THANK YOU FOR YOUR
PURCHASE
ASSEMBLY
The mini mill is
packaged in three separate boxes to allow shipment via UPS. There is some basic
assembly required after unpacking everything.
All the cnc mini mills are run in between 20 and 40 hours to assure
everything is working properly before shipping.
As a result there may
be some excess oil or grease that you may want to wipe off before continuing.
After unpacking the
mini mill you will need to attach the vertical column and head assembly to the
base.
There are three Allen
head screws and washers that attach the column to the base.
The head assembly and
column weight aprox 70 lbs so its recommended that you
have someone hold the column steady while you
tighten the Allen screws.
The next step is to
place the z axis motor assembly and belt on the head. It’s held in place with 4
Allen screws.
It’s fairly easy to
slip the belt in place while assembling the cover if you place the belt in the
cover attached to the motor and lower
the assembly in place
while turning the large cog on the screw allowing the belt to move into place. You should rotate the large knurled cog a
few rounds before
placing the Allen screw that holds the cover in place.
Follow the same
procedure for the axis motor and belt assembly.
After assembly you
are ready to attach the control cabinet to the mill and computer.
A cable is included
to attach the control to the printer port of your computer.
The three cables from
the mill attach to rear of the cabinet, the individual cables are labeled X, Y
and Z .
They need to be
plugged into the appropriate ports as labeled below.
Once you have the
control attached to the mill it time to install the CNC software.
The control included
is wired for Mach, Kcam or other software which out puts a step and direction
signal thru the printer port.
Below is a list of
the setup parameters followed by screen shots of the setup pages you will need
to modify for Mach3.
QUICK START GUIDE
After
installing MACH3 its time to configure the software to work properly with the
milling machine.
The setup procedure
is well documented in the MACH 3 manual as well as the forum, so this guide
will only focus on the areas that are specific to this machine.
Click on the config tab at the top and choose General Config… which will open the window shown below.
There are a lot of
useful settings on this page; the one you need to focus on in this quick start
setup is the noise reduction setting in the upper right.
The debounce should
be set as 100 and index debounce should be set to 4.
Then click OK at the
bottom right to close the general configuration window.
Now go back to the Config tab and choose ports and pins. This will set the
output signals to the proper pins so the computer can communicate with the
controller.
This is the ports and
pins dialogue window that will pop up , most of the
setup you will need to focus on is done from this window.
On this first page
you will just need to be concerned with the port 1 box .
click the port enabled box if it isn’t already
checked.
The port address
should already be entered.
Next you will need to
click the Motor Outputs tab and the window above will be visible, just change
the settings to match the example above.
You will notice the A-axis isn’t enabled, if
you decide to add a rotary table or other 4th axis device you can
come back into setup and enable it here.
Now click the Input
Signals tab to set up the E-stop, just scroll down until you come to E-stop,
check enable and set the port # to 1 and Pin Number t 10.
This will complete
the settings needed for the quick start setup in this window.
Click the Apply button
in the lower right corner to save all the settings entered in the previous
windows.
You will now need to
setup the motors by choosing Motor Tuning in Config
as pictured above.
This is the motor
Tuning Setup window, you can choose the different axis
with the Axis Selection buttons on the right side.
Input the values
pictured along the bottom to match the example above. The settings will be slightly different for
the three axis and examples for all three axis are pictured.
Start by putting in the figures above for the
x axis , then click the SAVE AXIS SETTINGS button
before choosing the next axis . You must save the settings before moving to the
next axis.
The steps per is the
number of steps the computer needs to send the controller per inch of travel
and wont change after the initial setup.
These are the
important settings that will get you up and running.
Once the settings above are entered you can
power up the controller and jog the three axis.
From the main screen in Mach3 you can push the
tab key and bring up a window that will allow you to push buttons
either on screen or the
keyboard to move the different axis .
The MACH3 forum has a lot of very useful information as well as links to
very useful video
tutorials that will step you thru everything possible with MACH3.