 SCALE = -8000.0 FERROR = 0.05 MIN_FERROR = 0.01 MIN_LIMIT = 0.0 MAX_LIMIT = 4 HOME_OFFSET = 3.950000 HOME_SEARCH_VEL = 0.100000 HOME_LATCH_VEL = -0.062500 HOME_IGNORE_LIMITS = YES HOME_SEQUENCE = 2 BACKLASH = 0.0075 [AXIS_2] TYPE = LINEAR HOME = -0.25 MAX_VELOCITY = 0.10 MAX_ACCELERATION = 0.4 STEPGEN_MAXACCEL = 1.25 SCALE = 8001.0 FERROR = 0.05 MIN_FERROR = 0.01 MIN_LIMIT = -7.0 MAX_LIMIT = 0.0 HOME_OFFSET = 0.000000 HOME_SEARCH_VEL = 0.100000 HOME_LATCH_VEL = 0.062500 HOME_IGNORE_LIMITS = YES HOME_SEQUENCE = 0 BACKLASH = 0.011 Do these numbers look normal? The MAX_VELOCITY and MAX_ACCELERATION look strange to me.. but then I don't know what normal is.. The backlash is a little high - it's on the list.. but otherwise what should I be looking for here as "normal". 2) I seem to be having some issues with my Z axis loosing steps (X and Y seem to be pretty stable). When making a series of up and down moves for some engraving, the depth gets reduced as the program progresses. 3) Is the step generation dependent on the stepper motor driver, or the stepper motor itself? Any advice or pointers to any good resources would be greatly appreciated. Remember.. I'm a NOOB at this, detailed explanations would be GREATLY appreciated. Thanks - Michael ------------------------------------------------------------------------------ The NEW KODAK i700 Series Scanners deliver under ANY circumstances! Your production scanning environment may not be a perfect world - but thanks to Kodak, there's a perfect scanner to get the job done! With the NEW KODAK i700 Series Scanner you'll get full speed at 300 dpi even with all image processing features enabled. http://p.sf.net/sfu/kodak-com _______________________________________________ Emc-users mailing list [email protected] https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/emc-users
