Scott's 2.x Log

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Re: Scott's 2.x Log

Postby sshwarts » Fri Oct 17, 2014 3:17 pm

Yea I noticed that (they were out of business). A shame, good price. The local supplier here (and at other locations in the country) is N.Glantz & Son <http://www.nglantz.com/>. This is where my local sign guy gets his panels.
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Re: Scott's 2.x Log

Postby injunear » Sat Oct 18, 2014 1:00 am

sshwarts wrote:Yea I noticed that (they were out of business). A shame, good price. The local supplier here (and at other locations in the country) is N.Glantz & Son <http://www.nglantz.com/>. This is where my local sign guy gets his panels.


Yeah, I found them online yesterday. I wasn't sure if they would sell to me. They're about 35 miles from where I live so it's a trip.

Bob T.
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Re: Scott's 2.x Log

Postby injunear » Tue Oct 21, 2014 2:57 am

Did you buy your cable and hose carrier (drag link cable) yet? If so, do you have a source? I've been putting this off for a while now. I see they sell them on amazon and probably ebay but I don't know what the dimensions are and I know little or nothing about these things in general. I did some reading on McMaster Carr and they're pretty simple to understand but on amazon they keep using the term 'nested' on some of the chains and I have no idea what 'nested' vs. not nested refers to.
I thought I saw in one of these build logs some dimensions but it's too long ago to recall where. Only need to know the width and height. The length of course depends on your build. Mine, and yours is larger than the stock 2.x.

Bob T.

edit- a simple search in the forum here yielded a thread that was discussing the original part numbers. It didn't take long to figure out that one drag chain is 10Hx20W (mm) for the Gantry and the lower chain is 15Hx37W (mm), both can be found on amazon.
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Re: Scott's 2.x Log

Postby sshwarts » Tue Oct 21, 2014 7:58 pm

I bought this one for the air assist hose:
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B009IM ... UTF8&psc=1

I bought two of them and put them together (in parts) to get the length wanted.

I bought this one:

http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B00880 ... UTF8&psc=1

For the X axis.
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Re: Scott's 2.x Log

Postby injunear » Tue Oct 21, 2014 8:54 pm

Thanks..It's time for me to order these things. Procrastinated enough.
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Re: Scott's 2.x Log

Postby injunear » Thu Oct 30, 2014 4:01 am

pourcirm wrote:I actually did something very similar. If you put the spacers on the motor you don't have to use the second bearing plate below the motor plate. I saw it on an older buildlog, but I can't remember who came up with the idea first as I've read so many people's posts while working on mine.

20141006_213616.jpg


Scott, is that the original mounting bracket B17017 or the modified bracket? Can't tell from the photo.
What length of standoff's?

I've been studying the difference between the 'modified' and the original and it looks like the only difference is a mounting tab that was added. True?


Bob T.
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Re: Scott's 2.x Log

Postby sshwarts » Sat Nov 01, 2014 7:45 pm

It's my modified B17017 (called B17017Rev.stl on my github). Yes,I just added a tab (and removed the hole of the old one). Total standoff height was one inch.
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Re: Scott's 2.x Log

Postby MitchL » Wed Nov 05, 2014 7:38 pm

Hi Scott,

Nice build - I have not posted a log of my nearly-completed laser publicly (yet), but like you I've built a supervisor controller for my machine, with an Arduino and a touchpanel. I think it adds great functionality.

Which LCD panel did you use?
What things inside your laser are connected to the Arduino?
Did you have any issues with electrical noise? (I did until I added some extra capacitors in key places).

Here's a list of what my supervisor does, you could easily add these things to your controller if you find them useful:

- Analog inputs:
Coolant temperature (inlet to laser),
Laser temperature (coolant at output from laser)
- Digital inputs:
E-Stop
Coolant flow rate (liters/min).
Door and front access panel interlocks to enable/disable the laser
AWC608's "output1" and "output2" signals to detect job running and laser firing
- Digital outputs:
Red dot
Power relays for laser PSU, Stepper PSU, AWC, Chiller power, Air Assist power, Exhaust fan power,
Relays for laser PSU's protect signal, AWC608's "input1" and "input2" (one of these is the "footswitch")
PWM LEDs for inside the laser.

The Arduino is responsible for power-up sequencing. I might add a PIN code there someday so that one can track laser users.

To protect the laser tube, I can kill the enable signal if the coolant pump isn't running or the temperature is too high.
Knowing the cover is open, I can change the color of the interior LEDs when the laser is "armed"

My favorite thing is getting around an issue I have with the AWC608 - when you start a job, there's no way to program a pause before the laser starts. I don't want to run the air assist or exhaust all the time. The laser starts too quickly for the compressor or exhaust to get to speed.

If you go into LaserCAD you can enable the "footswitch control" input. This works like a pause/resume button. My Arduino watches for the job to start (OUTPUT1), then immediately pulses the footswitch for 100ms (the gantry hasn't even had a chance to move to the home position yet). I can now start the exhaust and the air assist, wait for them to come up to speed, and pulse the footswitch again to continue the job. It works well. I wish the AWC had a real programmable delay here, but this will do.

If I can work out an isolated way to do it, it'd be very awesome to measure the laser power on the Arduino and graph power over time. Has anybody tried to do that?

/Mitch.
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Re: Scott's 2.x Log

Postby sshwarts » Wed Nov 05, 2014 11:40 pm

Mitch,
My control system is pretty similar. I don't turn on and off the laser psu though just leaving it on when main power is on. I also detect when the laser is firing and keep track of the total time the tube has on it (as well as the particular run). Have to tweak my code though, engraving I found throws it off a bit (sample rate).

Have to add light show LEDs though, only have white ones on the x axis makerslide for visibility . Cool idea.

At one time I was thinking of tapping into the digital ma meter to see if I could get some data out of it to feed to the arduino (via optoisolator).
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Re: Scott's 2.x Log

Postby MitchL » Thu Nov 06, 2014 2:38 am

sshwarts wrote:Mitch,
My control system is pretty similar. I don't turn on and off the laser psu though just leaving it on when main power is on. I also detect when the laser is firing and keep track of the total time the tube has on it (as well as the particular run). Have to tweak my code though, engraving I found throws it off a bit (sample rate).


The Arduino is what turns everything else on for my laser. I wanted to have "user IDs" at some point, particularly if I let the robotics team at the school use it, so this way I can make sure the laser won't start without at least a little bit of access control.

My odometer counts when OUTPUT2 is high (it's the one that is normally used for the air assist solenoid). I think it's reading way too high, as it thinks I've got a couple of hours on my tube now and I'm still running test jobs. More tweaking. I suppose to get actual laser tube active I'd have to wire the 'L' input to the laser PSU onto the Arduino.

Total job runtime is an excellent idea, I will add that to mine :-).

Have to add light show LEDs though, only have white ones on the x axis makerslide for visibility . Cool idea.


Yeah, total bling but it looks neat. I don't yet have skins on my laser, but having interior LEDs will be very useful when everything's buttoned up. Since I have RGB LEDs I can choose a contrasting color when the red dot is turned on, for example.

At one time I was thinking of tapping into the digital ma meter to see if I could get some data out of it to feed to the arduino (via optoisolator).


There's a thought - I was poking at isolation amplifiers and other things. I bugged some of the EEs at work about how to do this, they got spooked when I mentioned it was for a laser power supply :-). Hacking up the digital meter is an interesting thought!

/Mitch.
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