Tuesday 11 April 2017

Integration

Not much point wiring in any more of the IO connections with the controller on the bench, as the more I do now, the more I have to redo later when I mount the controller in the console. 

So I've cut down the cables from their shipped lengths of 3m down to about 60cm, stripping the ends back and moving the ident sleeves over, then reterminating the step/dir lines. 

The controller is now mounted in the console. It restricts access to the inside of the console as you might expect but short of fitting loads of expensive and time consuming connectors everywhere, there's little choice. Anyway, it still works afterwards.


Next I'll connect up the limit and home switches. There are 2 switches at each end of the X and Y travels, about 10mm apart. The inner switch can be the home switch and the outer one can be a sort of dead stop / e-stop kill switch. The Newkye controller wants all 3 of the +ve limit switches connected in parallel and all 3 of the -ve switches in parallel. For homing, they are moved in sequence (you can set the order in the setup parameters), so it knows which switch has been triggered. Once homed, it knows (also from config) how much movement is allowed, so there should be no need for the dead stop switches. But no harm having them there.

The Chinese handwheel / MPG pendant arrived today. Again, it's some way short of being "industrial" in quality but should suffice for my purposes. No documentation but they are fairly generic, so the circuit is no mystery. I whipped the back off to document the wiring and check the operation.








One problem / concern with the pendant and the controller is that the wires are tiny and have little strength. They are also difficult to strip and crimp. I may need to think about terminating them onto fanning strips rather than use individual crimps. 

Plan of action (subject to capricious interest and impatience):
  • Wire up and configure limit switches
  • Wire up VFD power / controls 
  • Set VFD parameters in both the VFD and the controller
  • Possibly tune the PIDs (how long's a piece of string?)
  • Install an ER40 collet chuck (steady on....)
  • Figure out how to control the speed range
  • Ditto tool changer
  • ....

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