Making Parts With Centroid Acorn

this is going to be a basic walkr of what it's like to use the centroid Acorn CNC controller I've been getting a lot of questions Lately from people building their own CNC machines asking me about what the best sort of DIY CNC controller is to use and the truth is is I don't really know because this is the only one I've ever used so to answer that question I'm just going to do my best to give you a feel for what it's like to use the software uh the workflow I use generally when making Parts some of the featur the software that I like uh some of the considerations you might want to think about before pulling the pin on any option uh we've got a I wrote a program um like we did some cam in Fus well I use HSM works but it's the same as Fusion uh just a little bit of basic Machining we're going to do on this wooden block which is a little strange but it will uh serve well for demonstration and uh yeah we're just going to go through we're going to load up a program we're going to set some tool offsets and uh we're just going to run it and I will show you some of the things I really like about the acorn this is not going to have much to do about how to set all of this up because there are a lot of great videos out there already and it's part of the reason that I actually decided to go for the acorn the support out there is awesome the technical documentation is great it's clear it's concise and if you're having a problem you can't get over you can actually pick up the phone call centroid and talk to a human I do want to mention that I'm not sponsored by centroid in any way all of these opinions are mine and everything you see in this video I spent my own money on and I guess I'd like to start by talking a little bit about let's talk about the pros of the centroids so something you'll find with centroid that you may not with many others is they've sort of got their own ecosystem um not sure if I'm saying this exactly right but I get the impression that centroid is kind of like the apple of the DIY CNC world that they've got sort of their own ecosystem of products that you can pick and choose from and when you plug them into the centroid controller they all just sort of work and so if you're building a CNC machine because you're you've got a product that you want to make or you just want to sort of get up and running as quickly as possible centroid is in my opinion and from everything I've gathered again remember this is the only one I've ever used so I don't have a ton to compare it to but you'll get up and running faster with the uh centroid system then you will with something like say Linux CNC um now they are both you know one is not better than the other from a like quality standpoint you will not find that Parts come out better with one or the other it'll be more so about the customizability of the system like with uh Linux CNC you can customize this interface I don't know how I mean this isn't Linux CNC but um it'll have a similar you know drro CNC interface face you'll be able to customize it a lot more than you can this one uh with Linux CNC you can control as many Motors as you'd like I don't know that there's a limit with centroid Acorn you can only control four now I say only but I'm controlling three I've got a motor for X Y and Z axis and that's it I don't have an automatic tool changer I don't have a fourth axis I don't have anything else that uses a fourth motor but if I ever wanted to I could do something like that but with Linux CNC you know you could have an automatic tool changer that maybe uses a turret that uses a stepper motor or a Servo motor you could use you could add a fourth axis you could add a fifth axis you could add as many Motors as you want there's a video on YouTube somewhere where I saw someone was controlling nine Motors and they didn't put them on a CNC machine they were kind of doing it just as a demonstration purpose um and you will need to buy extra cards I think they are you know what I I won't even say because I'm not 100% sure but there are there are these cards that sort of act as uh the interface between the software and um the motor drives that you'll have to buy with Linux CNC uh whereas with centroid it's all just sort of on one board and um you can control up to four axes here but then you know you're out the upside is definitely that you will be able to get up and running faster with centroid than many of the other guys they have things like this Wireless pendant that you can buy it just sort of plugs right in starts working right away they sell things like probes and Tool Setters and everything plugs in and just works so that's really great now what are some of the downsides well I guess the biggest downside is probably cost uh it is not the cheapest system you can see here the starter kit is 363 bucks and for that you get the board the power supply and this relay this relay board here you also get a shielded ethernet cable that's what you see here there's the 20 4vt power supply this is the the the controller itself and this is the relay board you see I don't have anything plugged into it but if you wanted to run like a light or a coolant pump or an oil pump or whatever else you can use those relays to kick on and off different sort of auxiliary functions um and you have up to eight of them I believe it's expandable if you need not 100% sure on that so beyond that um once you get that you can be up and running uh I mean assuming you have everything else so you'll to buy you know the motors you do need a computer to install the software onto um but you can also there's lots you can do like you can install limit switches which we have and we'll go over in a moment uh you can control the spindle speed uh through a vfd if that's something you want to get into it supports rigid tapping if you know you can put an encoder on the spindle motor uh there are there's lots of possibilities of what it can do um but you will also very quickly likely realize you need to so on top of that $363 have to upgrade to the pro license and that just you know without doing that you have limits on your G-Code file size I think it doesn't support um probing I don't think it supports rigid tapping or multiple work coordinate offsets there's a table down here where you can dig into it if you just Google centroid