Unboxing of desktop CNC from MIB instruments China

kilrabit
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Re: Unboxing of desktop CNC from MIB instruments China

Post by kilrabit »

I use the ethernet smooth steppers on 5 different machines and have no trouble at all. I trashed all of the USB steppers because Windows just can't help messing up the USB signals every once in a while. If you are supplying your own Computer and it is a newer model with all of the Windows power savers and ease of use, ( this is for your protection, they are here to help) you will have to go into your bios and change some of the power settings, and wake settings.



Roy

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Re: Unboxing of desktop CNC from MIB instruments China

Post by aironeous »

kilrabit wrote:I use the ethernet smooth steppers on 5 different machines and have no trouble at all. I trashed all of the USB steppers because Windows just can't help messing up the USB signals every once in a while. If you are supplying your own Computer and it is a newer model with all of the Windows power savers and ease of use, ( this is for your protection, they are here to help) you will have to go into your bios and change some of the power settings, and wake settings.
Roy
Yes I planned on changing screen saver and power saver settings and all of that stuff but first I have to get it working.

Here I see that there are other people having the same problem as me.
http://www.machsupport.com/forum/index. ... ic=20081.0
^I'll read that thread and see if it can help me

@Xxray I've seen it happen lots of times. Next time I see one I'll post a link to it here.

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Re: Unboxing of desktop CNC from MIB instruments China

Post by Xxray »

No need bro ,,, I have seen it happen at many forums and it is annoying & pointless, but I never got the feeling it was done on purpose to be obnoxious or something, maybe I'm wrong.
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Re: Unboxing of desktop CNC from MIB instruments China

Post by aironeous »

Last night about midnight when I got home from my nightshift job I sat down determined to get this smoothstepper working. I did a lot of things and finally got it working but since I did so many things in one shot I cannot determine which item it was that fixed the problem. What I did:

1) I went into control panel and uninstalled my anti virus, old hp printer software and drivers for the printers I used at the school and the planet CNC software and drivers. Restarting when prompted
2) Unplugged all usb items except the mouse and smoothstepper
3) Uninstalled mach3 and restarted
4) Reinstalled mach3 and this time I chose to install the printer port driver (I think I did not do this last time but I'm not sure)
5) Started mach3mill (I think I right clicked it and said ran as administrator but I can't remember now if that is what I did) and choose the smoothstepper plugin on the first popup chose no to the load default values and then I went into the plug in control menu and set a few things just guessing and then I pulled out MIB's configuration guide and did all the ports and pins and then tried to tune the motor as their guide says to but it wasn't accepting all of my inputs. I ignored all the ftdi usb driver errors I was getting and just kept making the changes that the MIB mach3 config guide said to.
6) Closed mach3 and restarted it. I got b axis pin errors popups so then I had to pick new pins for that and then closed and restarted and the smooth stepper loaded the firmware.

The green and blue lights are on and the red light is blinking indicating that it is receiving data from the pc.

Now I will have to read this install and configure guide for mach3
http://www.machsupport.com/docs/Mach3Mi ... Config.pdf It may take me a few days to learn this and get everything working properly. I may have to watch the tutorial videos.

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Re: Unboxing of desktop CNC from MIB instruments China

Post by Leo »

I am eagerly awaiting your return.

Mach3 has something called "Driver Test" or something like that. Do you need to do that?
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Re: Unboxing of desktop CNC from MIB instruments China

Post by mrmfwilson »

Just some info... The A,B and C axis are typically rotational axis. Don't think you have to worry about those. Also you may have wanted to accept the default settings. At least it would be somewhere to start from.

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Re: Unboxing of desktop CNC from MIB instruments China

Post by aironeous »

The smooth stepper takes over all that stuff that the driver test would be testing so that doesn't really apply here is my understanding.

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Re: Unboxing of desktop CNC from MIB instruments China

Post by aironeous »

So here's the point I'm at now.
First) I made a mistake in installing the printer port driver since I'm using the smooth stepper I don't need to. Also the driver test is a test of your printer port driver and it says in the manual you do not have to run it if you are using a motion controller device.

