CNC Router Maintenance this Friday evening

We’ll be doing the final steps to get the CNC router’s new spindle up and running this Friday evening. Only anticipated to take a couple of hours. If you have an important project that can’t wait, please let me know and we can look to change our maintenance plan.

For the curious, once we get the final integration done, we’ll need to update the SOPs and schedule training/re-training. There are a few steps that are different with the new spindle. As usual when we’ve had these re-training needs, we’ll get a number of initial sessions scheduled to try and get folks up and running as quick as possible.

Once we’re at the point of doing training, we’ll likely switch the config of the machine to the new spindle. The current router will stay on the machine as a backup in case of failure, but we’ll likely not plan on both spindles being able to be used concurrently. The CAM and operation steps for running both spindles as part of a job can be pretty complex and we don’t want to take any chances (at least initially). As we can develop SOPs for two-spindle operation, we’ll consider changing that plan.

Just wanted to update everyone as to where we’re at with the new spindle.

We got the contactor installed and wired, including the keyswitch. We’re down to a punch list:

Button up VFD access panel
Change the key on the wrench lanyard to the correct key
Mount the magnet to hold the wrenches
Verify Mach3 control over spindle speed (was working, not sure if it got disabled after our last test)
Pictures for SOP
Updates to SOP for new operations
Change Mach config to new Z and spindle control
Retraining

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@mgrossbauer we fixed the issue with Mach not having control of the spindle (bad connection inside the VFD)

I’m working on getting the current SOP into Dozuki so its easily modifiable.

SOPs are updated and available here

https://makers.dozuki.com/c/PA1000_CNC

@mgrossbauer I didn’t get all of the new sections printed before leaving tonight. I’ll try to get to them if I’m in tomorrow. I also still need to recreate the safety page in dozuki (similar to the laser cutter’s safety and overview guide), but you should be good to announce / scheduling retraining folks on the machine. I’ll leave that up to you to manage.

I’m also going to work on a few troubleshooting and maintenance guides
What to do when Z fails to Ref Home (axis has blown past limit switch)
How to resurface the table (low priority)
Overview of the diagnostics page.

Are there any other maintenance / troubleshooting tasks that we should create guides for ?

First item on your short list would be important, I also have some feeds and speeds pages to add to Vcarve.

For those who want retraining I can be available at 7pm on the 24th and 25th of this week.

Post this as a separate topic, please. Along with a reminder that retraining is required to use the CNC.