acor and you can sort of see all the differences whereas this is the free everything here is the free one this is the pro which is what I'm using and this is the ultimate the only difference I've been able to find with the ultimate is in terms of like uh digitizing so that is right here now digitizing is like um you know what I won't go into it here it is very cool but short of being very cool I don't see a huge purpose for it you can read about it uh it it's like it you can use a probe to like scan the part and then use the centroid software itself to kick out data to a CAD software cloudpoint data that you can use as a template for a part or something now I do a lot of part copying with this machine and I don't ever use digitizing I just sort of probe the important features I record their size and location and then I will model based on that so short of being really cool I don't see a great practical use for it uh and I'd love for somebody to jump into the comments and tell me why I'm wrong uh or what they use it for or I've heard it being used for but it just it's very I mean for 399 bucks it seems like a big price to pay for something that to me anyway doesn't have a lot of applicable uses um and so this is the downside right is all these kind of software upgrade fees um you know that you can get a computer here $799 I can tell you I run mine off of a little mini computer right there that thing cost me about $150 us and it is more than enough you do not need to spend $800 um here are some other uh centroid board that can control more axes I think they got a little more bells and whistles but here this is what I wanted to show you there's this Wireless pendant that's another $300 now if you using something like Linux CNC you can get something like this a lot cheaper but would it be as integrated would it take um you know it'll take you longer to get up and running very likely here's a probe $700 that's quite expensive I'm using the s5000 probe from Drew Tronics I forget exactly how much it is but check them out go to drron x.org and uh this thing is like I want to it's less than $300 but it's something something like that and um it's good too within about a thousandth or so uh so the downside is mostly cost with Acorn everything else is in my opinion fantastic works great and I highly recommend it another really important factor to consider when choosing a CNC Control software is making sure that whatever cam program you're using has a post processor for it so I'm using what you're looking at here this is the solid works interface but I'm using HSM Works plugin so this cam tab here this is the HSM Works plugin for solid works it was developed by Autodesk which are the same people that developed Fusion 360 and fusion cam so if you're using Fusion cam what I'm about to say here is uh sort of the same thing is when you go to like so this is our program this is what we're going to do here shortly we're going to machine that little wooden block we've got four sort of uh tool path here but in order to get them onto a CNC machine you got to make sure that you have a post processor for your CNC control and uh this is something I didn't realize when I was getting into it and I got lucky because um all CNC controls they read G-Code and this isn't G-Code these are just like tool paths inside of a cam program but we need to somehow translate these tool paths into G-Code and to do that you need a post processor so we go to postprocess you can see here that um the post processor that I'm using the post configuration is for centroid and this works right out of the box you will see so if whether you're using hsmworks or Fusion 360 they both come with this drop- down list of post processors so everything you're seeing in the list here are these are lists of CNC controllers and so there is one for centroid which is great that's what we need in order to translate these tool paths into G-Code that our controller can understand there's also one I saw down here somewhere there is one for Linux CNC so if you're considering that you are fine where is it uh here you go Linux CNC right here uh here you go Mack 3 mock 2 now I don't see any for like Mazo or uccnc but there's a very good chance like if you you know if you're going to choose one of those controllers just make sure you go onto the forums or you talk to somebody because another one of these may be generic enough that it will work with it uh you know but you can't be sure so whatever CNC control you're going to choose make damn sure that you can get your hands on a post for it or you're going to be into making your own post or modifying a post which is sort of uh it can be simple it can be really difficult depending on how far off it is uh just make sure that you look into that before making your final choice so let's go ahead and turn everything on we've got uh power is cut to the CNC controller you can see there's no lights on there's no power running through the control cabinet right now I don't have uh the centroid Acorn software running this is it by the way this is cnc12 I hope it's in Focus there uh that's the name of the centroid Acorn software but the first thing we do is we are going to power up the panel I've got the panel wired straight to a breaker here got uh 40 amps in the garage that's for an air compressor that sits in the basement and this runs power to the panel or sometimes the lathe I'll never use them at the same time but we turn that on you can see everything sort of comes to life here and that is the first thing we do once that is on there is something that centroid calls the heartbeat and if you look kind of right in here behind the board you should hopefully be able to see a flashing blue light there it is and once you see that that's the heartbeat that means the board is up and running and we can go ahead come over to the PC we go up here and launch cnc2 it's establishing Communications with Acorn and here we are we're up and running you can see on the drro X Y and Z we don't know where we are yet CU we haven't HED the Machine by default when you start it up the reset is tripped so the first thing we're going to do is we're going to hit the reset you can see here okay great the reset that's been cleared and then the very next thing when we hit the cycle start button so that is this green button over