Ok, funny that.

Isn't that what they are supposed to be? *shrugs*

nice vid! how come they servos are still being run off that large black box (battery charger?) i thought you had them running off the power supplies and drivers now? or is that what you ment by having problems?

RW is too funny, he should be the LL official spokesman. He just doesnt stop talkin! lol

Ok, here's the initial information for frame assembly.....


Notes: Frame to be made from 2-1/2" square steel tube.
We used 11 gauge steel (mis-stated 12 gauge earlier), but thinner gauges could be used for the horizontals.

Frame cut dimensions:

Columns (4): 48"*
Long horizontal supports (4): 75"
Short horizontal supports (4): 42-9/16"**


*column height can be increased to accommodate a higher working bed [maximum bed height = Column height - 13.5"]
**The short dimension may change, but will only shrink slightly.

We ordered the X ways at 1600mm but they sent 1650. I had you confirm before we posted frame dimensions.

RoGR is running off the battery charger because we had spent 3 hours trying to diagnose our malfunctioning Phelps amps. Gecko, no problem. Today we will conclude the tests and I'll let you know the verdict.


You were really scared!

Another bizarre day of malfunctions. I arrived at the shop with a strong working theory on fixing our drive issues, only to discover that the shop computer went from tried and true to fried and blue! It worked fine when we left!

An hour of diagnostics and I've concluded that it's pooped. I have a new, spare mobo I swapped out, but when trying to install Ubuntu I get kernel panics,,,(untested hardware anyone?) Installs XP fine but not much help to me at that point. Since this is the only intact computer I currently have with a parport, I was stalled. I decided to research the hardware tonight to see what I can do.

So instead we spent the day taking measurements for the table, the drawings, and finishing the BOM for the micRo...and it's actually done for once! It feels good, so some positive came from the day.

But tomorrow we will see the table on RoGR!

I'm sorry to hear of your misfortune! I've had a couple of technology deaths myself lately. I know how it feels. My TV and the computer I use to run my sounds in the house both went south as they say. I also was using it to transfer all of my analog tapes and vinyl, so it's a bummer!

I think yours is probably all the more painful because of all of your time pressures and long hours.

Yowza. We have a lot of vinyl recordings as well as about 125gb of music that we've managed to keep. Recently we lost the company books, 2 years' worth of images, company graphics etc. There are some backups, but it is a mighty chore to piece it all back together. At least with the robots, the comps are just "dogs" that get reprogrammed constantly. The set-up is routine and quick, until the hardware dies. My biggest concern is being stalled on testing tomorrow while I futz about chasing ghosts; it makes me somewhat furious and despondent.

Time to put the table on, exciting!

r.W. turner must be having some mixed feelings. I mean, with the table in place how's he supposed to ride the Rogr? Then again...the huge accomplishment of everything coming together might outweigh it...


Oh, and be sure to let us know findings with the computer. I've put mine on the back burner till next week as I'm not having luck booting the EMC2 live cd (ubuntu 8.04 version). I doubt it's a distribution issue, but mine for sure is going to take some brute force (by brute force I mean me hacking away putting together an install from scratch whilst drinking a barley and hops heavy diet) as it is flaking on the RTAI kernel.


I have a feeling the next video or 2 will be epic...

Have you tried disabling onboard network interface and sound? That's worked for me a couple of times

Hmm flashed the bios with a known working nix compat; no hw periph, multiple vs of EMC..blah blah blah blah blah blah. IT'S A DOG! BYE. New (old) computer required. The computer is infected with the devil, the only loss is my life!

For your new(old) pc try adding a startech.com PC I /PCI-E parallel add in card. They provide support for Linux and most are plug and play.

p.s what speed parallel port will be needed? As add in cards are often much faster for printing than built in ones on the mobo. Though i have no clue as to whether 0.5mb/s i get from a built in one is already overkill.

No need, unless you need onboard fast quad counts...

Hahaha...we found a way to get our rides on. Don't know about 'epic', but the ease with which RoGR pulled itself across the room blew my mind!


Hi Gordon, Well I used a known linux-friendly bios, and the mobo (A8V-VM SE) is known to work...

As soon as the kernel attempts to load, it freezes.

So it doesn't even take you to busybox so you can look at dmesg? That would be the polite thing for it to do to help you narrow down the possible problems. You turned off the quiet boot option?

My suggestion was to go into the bios settings and disable all possible on-board peripherals, perhaps it's hanging on one of those. I've had that issue a few times but usually get a specific panic message that helps narrow it down.

I see that some ASUS boards had issues with SATA drives under Hardy. Are you using ATA or SATA? Or have you tried an earlier version of the LiveCD or a newer kernal release?

