Category: IndyMill CNC-en

Posted on

Indymill CNC Controller -the final choice- and WHY

To get the best possible CNC driver / firmware setup, in combination with the CAD and CAM programs that are required, I tested the following setups with the Indymill hardware:

1) Reprap 3.3 & the Duet2wifi.  STL’s are made with OpenScad and then converted either online or with Estlcam to Gcode (.nc files).  The Gcode is then uploaded via Duet webinterface and run on the local reprap driver board.  Not chosen by me beacause it proved impossible to run a gcode stream online from the PC to the USB interface of the Duet2wifi board.  It is, however, possible to attach a serial handwheel to the Duet2wifi and manually control the CNC setup.  And dual axis squaring is also easily made possible.  Actually, the Duet reprap CNC setup is very mature and customizable.  I still have this setup as backup and by switching the connectors from the Indymill over, I can easily switch to this setup.  Some advantages of this setup are a.o.  the webinterface and the ease of having an automatic squaring gantry on the 2 Y axes with individual endstops.  I also learned that Estlcam can generate Gcode that I can then send via the webinterface to the Indymill CNC machine which works very well.  (I make my designs in Openscad and save this as .STL files. Estlcam can then convert these .stl files to .nc files…, using the machine configuration to get the code properly generated for the Indymill’s dimensions and hardware settings)

2) GRBL, Estlcam & Openscad, Marlin & GT2560 (A) board; This is also working out of the box and emulates a GRBL driver board. The main reason to NOT use this is the fact that the GT2560 board just has not got enough pins available onboard for things like a handwheel and other outputs for accessories.  The second thing that prevents me from going this way is the fact that it proved impossible to have a functional LCD attached that shows things like position, speed, status et cetera.

3) Mach3, FreeCad & USB CNC ‘barebone’ .  This is actually a very solid and reliable solution BUT I could not get it to do any way of squaring my dual Y axis setup.  Still investigating this…

4) GRBL, Estlcam & Openscad & MKS DLCV2.1 board with TFT 3.5 “;  Also for this setup: No option for squaring the dual Y axis setup.  But- this is a very neat solution for smaller machines.  or larger, if you use external drivers.  The nice option of this setup is the 3.5 inch LCD that also comes preconfigured for CNC.  I use this for my small 3018 CNC.

5) GRBL, Estlcam& Openscad & Mega2560 & RAMPS 1.6 shield. 

DUET2WIFI clone Mellow FLY-CDY-V2

 

MACH-3 with a generic USB-CNC converter

I also have an original USB Mach3 interface with a. o. a handwheel unit. This works very straight forward but needs a PC to keep a stream of Gcode commands running to the USB controller. I am not very fond of this solution since a little mishap will destroy your objects that is being carved.  But- this appears to work very well for many people so I have set this up after I had the FLY-CDY-V2 with the reprap 3.3 and the Duet webinterface running, to get to know the differences.  I must admit it works straight forward without any problem.  I decided to have this setup available next to the GRBL Mega2560/GRBL shield solution.  The thing that keeps me from the USB-CNC solution is primarily the fact that this setup cannot auto-square my dual Y axis gantry. The Mega 2560/GRBL shield solution does this squaring very well.

 

GRBL with MKS-DLCV2.1 and the TFT screen

And- the most in use hobbyist solution: The GRBL boards like the above shown setup from MKS.  I have this running on my old 3018 CNC milling machine and it always works well. This particular setup utilizes the preconfigured  KMS DLC 2.1 board and the preconfigured MKS TFT for CNC.  All is very neat and since the drivers can be adde externally as well as interanlly, it is possible to drive real high currents if you want that.  These boards don’t do sensorless homing and usually put the 2 Y steppers in serial.  This means that you will never be sure that they are well aligned.

RAMPS shield for Arduino UNO and Mega2560 (and DUE?)

Still to discover:  ESP-based CNC board 6-axis on Openbuilds is very promising!

Unpopulated Controller

Posted on

Flightcase for the Indymill

This is only the lower part of the newly built flightcase for the Indymill.  It is 15cm high, 75 cm deep and 80 cm wide, all measured on the inside.

The top of the case is 22 cm high on the inside and it will get perspex windows at the front and top.  Wheels will get mounted at the rear so the case can be moved standing upright.

The Indymill will be mounted in rubbers underneath and on the sides of the frame.  The connectors to the electronics will be mounted in flightcase shells at the front.  When all is positioned correctly and connected, the Indymill will be placed in my garage where I will use it in my large(r) shop.

With the 1.5 Kw spindle I intend to mill aluminium and brass, but mainly aluminium.

