Re: Boss 5 retrofitting project

Nathan, Get ready for some potential problems with the motors. I
was just told by Mariss at Gecko that my stepper motors need to be
replaced. I have been trying to get the Gecko 201s to move my
motors on a Boss 6 machine faster that 30 ipm without stalling.
Apparently the old motors on the Bridgeports are current hogs. Even
wired at half-winding and doing everything recommended by Mariss and
others, no luck. BE careful when you wire the motors to the Geckos
because it is easy to do it wrong and burn them up. I had to buy a
new powersupply to drive the motors and now am buying another
powersupply to run the selonoids on the spindle. The mill's 5vDC
and 12vDC power just fried 2 motion control boards so now I have the
motion board powered from the computer's power supply which is
protected by battery powered backup power supply. One thing I have
learned about this process is it costs much more that one initially
expects and more goes wrong than you can ever predict. The software
seems to be the easiest part of the puzzle...

Good Luck

Keith Clark

--- In CAD_CAM_EDM_DRO@yahoogroups.com, "rocketscientistnate"
<rocketscientistnate@y...> wrote:

> Thanks for all the info guys. My Gecko 201's are on the way. I'm
> going to try to reuse the power supply, and I can dig up an old pc
> pretty easily. Do I need anything between the PC and Geckos? Les
> mentioned a breakout board and gave a web address, does it need to
> be that one, or would any work. I've seen different software
> packages discussed on here, but at the time I was just thinking of
> something to generate g-code, not actually run the machine. What
> are the advantages and disadvantages of each. I want something

that

> will run g-code, because this is how I write most programs, but
> conversational is good too. Price is definitely a factor. I want
> something that can do 3d contouring, and high speed 3d contouring
> (lots of fast really tiny moves) would be even better. By the

way,

> I've seen things that say 2.5 axes, what is half an axis anyway?

I

> plan to take pictures and post the entire process on my web page
> (www.clymermachine.com) but the way I get around to those things,

it

> will probably be a couple weeks before I get that done.
>
> Nathan Clymer