- Joined
- Mar 22, 2013
- Messages
- 506
Looking great, hopefully one day I can get down there and see the shop in person! (Maybe when it is winter here haha)
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- Thread starter [X]Outlaw
- Start date
Hopefully this weekend I'll get all my other equipment moved into the shop. Last weekend we were preparing for a tropical storm (Bret) that hit us around Monday night. Very thankfully to say our area (North East) didn't sustain any notable damage, the south of the island suffered some major flooding however, hopefully the waters will subside soon. We are forecast to have more bad weather this weekend. I had to turn back from going to work this morning (Central part of the island) because the Caroni River (our main river) overflowed onto the Hi-way, spent two hours in traffic before deciding to work from home.
I did manage to install an Align 500P powerfeed on my X axis. Though it was pretty straight forward here are some things to keep in mind if this is your first install as it was mine.
1. There is a little steel bushing that slides onto the lead screw. At first this part was very tight fitting and I thought I would have to polish out the ID with some emery paper. Before I committed to that idea I measured the lead screw OD and the bushing ID and there was enough clearance for a nice slip fit. When I took a closer look at what was happening I found that the bushing was actually catching on the chamfer on that part of the lead screw. A very light pass with a stone on the chamfer and the bushing slipped right on.
2. Take your time and set the correct backlash with the bevel gear, it takes a fair amount of trial and error. Assemble everything and make sure it turns smooth with the hand crank. I ended up with one 2mm and one 1mm shim to get it nice and smooth.
3. When everything is setup and you test your new powerfeed, that loud click sound you here when you shift from neutral to your desired direction in normal. This is the clutch engaging. Now I did think that the sound was the clutch engaging but I didn't know if it was normal for it to make such a sound. I spend a couple hours searching online to find and answer to this till I gave up and emailed Mark and Bestline. The both told me the sound was normal. Believe it or not..this is way took up most of my time as I thought I installed something incorrectly lol.
This week I've been working on the general layout for my VFD enclosures and have it more of less finalised. Once my wire ferrules and termination ends come in tomorrow I'll be able to get to work.
Chevy
I did manage to install an Align 500P powerfeed on my X axis. Though it was pretty straight forward here are some things to keep in mind if this is your first install as it was mine.
1. There is a little steel bushing that slides onto the lead screw. At first this part was very tight fitting and I thought I would have to polish out the ID with some emery paper. Before I committed to that idea I measured the lead screw OD and the bushing ID and there was enough clearance for a nice slip fit. When I took a closer look at what was happening I found that the bushing was actually catching on the chamfer on that part of the lead screw. A very light pass with a stone on the chamfer and the bushing slipped right on.
2. Take your time and set the correct backlash with the bevel gear, it takes a fair amount of trial and error. Assemble everything and make sure it turns smooth with the hand crank. I ended up with one 2mm and one 1mm shim to get it nice and smooth.
3. When everything is setup and you test your new powerfeed, that loud click sound you here when you shift from neutral to your desired direction in normal. This is the clutch engaging. Now I did think that the sound was the clutch engaging but I didn't know if it was normal for it to make such a sound. I spend a couple hours searching online to find and answer to this till I gave up and emailed Mark and Bestline. The both told me the sound was normal. Believe it or not..this is way took up most of my time as I thought I installed something incorrectly lol.
This week I've been working on the general layout for my VFD enclosures and have it more of less finalised. Once my wire ferrules and termination ends come in tomorrow I'll be able to get to work.
Chevy
- Joined
- Oct 27, 2016
- Messages
- 288
Outlaw, nice machines and thanks for showing them off.
Hopefully you are far enough South East to have missed most of Irma and you and your family are safe.
Was in Trinidad & Tobago on my way to sailing in BVI recently, very nice people around those parts.
Be well and give us an update when you can.
David.
Hopefully you are far enough South East to have missed most of Irma and you and your family are safe.
Was in Trinidad & Tobago on my way to sailing in BVI recently, very nice people around those parts.
Be well and give us an update when you can.
David.
