I have a 6040 router that i built from a frame kit that has been running fine for over a year.  Now while trying to cut an aluminium heat sink, I am losing steps like crazy, In I be leave both the X and Y axis's.  I have checked both X and Y axis and they are not jammed or obstructed in any way.  All Steppers seem to be running fine I think.  Has anyone ever experienced this before, and if so where do i look for the culprit?

Thanks Scott


My System:
CNC Software: Mach4
Table: 6040 Router Frame Kit
Steppers: 3 - 23HS2430B 425 oz. @ 3 Amp
Drivers: Leadshine: MX4660
Controller: Warp 9 ESS Smooth Stepper
Power Supply: KL5620, 55V 20 Amp, with 5 Volt Aux Output
Spindle: 400Hz 24,000 RPM, 220 Volt (Powered by Step-Up Transformer 110V to 220V)
VFD: Sunfar E500 (Powered by Step-Up Transformer 110V to 220V)

If you've cut aluminium before, is something mechanically loose?

What feeds, speeds, tool dia, tool material, tool coating, no flutes, depth of cut, material thickness, material grade .

What spindle size (w/kW).

The 6040 is not very ridgid.... depending upon its design a lot of the load is placed upon the leadscrew bearing(s) which can be very cheap Chinese kfl000 (I think from memory) pillow block bearings which have two grub screws....and the metal can be of questionable brittleness ... but it does depend on the 6040 ...

My personal experience with a 6040 was that it would be great for PCBs, wood, but lacks rigidity for aluminium... also it depends on your cutter, I went with onsrud o - flute cutters which cut well but needed really good chip clearance (continuous compressed air) and cutting fluid (wd40 in my case), and dispite having bigger steppers than yours (4.2a) and a higher power supply (50v ac, 850w, my drives are ac leadshine am882h) my feedspeed with 1605 ballscrews was not good under cutting application and the ridgidity was lacking (hence am pulling my finger out to convert my emco fb2 mill to cnc..., but have been looking for a more ridgid xyz table as I like the cutting bed size, but other than open designs c-beam cannot seem to see anything that's rated for aluminium)

This is just one person's limited experience of using a 6040 frame, and I do use a makita router (rt0700cx4+ Elaire corp collets) with it with a superpid2 speed controller .... PCBs great... wood great... aluminium... borderline... (note my steppers plus drives are probably well oversized... but I use the same size on my 4'x4' 40a pmx plasma htd direct belt drive (20T/5mHTDx20w) custom 2"x2" box frame with roller bearing setup with very very high acceleration and rapid speeds and this allows me to share the same pc + driver and controller box between lathe, mills and plasma.  I use to use an ess smooth stepper but have moved on to a uc300eth with uccnc, but may come back to the ess + mach4 licence if warp9 ever sort out the mach4 plasma plugin functionality with m62/m63 as I liked running the ess + m4 with the 6040 mill as the tuned drives seemed to run quieter than the ess with mach3

Thanks for the reply Rob ...  FYI my spindle is a 2.2kW unit sorry missed that detail.  Yes the 6040 table is very much does lack for rigidity, its really weak in the Z, ok X and Y also.  I have found if I keep my cut depths around .012" to .020" it does OK for the metal test fixtures I am making with it. They do take a while to cut but come out pretty good.   If cutting wood or plastic it does very well.  I even made a 6040 into a production gluing dispenser that works awesome.  You are right though I need a stiff CNC for cutting my metal parts.  I am working on one from scratch on the side.

Back To Missing Steps:

OK this is what I have found working with the router all day yesterday.  I found that depending on what type of G-code I run the the problem goes away.  For example I use Mecsoft Vismill to generate my G-Code and when I use there Horizontal Roughing Offset cutting option the machine works flawlessly.  Its when I run there Radial Roughing option the machine lose's steppers every time within a few seconds.

So I know know when the problem accrues but i don't know why!  I Know its not G-Code ... but where does the problem come from.  Is it Mach4, Motors, MX4660, Warp9 ESS Ctrl and or combination.

I hope someone else has come across this problem also!

Scott

Can you post the gcode files for comparison? 

(If you're precious about them cut a bit out of the middle so they can't be reused but we could look at what both option are trying to do to active a similar thing)

I will give it a shot never sent a file on the form ... here goes

Note: Bad file uses a radial cut option and good files uses offset option in MecSoft.

Scott