PM-940m CNC - VS Motion Controller Conversion to Centroid Acorn

[pburgh]

Hey PZ, great to hear that you're all set. And thanks for the info on the switches. I guess by having to do this we'll have better mills from the experience. I know that the qc on mine isn't what I would have expected. Things being loose and all. I also have a wire going to the swingarm control box that is just cut off in the control cabinet. But hey what can we do. Did you see the post in the thread from the Centroid site? One of the techs there responded and said we didn't have to use the ENA feature if it wasn't used in the mill. Don't know if that makes a difference, but it's there.
Regards,
Doug

 

[cut2cut]

Nice finds PZ ! Sorry about the squirrels :-(

guys, check out this video of a centroid software feature. This is awesome ! Now I'm researching probes again... damn expensive, but ....

Jake

 

[phazertwo]

Hey PZ, great to hear that you're all set. And thanks for the info on the switches. I guess by having to do this we'll have better mills from the experience. I know that the qc on mine isn't what I would have expected. Things being loose and all. I also have a wire going to the swingarm control box that is just cut off in the control cabinet. But hey what can we do. Did you see the post in the thread from the Centroid site? One of the techs there responded and said we didn't have to use the ENA feature if it wasn't used in the mill. Don't know if that makes a difference, but it's there.
Regards,
Doug

Yeah, I'm honestly not sure what the enable circuit does for you... but I figure it's there, the wire is there, and it's in the Acorn wiring diagram I'll hook it up and see if she chooches.

Looks like the Acorn was delivered... I can't believe how excited I am about this, it's like I'm 5 years old and it's Christmas day!

PZ

 

[pburgh]

I tell my wife every day is Christmas. She tells me that the only difference between men and boys is the price of their toys. I hope it all meets your expectations. I have a good feeling about this product.

 

[pburgh]

Nice finds PZ ! Sorry about the squirrels :-(

guys, check out this video of a centroid software feature. This is awesome ! Now I'm researching probes again... damn expensive, but ....

Jake

Jake,
Alan has some good videos. He seems to be very happy with Centroid and Clear Path. I purchased the basic probe from Tormach to give it a go. But I came across probe called a Hallmark that's made by a guy in New Zealand that might be at a better price point than say one from Centroid. Here's a video of how he came about it. There are others showing his development of the probe.

I think it goes for between 600 and 700 dollars.

 

[phazertwo]

I have been keeping half an eye on the Hallmark ITTP (Impact Tolerant Touch Probe). It looks like a nice probe, but I thought he wasn't really selling them yet? Either way it's on the list of tools that would be nice to have, especially with the probing routines available in CNC12.

Got my Acorn bench tested last night, and modified the cabinet so the Acorn will be mounted near the same location as the old nMotion. Couldn't find standoffs to get it mounted though, so I had to call it a night. Hoping to pick some of those up on the way home tonight, get the Acorn mounted in its new home, mount the new 5v power supply and see if I can get some motion out of it!

Also, Jake was defiantly correct about the e-stop on the 940 being a NO circuit... which is super sketch. China never ceases to amaze me with corner cutting. I can't imagine there is much of a cost savings in using a NC switch instead of a NO switch, and with the nMotion and M3, its just a flip of the active high/low on that input to change it... Anyway, lucky for me I happen to have a few switches from some equipment that I scrapped, but important for others doing the swap to know, you will need to replace the e-stop with a NC. Actually not a bad idea to switch it out anyway, a NO e-stop circuit is dangerous.

PZ

 

[pburgh]

hey PZ, thanks for the heads up. I really didn't want to have to change things around that much with the limits, but oh well. I actually bought a new Estop switch when I bought my Acorn and was going to do the machine from scratch. Looks like i'll have to put it to use. To save room I made a backing plate for the controller and i'm going to stand it off of the main board around 3" with all thread. Underneath that i'm going to mount the power supply against the main board. Hopefully I wont get any interference. This way i'll have the space to add another drive if needed.
On the probe, do a search on YT. There is a guy who just reviewed the Hallmark so I think they are for sale. I'd like to get the one from Centriod, but I want to get some experience with using one of these before i'd go with that amount of money (and the big boss would kill me). They are expensive, but i'm sure they are high quality.

 

[phazertwo]

Looks like he is taking email orders...I don't really want to inquire about one since I cannot afford it at the moment, but it would be nice to know how much it costs.

This is the video that made me dig deeper into it. The CNC4RX7 guy seems to make some decent, informative videos.

PZ

 

[pburgh]

Yeah, Sam is very good researching stuff. When I was going to build my CNC 940, I purchased his plans and documentation to give me a jump on trying to gather all of the info. I think it was $40.00. I don't mind contributing some when folks give you good info. Helps save time. Even though he did the 727, a lot of what he did translated to the 940. For the probe, I did see some pricing down in the comments on one of the videos. Not sure if it was Sam's.

Regards,
Doug

 

[pburgh]

Hey Guys, finally starting to make progress. I got the power supply and controller mounted in the cabinet the way I wanted. I wanted to try to maximize space for a future 4th drive. But also wanted to be sure that the power supply won't interfere with the controller. I hope to get things wired in the next couple nights. Hopefully i'll be able to use the existing shielded cable, but I may have to buy some more. I posted some pics on how they are mounted.