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Cecil Thomas | 22 May 2013 22:54

Can someone quote me a price on a simple(?) part?

Stuart,
I lived in Wichita from Sept 1969 till July 1973 while I was working 
for my uncle (Sam) at McConnell AFB.
My wife and I almost became natives.  She was a computer geek at 
Cessna.  I've been talking up a trip back to Wichita with my 
wife.  She still keeps up with friend who lives there.
Maybe we can come next summer if you have another CNC love-in.  I can 
bring my little CNC'd Derbyshire lathe.  It might win the prize for 
the cutest...or at least the smallest.

By the way, I hope you missed all the weather this week.  Sounds like 
most of the action was West or Southwest.  Our last two years there 
we lived out west off Pawnee.  Never saw a tornado but sat out a 
couple of near misses in the basement.

Cecil

 > A scenic commute. You could stop in Wichita for a visit. :)
 > On May 21, 2013 10:27 PM, "Gregg Eshelman" <g_alan_e@...> wrote:

 > --- On Tue, 5/21/13, Cecil Thomas <wcthomas@...> wrote:
 > > Gregg,
 > > Where do you live?
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Ralph Stirling | 22 May 2013 19:44
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Axis and infinite loops

I need to have an infinite while loop for an
automation application, but I can't figure out
how to keep Axis from hanging forever when
loading the program.  Turning off all the
"Show" settings in View doesn't seem to help.

I also have a problem with M66 commands.
These insist on a Q timeout value.  I don't
want an arbitrary timeout.  If my machine
needs to wait an hour for the input, I want
it to wait an hour.  Can I restore the old
functionality of M66 that did not require
the Q term?

Thanks,
-- Ralph
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Cecil Thomas | 22 May 2013 04:44

Can someone quote me a price on a simple(?) part?

Gregg,
Where do you live?
I don't quote prices since I mostly work for fun but I have an iron 
clad business model.....

If you bring me something to work on:

1. You must be present throughout the process either doing the work, 
helping or standing around waiting.
(This eliminates most requests because most of the friends needing 
work done value their time much more highly than they value mine.)

2. Since I work mostly for free my guarantee is that I will give you 
back ALL the pieces of the thing you brought....even if they won't 
fit together anymore.

Seriously, If you are anywhere in East Tennessee I would be happy to 
have you come by and use my machines (which are fully capable to do 
the job) or I would make the the part if you brought the stock and 
the screw for test fitting.

Cecil

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Gregg Eshelman | 22 May 2013 03:28
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Can someone quote me a price on a simple(?) part?

I need a nut for the compound slide on a 17X78" LeBlond Regal. Ain't none to be found anywhere, new or used in
any condition.

What I need is a 5/8" x 8 tpi square thread* hole put through a piece of brass bar stock, leaving sufficient
thickness to the end for strength. I can measure the thread and groove width etc. accurately.
The rest of it I can turn to diameter and cut to length.

There's plenty of room inside the bottom of the slide, the lower end of the nut simply slips into a 0.999"
diameter hole.

*Yup SQUARE, not ACME. The lathe was made in 1944.

The only currently operational lathe I have is my 1940 Montgomery Ward, which has no gearbox and just the
change gears that were on it when I got it. (Possible CNC conversion candidate, or at least e-leadscrew.)
Currently rehabbing Wade 8A #403 and the forementioned large Regal.

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John Kasunich | 21 May 2013 04:13

two X axes on a lathe?

OK, I admit that this post is partly just a tool gloat, but I
do wonder if anyone has done a lathe with two independent
X axes?

The gloat:  I just bought a Dunham Tool Co, "Optimatic
Lensmaker" for $115 plus tax.  It was originally used to
make contact lenses.  It has a normal Z axis, but no X.
Instead there was a rotary axis with manual adjustments
for tool tip radius (like a ball turning attachment).