Second) the first thing I should do when starting mach3 is to copy the mill profile using it to make up a name for a new profile because whenever you uninstall and reinstall mach3 or install an upgrade it will delete that generic mill,turn and plasma profiles and you'll lose all your settings.

I'm almost at the same point I was at yesterday. What is happening is that I get all the ports and pins info entered into the config and handle any erros pop ups and then restart it but it for some reason never accepts my info on the plug in control for the controller frequency etc. So this time I just got everything handled and then restarted mach3 except for that plugin control popup and this time I just accepted the defaults and it loads the firmware into the smooth stepper but then I keep getting what sounds like a window notification every few seconds like the estop is being triggered or limits or something and then when I restart mach3 it crashes on restart.
mach3_crash_on_config_input.JPG
Well, I chose inches as native units against the advice of MIB so next time I'll choose mm's. I'm going to have to delete the profile I made and start all over again. This time I'll stick to mm's and probably set the limit switches before finishing and restarting mach 3. Lets see how far I get next time.

I emailed MIB last night about them switching the a and x axis lets see what they say.

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Re: Unboxing of desktop CNC from MIB instruments China

Post by aironeous »

Ok finally it is Saturday and I only had to work 8 hours today instead of 10 like M-F.
So now I just got home, grabbed a beer and went out to the garage to give this another shot.



Honestly I like the little machine, It's all steel and aluminum and I'm just a total newbie on Mach3, except for in the shower before work.
Image

Here's where I'm at.
I started by copying the mach3 mill profile and renaming it as 3020tocopy (because I figured this would take me many tries) and then inputting all the ports and pins and saving it.
3020_profile_to_copy.JPG
According to the stapled pieces of paper I have here from MIB these are the ports and pin settings

Motor outputs
ports_pins_M_outputs.JPG
Oops must have taken the screen shot before I typed in 17

Input signals
ports_pins_input_signals1.JPG
Scrolling down
ports_pins_input_signals2.JPG
Output signals
ports_pins_M_output_sigs.JPG
So I got that all in and saved it (this was on 4/5 an hour before I left for work). Then
I closed mach3 and restarted it and made a copy of the 3020tocopy profile and called it config attempt 4.5
copy_3020_profile.JPG

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Re: Unboxing of desktop CNC from MIB instruments China

Post by aironeous »

Next I restarted mach3 and because I get this notice on start
pop_up_notice_before_config.JPG
I tried to input values In the plugin control menu and click ok
plugin_control.JPG
But when I close and then restart mach3 this all gets erased and the same popup appears as though I never input the values. This keeps happening, whatever I input into that menu gets erased on restart of mach 3. Plus I'm still getting the ftdi usb driver error all the time so I finally decided to revert the driver from this one
SS_driver.JPG
to the 2.8.24 one

and then I finally decided to accept the default values from the pop up when I restarted mach 3 because even that did not work.

Ok now the firmware loads into the smooth stepper and I'm getting all 3 lights on with the red one flashing but I'm getting a continuous sound as if limits or estop is being triggered. So I go to the diagnostics screen and all 3 limit switches are triggering so I go back into the ports and pins menu and un-check the active low for all 3 axis including the Estop and now after clicking on the offline thingy in the main window the Estop no longer is constantly sounding off and now when I try to close and then restart mach3 it does not freeze.

So I have apparently reached a starting point. I will take another crack at it when I wake up tomorrow.

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Re: Unboxing of desktop CNC from MIB instruments China

Post by Ms Wolffie »

Did you remember to "SAVE" your settings?

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Re: Unboxing of desktop CNC from MIB instruments China

Post by aironeous »

@wolffie Yeah at some point I saw that "save settings" in the config menu and said to myself, hmmm that looks like something I should be clicking on," so I did but I'm not sure at what point that I did but in any case I will be doing it from now on.
--

So just woke up took shower etc., ready to take a crack at this again.