Hey David,
Thanks for the thoughts. Thankfully we are far enough south not to west to have Irma miss us completely, so we're ok. I do feel it for the islands that did get hit, especially Barbuda and Antigua. The pictures I've seen from the damage in Barbuda is truly heart breaking. Hopefully the other CARICOM countries will send aid to help the get back on their feet. I also hope by some miracle Florida is spared. I don't think I recall any past years where there was this much intense activity.
Talking about sailing and BVI, I saw pics of the damage done to scores of sail boats there because of Irma. Hoped you enjoyed your stay in my Country
A little update on the shop. Most of my equipment has been moved in except for my CNC mill. I have finished my VFD, power distribution and control system for the mill. I ran her motor up for the first time a couple weekends ago and everything worked great. Big thanks to Mark for all his help! This weekend I'm finishing up machining the mounting bracket that attaches the switch control box to the knee of the mill and hooking it up to the VFD.
I will post a detailed write up about my VFD and control system installation next week with lots of pics.
This is the current state of the shop thus far
Chevy
Thanks for the thoughts. Thankfully we are far enough south not to west to have Irma miss us completely, so we're ok. I do feel it for the islands that did get hit, especially Barbuda and Antigua. The pictures I've seen from the damage in Barbuda is truly heart breaking. Hopefully the other CARICOM countries will send aid to help the get back on their feet. I also hope by some miracle Florida is spared. I don't think I recall any past years where there was this much intense activity.
Talking about sailing and BVI, I saw pics of the damage done to scores of sail boats there because of Irma. Hoped you enjoyed your stay in my Country
A little update on the shop. Most of my equipment has been moved in except for my CNC mill. I have finished my VFD, power distribution and control system for the mill. I ran her motor up for the first time a couple weekends ago and everything worked great. Big thanks to Mark for all his help! This weekend I'm finishing up machining the mounting bracket that attaches the switch control box to the knee of the mill and hooking it up to the VFD.
I will post a detailed write up about my VFD and control system installation next week with lots of pics.
This is the current state of the shop thus far
Chevy
R
Robert LaLonde
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I friend of mine recently gave me an old chair lift for an electric wheel chair. My plan is to mount it to a heavy tool cart so I can use it to swing vises on and off my mills. Just clamp the buckle in the vise and go. I can easily lift the vises I have. The two biggest ones I have (8 inch) only about 100 lbs, but lifting and leaning in over a table to set it in place is something I can feel pulling in my back. I've done it a few times, but I know if I keep doing it I'll damage something. One bed mill I have with an enclosure requires a real long reach in to set a vise on the table. The arm on the chair lift would reach right in there. It would be kind of like a pickup bed crane, but with an electric winch instead of a hand crank.
Hey guys,
So here's where I'm at in getting my machines up and running. So far all my efforts have been focused on the mill. Besides cleanup and leveling I haven't done anything with the lathe yet. Hopefully I should be able to start working on her later this month.
This is the VFD and power distribution system I built (Many thanks to Mark for his wiring diagrams). Apart from powering the VFD it provides 12V and 24V DC power for devices such as work lights, tachometer solenoids and relays. It also supplies 120v to the DRO and powerfeeds. This way all equipment for the machine is powered on or off with one switch.
The motor on this machine is a two speed, 3ph, 3HP, constant HP. Below is the motor name plate showing the wiring diagram for the two speeds. I opted to wire it on the low speed side (4(8)P) this way you get double the torque on the low end. For top end speed I would run the VFD between 60-100Hz. On the highest pulley @ 100Hz I should get a top speed of ~4500RPM.
When I opened the motor wiring box I realized that the entry hole for the motor wires had a sharp edge to it. So I took out the box filed the edges of the hole then used some fuel tubing to make a grommet so that the wires have zero change of coming in contact with any sharp edges.
Motor wire up in 4(8)P configuration. For motor to VFD I used 14 AWG shielded VFD cable that has both a braided shield as well as a drain wire.
Wiring for my control box. I should have really used a 9 conductor cable for this but I couldn't find any at a reasonable price. I had a good supply of shielded 3 and 2 conductor cable from previous projects so I opted to make use of those.