I took off all the contact lens stuff, and found a gem of
a small lathe hiding underneath:

Photos:
http://jmkasunich.com/pics/lathe-front.jpg
http://jmkasunich.com/pics/lathe-top.jpg
http://jmkasunich.com/pics/lathe-saddle.jpg

Features:
5C spindle taper.
Dunham spindles are supposed to be on par with Hardinge.
Ways are hardened/ground steel bolted to the cast iron.
Saddle has turcite or similar anti-stiction material.
Saddle has tapered gibs.
Sturdy - it is only about 18" long overall, but it weighs 140 lbs
(bed, headstock, and saddle).

As the last picture shows, the saddle is very long in the
Z direction - about 8.5 inches.  But there is only about
4 inches of Z travel.  Doing collet work with no tailstock
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Kip Shaffer | 19 May 2013 23:05

Success: Added physical button to Start or Resume program execution.

Just wanted to share a little success story with you all.

This week I added three physical buttons to my mill.  They are large,
industrial buttons from Allen Bradley that should last forever.  They are:

E-Stop - Red, latching, easy to hit
Pause - Amber, momentary, easy to hit
Run/Resume - Green, momentary, recessed

The first two are trivial.  They interface directly to the appropriate
halui pins.

Here's the problem. "Run" and "Resume" are two distinct operations. HAL
must decide which signal to generate based on the current state of the
system. In addition, halui must be in 'auto' mode in order to run the
program. It must be requested if it is not already selected. Furthermore,
timing can be a bit tricky. Continuing to assert halui.mode.auto,
halui.program.resume, or maybe even halui.program.run can result in screwey
behavior. An ideal solution is to assert these signals only until they take
effect.

My solution (attached) was to:
- Select the appropriate action using 'and' components
- Use flipflop components to stop asserting the signal as soon as they take
effect
- Use the edge component to lock in the decision to ensure one 'run' or
'resume' command from a single button-press event.

I posted this on the wiki here:
http://wiki.linuxcnc.org/cgi-bin/wiki.pl?One_Button_Run/Resume
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Bruce Layne | 19 May 2013 21:11

Small & Easy To Install Embedded PC Power Supply

My Summer Of Projects is plugging away nicely.  The CNC router is 
nearing completion, and I've added a CNC precision mini lathe project 
next in the lineup, to be dedicated to short run production, ~4 hours 
per week.  The lathe is at the local UPS hub and will be delivered 
tomorrow, and the stepper motors and drives and power supply will be 
here a few days later.  I just ordered the motherboard, RAM and SSD.

I've been getting the Intel D525MW motherboards and I'm liking them so 
far.  I'm putting 4GB of RAM on them so they shouldn't need to swap to 
the 64 GB solid state drive.  All of that makes for a compact and fairly 
easy installation in an electronic panel for this embedded LinuxCNC 
application, but then I need to power the computer.  On the router 
project, I used an ATX power supply, but it's big and bulky.  The 
oddball hole pattern is awkward to mount on the subpanel, and there's a 
huge rats nest of power cables and connectors that I don't need.  I 
considered opening the power supply enclosure and pulling the cables and 
connectors inside if there's room.  Opening the case might make it 
easier to mount the power supply as well.

The guys who use the D525MW for mobile media players have power supply 
modules that snap into the power connector on the motherboard and are 
powered by 12 VDC, but it wouldn't do me much good if I needed to mount 
a power supply to power the DC-DC converter.  I suppose the DC-DC 
converter provides enough isolation that I could use some extra capacity 
from the DC supply that's used to drive the motors, but I'm not crazy 
about that idea.  I want a transformer for isolation.  I wish there was 
a small (100W?) 120 VAC PC power supply, preferably with no fan, that 
plugged into the motherboard and had one pigtail to power the SATA solid 
state drive.  I looked, but couldn't find one.  Any suggestions?  What 
are you guys using?
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Maximilian H | 17 May 2013 14:46

7i43 watchdog has bitten, looking for the cause ?


Hello,

I have a old mill that I want to use with linuxcnc.

I have prepared a pc with a 7i43+7i33+custom pcb to interface the mill.