I've seen "EIP failed to sync, kernel panic" a couple times as it froze...best I can tell that's a register value. I always (try) to boot verbose.

ATA: I'd never do anything insane like try to install to SATA first! I've been through the bios a few times to kill ACPI etc. Audio to ac97 stereo instead of hd, power management off, boot drives only (known nix friendly), all onboard audio/USB jumps pulled, 4 separate sticks of RAM tried, nothing but the mobo and onboard nic left ...I suppose I can kill that. Really weird, Ubuntu usually plays nice, esp on older hardware.

PS: Tried both Gutsy and Hardy.

as a point of interest, in the third video from Friday night (the one where we have the RoGR pull its self), the gantry is moving at around 290 inches per minute ....

You may have noticed the lead screws are vibrating, all lead screws become resonant beyond a given RPM.... The theoretical max for our screws (given the minor diameter, the length, and end conditions) turns out to be about 130 inches per minute before reaching resonance.

Resonance was actually dampened by loading (and not an insignificant load- meaning the combination of screw and motor actually performs *better* heavily loaded)..... Though, in all fairness, the power supply I rigged would have been capable of providing over 1KW per motor before the bridge rectifier would melt. Did the motors get a little warm.... Yes. Then again, they are performing well over specification. (BTW there are between 2.4KW and 3.3KW theoretically available in DC off of a single household light-duty circuit in the USA.)

In this video you show a lil' motherboard, is this the motherboard that's now giving you problems?


I guess us normies can't embed stuff. The video I'm talking about is in this post...



... wait, now the video is there?

Robin, How'd you get 290IPM? At ~80v the motor's doing ~2400RPM. 2400/6TPI is 400IPM. To boot, your PS is doing about 85v, yes?

No, the mini-ITX board is a tested board. It uses some type of ram I'm fresh out of, or it'd be in use. It uses an Intel ULP BGA dual proc called a U2500...a leftover from our embedded R/D.

I think you can embed; check the dropdown above the post options; enable HTML.

It moves roughly 48" in about 10 seconds..... The power supply is 83.4VDC without a load... Didn't measure it under load, would be interesting to see how it behaves.

Interesting. I'll bet it's screw resonance damping the speed...oh well, we can't melt the nuts after all.

Late night drunken carousing and bondage whilst mounting and riding RoGR. Cripes! Pull yourselves together guys! Get our RoGRs done!!!

I think maybe you'll actually be doing some cutting by the end of this week! That's a challenge.

To Hell with that! Take some pictures and we will publish a calender for geek chicks....

...all ten of em!

Sure, just buy one and I'll deliver it in a month's time.

Cutting of jobs perhaps. Scaredycats don't spend money, Lumenlab die. To me, a RoGR is about the best investment one could make: not some fear-driven flailing about whilst losing money at every step, but an investment in reality. These aren't the 'end days' by a million miles; actually we are on the cusp of the greatest economic boom in history. The three technologies that will power the next human renaissance?

Genetics
AI
Robotics

Supporting evidence:

"As this is being written during the summer of 2008, the U.S. economy is widely
seen as gripped by a severe financial crisis that began in mid-summer 2007 and is still
growing more intense and dangerous. Serious professional observers have publicly
compared the situation with past recessions, and even depressions; the extreme
impression conveyed by some is that it is the worst time since the Great Depression of the
1930s. Yet economists with specialized training and experience in the subject have still
not declared that a recession is underway. Indeed, none is, for the good reason that no
cyclical decline in general economic activity (total employment and production, real
spending and income) has yet occurred."

http://www.conference-board.org/pdf_free/e...ntUSEconomy.pdf

This is from the nation's economic advisors; the "Conference Board" of the National Bureau of Economic Research. Some creds: Sixteen of the 31 American Nobel Prize winners in Economics and six of the past Chairmen of the President's Council of Economic Advisers have been researchers at the NBER. The more than 1,000 professors of economics and business now teaching at universities around the country who are NBER researchers are the leading scholars in their fields. These Bureau associates concentrate on four types of empirical research: developing new statistical measurements, estimating quantitative models of economic behavior, assessing the effects of public policies on the U.S. economy, and projecting the effects of alternative policy proposals.

Brain.. seeing how your economic s paper was written in long ago history
We are in the Fall of 2008 the best part of a fall is hitting the bottom .... then all you can see while you are flat on your back is blue sky.. As Jesse Livermore used to say about the markets.. they are either up or down.
May the gyroscopic forces be with you.

Thanks...we will survive.

Got home at 4am this morning and was too tired to post. I got the temporary bed glue-lam'd and painted:

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On the machine:

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Got the temporary replacement computer set up:

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Using Geckos for the X drives:

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A shot of the X running. Best I can do since my little video cam was dead. We ran it for hours. Vids tonight...