Now I bought legend plates for the direction switch as well as the speed pot. However when I installed them they looked..well I didn't like how they looked lol. So I decided to design and make my own Below is my Taig CNC mill engraving my legend plate. I didn't have the proper V bit on hand so I just used my smallest spot drill and tested at different DOC till the engraving looked right.
Finished plate
I knew from the start I wanted the controls mounted to the knee in front the machine. I don't like (read loathe) drilling holes into machines unless its absolutely necessary such as mounting DRO scales. So I designed and machined a mount for the control box that utilizes the existing M8 bolts on the Y Axis end plate.
Top to bottom:
1. Switch box mounting plate. The slots cut in it are for 1/2" velcro straps for some cable management.
2. Bracket that mounts to the Y axis end plate
3. Extension that connects the Bracket and the mounting plate together. These two parts could have really been made as one but the Taig mill doesn't have that amount of travel and more importantly I just didn't want to machine one half, index and then machine the second out of one piece of stock.
4. This is an isolator made out of some scrap .062" engraving plastic. The Y axis end plate is aluminum and I wanted to prevent any chance of it galling when the mounting bracket is bolted on top of it.
Switch box mount assembled
Cable straps
So that's where I'm at. This week I hope to wire up the controls to the VFD and make the mount for the E-Stop switch which will go on the head, where the stock switch was located.
Chevy
So here's where I'm at in getting my machines up and running. So far all my efforts have been focused on the mill. Besides cleanup and leveling I haven't done anything with the lathe yet. Hopefully I should be able to start working on her later this month.
This is the VFD and power distribution system I built (Many thanks to Mark for his wiring diagrams). Apart from powering the VFD it provides 12V and 24V DC power for devices such as work lights, tachometer solenoids and relays. It also supplies 120v to the DRO and powerfeeds. This way all equipment for the machine is powered on or off with one switch.
The motor on this machine is a two speed, 3ph, 3HP, constant HP. Below is the motor name plate showing the wiring diagram for the two speeds. I opted to wire it on the low speed side (4(8)P) this way you get double the torque on the low end. For top end speed I would run the VFD between 60-100Hz. On the highest pulley @ 100Hz I should get a top speed of ~4500RPM.
When I opened the motor wiring box I realized that the entry hole for the motor wires had a sharp edge to it. So I took out the box filed the edges of the hole then used some fuel tubing to make a grommet so that the wires have zero change of coming in contact with any sharp edges.
Motor wire up in 4(8)P configuration. For motor to VFD I used 14 AWG shielded VFD cable that has both a braided shield as well as a drain wire.
Wiring for my control box. I should have really used a 9 conductor cable for this but I couldn't find any at a reasonable price. I had a good supply of shielded 3 and 2 conductor cable from previous projects so I opted to make use of those.
Now I bought legend plates for the direction switch as well as the speed pot. However when I installed them they looked..well I didn't like how they looked lol. So I decided to design and make my own
Below is my Taig CNC mill engraving my legend plate. I didn't have the proper V bit on hand so I just used my smallest spot drill and tested at different DOC till the engraving looked right. Finished plate
I knew from the start I wanted the controls mounted to the knee in front the machine. I don't like (read loathe) drilling holes into machines unless its absolutely necessary such as mounting DRO scales. So I designed and machined a mount for the control box that utilizes the existing M8 bolts on the Y Axis end plate.
Top to bottom:
1. Switch box mounting plate. The slots cut in it are for 1/2" velcro straps for some cable management.
2. Bracket that mounts to the Y axis end plate
3. Extension that connects the Bracket and the mounting plate together. These two parts could have really been made as one but the Taig mill doesn't have that amount of travel and more importantly I just didn't want to machine one half, index and then machine the second out of one piece of stock.
4. This is an isolator made out of some scrap .062" engraving plastic. The Y axis end plate is aluminum and I wanted to prevent any chance of it galling when the mounting bracket is bolted on top of it.
Switch box mount assembled
Cable straps
So that's where I'm at. This week I hope to wire up the controls to the VFD and make the mount for the E-Stop switch which will go on the head, where the stock switch was located.
Chevy
- Joined
- Oct 27, 2016
- Messages
- 288
WOW, that is nice work.