That pc with the interface I have both tested with the latency test and
also with 7i43+7i33+pcb and the output for EstopWrite connected to the
input of EstopSense in the lab for over *two weeks*, not days, with no
latencies at all to speak of. Max. latency with huge load of IO was in
the order of a few tens of microsecs, so I expected no problems. I use a
servo loop of one millisecond.

Now when I connect the setup to the mill I get bitten by the 7i43's
watchdog within maybe an hour, often much earlier, and I have already
increased the watchdog timeout from 5 milliseconds to 0.5 seconds, i.e.
500 milliseconds.

I am a bit out of ideas of what could be the cause for the watchdog
biting. The lab setup runs fine with latency test, the pc+7i43+7i33 on
the lab bench with the servo calculations running also makes no
problems. I am getting no message of "unexpected realtime delays" in
axis or in dmesg when the watchdog bites - which I would also expect
when the watchdog is not pet for 0.5 seconds.

Finally is there an IO pin in the motion module to which I can connect
the 7i43 watchdog's has-bit pin ? Both to use the message to generate an
estop and to be able to reset it ? I looked at the pins of motion at
http://linuxcnc.org/docs/html/man/man9/motion.9.html, but could not see
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Todd Zuercher | 15 May 2013 06:48

Modbus Question

I have a Modbus question. I hope there are some Modbus gurus listening. 

I am trying to use mb2hal to control a bunch of VFDs on a gang router . 
I have successfully gotten mb2hal to communicate with the drives but... 

Several of the registers of these drives use a format of "A chain of two 8 bit unsigned integers" to quote the
manual. 
Basically the drive is using 1 register to write two different pieces of data. The mb2hal component is
writing both of these data points to a single s32 pin. How do I separate this into the two numbers I can use. Is
there a component that can divide an s32 into 4 u8 numbers? Would I then have to change the 2 u8 numbers I need
back to u32 numbers to be able to use them for anything? 

I've also asked the question here.

http://www.linuxcnc.org/index.php/english/forum/25-classicladder/26456-modbus-examples?start=30#34112 
A pdf copy of the drives manual is attached to the first post of the thread. 

--

-- 

======================================== 

Todd Zuercher 
mailto:zuercher@... 

======================================== 
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Charles Buckley | 15 May 2013 06:42
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Glade gui and python configuration

Have been going through the tutorial on
http://gnipsel.com/linuxcnc/gui/gui03b.html

I am running off a Linuxcnc 2.5.0 install. Had a problem with PYTHONPATH,
but I managed to work around it by adding the path specifically to the
script.

Here is my existing script:

#!/usr/bin/env python

import sys,os
sys.path.append('/usr/lib/pymodules/python2.6/gladevcp/')
import pygtk
#pygtk.require("2.0")
import gtk
import gobject
import linuxcnc
import gladevcp.makepins
from gladevcp.gladebuilder import GladeBuilder
import hal
import hal_widgets

# set up paths to files
BASE = os.path.abspath(os.path.join(os.path.dirname(sys.argv[0]), ".."))
libdir = os.path.join(BASE, "lib", "python")
sys.path.insert(0, libdir)
datadir = os.path.join(BASE, "share", "linuxcnc")
xmlname = os.path.join(datadir,"gui3.glade")
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Cecil Thomas | 15 May 2013 00:15

Superglue, or Loc-tite for that motors flywheel?

One of the greatest of the advantages of a wound field motor.... No 
magnets to degauss.  The only thing challenging really quick stops is 
inertia.

I was once involved in the power industry and saw the results of a 
mis-timmed synrconizing breaker closure on a 600 MW generator turning 
3600 rpm.  The inertia of the rotor which was now magnetically locked 
to the stator took the stator and its housing for a ride, ripping the 
generator from the foundation and rotating it about 45 degrees.  Good 
news is that there is a lot of scrap copper in one of those babies.

The other advantage is of course that when you have the motor running 
at full speed with max armature current you can go even faster by 
reducing the field current.  You give up torque of course but the 
extra speed tends to keep the horsepower constant.

Cecil  
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Gmane