1st Job will be to machine ‘flat’ the 8mm aluminium plate I have bought some time ago for the heated bed of my Voron 3d printer. The plate is 310x310mm wide and was not entirely flat when I received it, due to the way it was stamped instead of saw’d.  Now, I will be able to get it done right.  I will use the boring head from my other mill to get this done.  My other mill can only work with smaller objects, not anything as large like the Indymill can handle.

 

Posted on

Indymill CNC Nema23 with sensorless homing on Mellow Fly-CDY2

After configuring the reprap Mellow FLY-CDY-V2 motherboard for CNC including the webinterface and installing Mellow’s TMC2209 driver units I got  sensorless homing setup for the Indymill.

It took a lot of time to get it all tuned, as the 3 axes act entirely different due to their different inertia.  The weight that is carried is obviously higher for the Y- than for the X axis.  And the 4 kilogram weighing spindle engine made it pretty difficult to get the Z axis tuned.

The resulting config file is provided in this post.  Use this with caution, since every machine is different, and the used stepper motors, cabling, steppers and PSU all have influence on the CNC’s behaviour and thus on the config settings.

To have the original Mellow FLY TMC2209 drivers work with sensorless homing, set the underneath dip switch to ON

(Diag pin will then be connected).  It took me some time to find out that this is different than other TMC2209 drivers, where the Diag pin is activated by jumper settings on the motherboard.  No idea what happens when you use non-Fly TMC2209’s on the Fly board, but I expect this will not work for sensorless homing.

What I experience on the Y axis is that if you have real problems with homing or skipping steps, the steel Y carriage plates may bend and cause a non-square Y carriage that will never align any more.  I repaired this but preventing is better.

GO TO THE INDYMILL & Reprap Driver POST 

Since this setup with sensorless homing never gave me good speed ratings, I disassembled this setup and continued with endstop setup.  If you want to know how to setup sensorless homing with reprap, please look at my sensorless homing setup on my dual carriage 3d printer, where this works perfect!

Posted on

Indymill CNC with GRBL Mega256 RAMPS1.4 shield and LCD

This is my test setup for a 1.4 RAMPS shield on top of an Arduino Mega with TMC2209 drivers, optical endstops and individually homing of dual Yaxes PLUS an LCD that shows the exact XYZ locations anytime.

Firstly, I must admit that this option was initially NOT on my list bacause I felt this was a pure hobby-like option.  BUT- as my requirements list grew and other options got less and less, I ordered a Ramps 1.6 shield and plugged one of my Mega2560 boards under it.  Then- the search began to get a working fork of GRBL for arduino that both accomodated the Mega 2560 and my requirements list.  On this list: GRBL, Squaring my gantry, LCD with useful data, Handwheel connection, Preconfigurable buttons on the handwheel (stop, define as zero, probe here, et cetera).  The fork that does this all is: GRBL-Mega-edge.  The last comment is of April, 2020 and the fork was updated last in 2019.  But- it works straight out of the box and the documentation is very well maintained. 

Since it works under the Arduino IDE and has its own library, I foresee little problems in the future.  Everything is freely configurable and it might even be possible to put an Arduino Due in place of the Mega2560 in this setup, with some tweaking of pins and speeds.    And- tweaking is required for the hardware as well. The Ramps boards were never designed for 24 Volts, so this needs to be taken care of.  One might of course use 12 Volts and use external driver modules, but I intend to keep everything very small and make use of an external PSU, and a small handwheel-like box for the Mega2560, Ramps, drivers, LCD, buttons and handwheel knob.  By the way: For getting my designs I already had from my 3d printer background towards the CNC I bought Estlcam (CAM program). This really does a great job at converting it to Gcode and sending it to my Grbl- Mega 2560/RAMPS setup.

Afterthoughts 2021-06-22:  When connecting Estlcam to the Mega2560 and RAMPS1.6 shield, Estlcam can program the RAMPS / Mega2560 configuration, including dual X and Y axis.  This works straight out of the box including endstops. Actually this is easier than first compiling GRBL on RAMPS with Arduino’s compiler.  BUT- it seems that autosquaring does either not work or I did not install Estlcam’s options correctly since the endstops on the dual axis appear to function in parallel instead of indicvidually per axle.

24 Volts connecting is not possible on a RAMPS shield just like that. I removed D1 and powered the Mega2560 with a 9 Volts PSU, and the shield seperately with 24 Volts.  For the Arduino DUE, dedicated RAMPS boards are already available (Smart ramps that compensates for the 3.3 volts in/out Voltage of the Arduino Due)!.

Another option for Estlcam is to program the Mega2560 without RAMPS shield and connect everything directly to the Mega2560 with jumpers.  If this is done, Estlcam will do the bare programming of the Mega and Estlcam can steer almost everything.  Since I bought a license for Estlcam I will, at a later stage, try this as well.  SEE THIS POST

 

 

error: Content is protected !!