here the machine is going to start to home itself so I'm going to click it oops now let's go over to the CNC machine you see the Z axis is moving up until it hits the limit switch next is the Y till it hits the limit switch and next is the X [Music] so now the machine sort of knows where it is and we've got a digital readout on the X Y andz this is not something you have to install on the machine but what's really nice about this is that now um the machine will not crash into the ends of its travel so because I've defined it in the controller so yeah we've got a limit switch on this side of the X so you know I'm jogging it won't let me go past the that stop cuz it it's hit that switch that's great but it will also not crash into the ends of the travel on this side even though there's no limit switch there because I've defined the limits of the travels inside the um inside the centroid wizard so let's go here I'll just really quickly show you this you go into the utility and when you're setting this up you're going to be spending a lot of time jumping in and out of this so we go to the acorn wizard opening up so this is the centroid Acorn wizard you're going to be going through all these menus setting things up but when we go over here on the left side to homing and travel and click there we can see these are the soft limits so um in X I've got 20.57% these are the actual these are the travels of my machine the limits of my Precision Matthews pm30 so that's what's really nice is you only need one limit switch on every axis because then you can just you know Define a soft stop on the other on the other side and the Machine will never travel past those limits let's just jump back into the cam quickly because the first thing we've got to do in the centroid control before we start Machining is set up the tools and so in cam here we're using tool number six then we're which is a 516 flat endmill we're using tool number two which is a/2 in endmill we're using tool number two again and then tool number three so we're using three different tools tool number six tool number two and Tool number three and because the cam program is going to be calling for these tools we got to make sure that the tool numbers are the same in the centroid control so this is the centroid home screen I'm just using a keyboard and mouse to navigate it here and uh to set up the tools we're going to go into setup or you can hit F1 and then in setup we're either going to hit part or tool again this is just a basic walk through there's lots of options here and we'll dive into them a little bit more but this is just sort of the basic operation the basic workflow this is what I do 99% of the time when I'm making parts and I don't usually go much further than what you're about to see so we're going to go into setup and then first we're going to go set up a tool and then here we've sort of got two options you see three here I never ever go into tool life ough you can you can like uh for all your tools you can set the life and it'll keep track of how long it's been Machining with each tool and then you can switch it out if you've decided it gets dull after a certain number of hours in the cut or whatever so that's really cool but I don't really use it so we've got two main things to set up uh the offset Library which is the most important and then the tool library and in this tool Library you can just kind of add descriptions so we are using tool number six first okay I've got it selected here see tool number six we don't have a description so let's just add one it makes a little bit easier when the program tells us to change tools um while we're Machining so this is the 516 for flute and mill and that's all I will say about that one we'll Tab out of there and then tool number two let's make sure we have the right description yep that's the half inch three flute 30,000 rod end Mill and then tool number three is the 38 chamfer Mill that's all good okay let's hit save there we're only using that uh tools 2 three and six and now let's go into the offset Library this is the most important part of the whole thing because if we get this wrong we are going to crash the tool so these are the three tools that we're going to be using for the Machining this is tool number two that's the/ in NM this is tool number six that's the 5/16 inch NM and this is tool number three which is the shamer mill so and they all stick out a different amount um I guess tool number three and Tool number six look quite similar like the stick outs look similar but they're not the same and then obviously tool number two is sticking out a heck of a lot more and we somehow have to tell the control how much each tool is sticking out because while we're Machining uh the CNC control is controlling the tip of each each tool and right now the machine doesn't know how far out we've stuck these endmills uh so we got to tell it that so we got to somehow communicate to the machine what the tool stick out is for each one of these tools and uh that's what we see here these height offsets that's what we're going to set and these diameter offsets we're not going to worry about them yet but those are going to come into play later on when we want to make some changes to the part with uh the offsets we'll actually be able to change the size of the feature that we've maed just by changing the um the offset of the tool which is I guess maybe something a little more advanced you don't need to know how to do this because if you want to change the size of a feature you can also just go back into Cam change the size of that feature or change the stock to leave in the cam modify it that way but it's a lot faster just to change it in the control you know you've already got the program loaded up you can make a quick change into the control to make a hole bigger which is what we're going to do um instead of making the changes back and Cam and then post-processing the program again then re-uploading it to the control so anyway let's go ahead and teach the machine what the stick outs are for Tool number two tool number three and Tool number six all right so let's head into the offset library to set our height offsets and a little trick I like to use is I don't know if you can call it a trick but I actually like to use the probe to set the hide offsets it's uh a lot