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Bow chicka wow wow...That's some high class pron right thur.


Might sound slightly odd, but I have a question on the painting...knowing MDF has to be painted or sealed to prevent it from soaking up the moisture in the air and swelling up, I understand it needs to be handled...BUT what I'm unsure about is how would you go about putting on a smooth even coat. I imagine in a world where .01 inch is huge, that flatness would a major item of concern. So, how does that play into all this?

As I had much the same question I'll take a shot. A very ignorant shot. I think that table is the support for what may be called "sacrifice". One places a sacrificial layer on top that schtuff and actually machines it totally flat then uses that to place raw material to be machined upon. Is that even close to correct you smart guys out there? The sacrifice gets sacrificed with use.

Correct. Sacrifice can be hardboard, alum, plastic... or you can mount vices, t-slot alum, etc.

The shots are beautifull BC! ... And Robin!

BC,
RoGR is looking great, beautiful (handsome?) and powerful!

It's orders of magnitude more impressive than the usual DIY CNC usually seen on the the 'zone. Can't wait to see it cutting. You guys do great work.

Gordon

Our diagnosis concluded with the certainty that one of our Phelps drives is DOA. This limits us to 3 drives, so we can only run the X and Y until the next G320 arrives. Testing on the 2 axes commenced with verve today, and I had some fun trying to "blow it up".



I began making the indexes for the table. There are 4 of these; one for each leg. I will spot weld these to the legs. The angle will bolt to the perf-tube, making bed height changes simple.

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The Phelps driver uses a differential signal transcoder. I imagine this has utility to some, but to us it is a nuisance.

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Some minor wiring:

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Beware a "free concert", but dual axis computer control; beauty.

Are all servos that insanely quiet? It's kind of a shame there'll usually be a router screaming while it's running...

Also, did you guys put up some better lighting? Or maybe that's sunlight...

I kind of like the music with the mill moving together.

I would think after a few YEARS of that same song playing over and over and over it just might get a little old.

Did you say Music Shop? They are going to just love a 14 hour milling projects with air cooling and a dust collector on.

Enjoy the music while you can.

Wire cleanup in row 7...

"Whisper quiet." You can hear the linear bearings recirculating...

Remember we didn't have lights for a month? Management finally came through.

PS: I think we'll see more than routers once I have a minute to 'turn the mutha out'.

Sincerely appreciated!

Arizonavideo-

You should've seen the wiring *before* we cleaned it up!

Looks amazing!

Sorry if this was specifically mentioned already...


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I'm guessing the final version of these standoff block things will have holes drilled through them right?

Are there any drawings or specs for the z axis aluminum parts? Will you make availible any of the specs or drawings of the aluminum parts if we want to make our own parts/replacement parts?

Why?


Currently there are only lists of numeric coordinates used to hand-mill the pieces. All of the NC files that we would have are out of spec; past revisions. All of the basic dimensions can be had by simply PM'ing Robin; if he has them on hand....(you might need to be nice to him too).

It is truly amazing...and thanks!

Today my former design idea arrived in the form of 1/2" "square" U-bolts. Rather than weld-on my indexes, I decided the old idea still deserved a try after all (good thing I cut the indexes yesterday ). The U-bolt clamps are a simple proposition that work too well to change, as it occurs, and the clamps add great rigidity to the frame. Next!

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To change the table height, you just loosen the U-bolts and level the angle. Infinite variation is possible giving very tight trams. This design is slated to evolve into a motion table. The angle was inverted to provide the clearance for the nuts.

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I also got the third layer on the glue-lam stack. Lots of screws and "Devil Glue"!



The stack is looking thick (and heavy). It feels like stone when you strike it in the middle! That'll do pig, that'll do.

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The table is on, beauty.

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I dunno... it just seems like that's how it's usually done, like with the original Z motor mount.

Well, let me know as soon as you figure it out.

Maybe it has to do with how the mount appears to be functioning normally. Perhaps you were referring to the baseline hatch, right here, beside this aft attachment point. Then by modifying this guidance bridge array, we can make it work in conjunction with the flux beam. If we use the environmental dissipation replicator to align it with the optimal beam polymer, then I believe that this will increase the efficiency of the dorsal improbability bay by 63 percent, thus reducing the load on the tertiary reserve panel.

And of course there aren't many mechanisms that can't be improved by the simple addition of a synusoidal dingle arm or differential deplinerator girdle spring...

LMAO...If I were BC I'd know who'd be getting the "well tested - over volted, let's make it blow up" hardware vs. the NIB stuff...