*note: Looking at the artsoft website last night when I got home I ran across the plugins page where they have a lot of 3rd party usb and ethernet motion controllers so my statement earlier that smooth stepper has a monopoly was just plain wrong and ignorant. Reading the machsupport forums there are many people using motion controllers of various types and even some building their own.


I just noticed something ten minutes ago that I thought was strange. When I click on the smooth stepper data monitoring menu look what I see at the top.
what_is_with_drivernum.JPG
Didn't I just revert the USB driver last night from 2.8.28 to 2.8.24? So then why does it say that? I don't get it. Well anyways, it's working so not gonna mess with it. Back to motor tuning.

According to the paper instructions these are the figures for motor tuning so I input them for all axis and save axis settings plus save settings in the config menu.
motor_tuning.JPG
By the way, here is a webpage with an abbreviated version of their mach 3 settings.
http://www.mib-tech.com/mach3_setup.html

Now I think is the time to open up the control box and fix the A and X screw up (even though I don't know how to do that) I assume it will just be a matter of switching some wires.

So that's next after I get back from running some errands.

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Re: Unboxing of desktop CNC from MIB instruments China

Post by aironeous »

I opened the control box
13040003.jpg
13040004.jpg
This is X
13040005.jpg
X is correctly connected going by the labels. I pushed down on the X board and it seemed to go in a bit, so maybe it just wasn't pushed in all the way. Now that I've opened the box I now know my previous assumption was wrong, it isn't that they cross connected the X and A axis inside the box it's just that X simply is not working so when I hooked the X stepper motor up to the A axis connected on the back of the control box and used the A control on the hand controller it worked because they are the same setup inside the box.

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Re: Unboxing of desktop CNC from MIB instruments China

Post by aironeous »

More shots of inside, overhead view
13040006.jpg
The main board says mach controller mmc2 V1.1

Where the main power comes in, back left side of box.
13040007.jpg
You can see below the driver board for the spindle on the main board it says PWM motor.
That driver board says "DC Motor Driver DCD-1 V1.2" The rest of those boards for the axis say "Stepper Motor Driver SMD-1 V1.3"

The power supply
13040008.jpg
Left to right Spindle, Estop, ON/Off, pc/hand controller toggle
13040009.jpg
I just plugged X back in and used the hand controller IT WORKS NOW!!!
The board just needed to be pushed in a little bit. I am so happy and relieved! :D

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Re: Unboxing of desktop CNC from MIB instruments China

Post by aironeous »

Setting my Machine home:

Now that I've got the computer working with the smooth stepper and mach3 and I can move X and Y using the keyboard arrows and the pg up pg dwn keys. I need to figure out how to set my machine home (G28) and how to set a G54 also. Watching the mach3 tutorial videos helped along with reading the manual.
Setting my home was getting frustrating as the description of the directions made me think I was supposed to do the opposite of what I did in the homing limits screen.
So first thing I did was go into ports and pins and turn on (make active) the X,Y and Z home. As they were already set to using the same pin number (see previous pics) as the X--X++ etc., it was just a simple matter of toggling them on.

Then the next thing I did was to set the size of my table and Z range (I already knew the size X,Y and Z from playing with the hand controller).
homing_limits.JPG
Then clicking on the "reference all home" button in mach3 I got the machine to use the limit switches as home switches and zero out.
13040010.jpg
first_homing.JPG
*notice they stuck a limit switch on the -Z.

So from watching the video it seems all you have to do is toggle off that "machine coord's" button, jog over to your G54 location on X and Y and zero them out right there using those buttons to get your G54 and the same for tool length offset. In the video he has a gcode file loaded so there is some kind of refresh gcode button he clicks on.

I was under the impression that I would be controlling the spindle manually so I had that all turned off but it seems this is not correct as I am in pc mode right now and turning the spindle control on the control box has no effect.

Question for you more experienced guys:
How can I convert my motor tuning to inches looking at the previous screen shot I posted on motor tuning? I'm hearing a troubling sound from the Z ball screw. It sounds as if a nylon nut is being slowly grinded away or something like metal shavings in the nut or something like that.
Well got to go to work now. They're working me 10 hours a weekday and 8 hours Saturday.

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