faster than using any other method not as fast as a tool Setter but check this out this is pretty cool we're going to first go to zed ref and we're going to choose a reference plane and we're going to hit that plane with the probe so we can load the reference tool jog to the reference position press F10 to save the reference or press F3 to seek to probe uh so that's what we're going to do and if we take a look over here we have um we've got our probe loaded into the spindle it's working properly you can see with that little blue light we've got a one two three block here and uh we're going to jog the machine over so that that probe is just over so here's the pendant and what I'm doing is I'm selecting which axis I want to jog so we'll go to Z and when I move this wheel we're actually jogging the machine down and we can see that yet our probe is over the one two3 block so that's good I'm going to move it over a little right about here kind of in the middle make sure there's no chips under the block that's all good there and then what we're going to do do is uh we're going to go ahead and press F3 so I'm going to so right here we're going to be pressing F3 I'm going to bring the mouse over with me here so that I can click it uh when I hit F3 on the centroid control we're going to see press cycle start to move tool to the detector and so here I'm going to hit cycle start on the pendant and keep your eye on the probe when we hit cycle start so the probe moves down hits it and then we see that our Zed ref it updates here and uh now we've got a new Z reference position the machine knows exactly where the top of the 123 block is and we're now going to load tools 2 three and six into the spindle and just kind of touch them to the top of this surface and teach the control what those height offsets are so let's do that now we're going to take the tool of the uh the probe out of the spindle it doesn't at all matter which tool we set up first but I'm going to throw tool number two into the spindle so I'm now going to lower by jogging I'm going to lower tool number two until it's close to the one two three block and then what I'm actually going to do is move it out of the way so it doesn't crash and I'm going to get a close close oh too far okay too far oops okay and now we're going to switch on the pendant we're going to switch to thousands so this times one increment when I kind of I'm spinning this wheel down by a few thousands oh there you go and I've touched so here I'm going down until the there you go I was moving the probe down until the one two three block or sorry moving the tool down until this one two three block no longer fits and now I know that the the tip of this tool is exactly on the top of this surface and when I know that I come over here to the control and I go over to Tool number two you see how it says 0000 0 keep your eye on that we're going to go down here to manual measure and when we click it we're going to see that this changes to 1. 6703 so what we just did is we just taught the control where tool number two is so we're going to do the exact same thing for Tool number three and tool number six and we will be done teaching the machine exactly where these all are so now that we're done with tool number two something cool on the um on the pendant you can hit this tool check button when you do that just JS the machine up I stop it about there and now I I'm going to take out tool number two we're going to put in tool number three and now we're going to do the exact same thing I'm going to jog the machine down until we're almost at the one two three block okay we're almost there I'm going to switch to thousands on the pendant start kind of moving the wheel down and just sliding the Block in and out until it doesn't fit anymore getting close and there we go now it's just scratching it's barely touching so the tip of this tool is now at the top of the one two three block and that's tool number three so we're going to go back here we're going to go to tool tool three we're going to hit manual measure you can see it's updated. 2596 now the last tool offset we've got to do it's tool number six and it looks like it remembered the offset from the last time I used this tool but just as a sanity check I'm going to go ahead and do it again uh when we hit manual measure if this number doesn't change much or it doesn't change at all we will know that the control did remember the tool offset so that's a neat thing um probably all CNC controls do this but it's neat that if you don't change the tool like you don't take the tool out of the tool holder uh the the control will remember the stick out so I usually have like a staging area here for the tools that I keep offsets of and uh if if a tool is in that rack I know that um like I I trust that this is the right offset now the reason you see these are all zero is because I just up updated the software and it sort of wiped all the value so I'm going to go ahead and do it for Tool number six and that'll be the last one so again we'll hit tool check tool comes up I hit stop it's all about there now imagine having an automatic tool changer that would just make life so so sweet but unfortunately we haven't got one you kind of got to build one yourself if you want I've wanted to for a long time but you know what for the cost and the time I just it's hard to justify but it is really cool okay so let's drag it down on the pendant again till we get close okay so let's switch to thousands now so I know I'm about 10,000 up and I'm going to just slowly start clicking down on the pendant there we go so now we're at the top there that's tool number six let's go back to the centroid control so keep your eye 0 2216 let's hit manual measure and see how much that number changes 2214 so that's 2/10 that essentially means it hasn't changed at all that is that's 1 fth of a thousandth of an inch so um we had that stick out already in the control but now all the green ones are the ones that we've updated so tool two tool three tool six great we hit save now if we want as a sanity check we can go back into our offset library and we see that tool six tool three and Tool two are all updated so that is all good and we are ready to to run the program all right so let's quickly jump back into Cam just to run a little stock simulation to show you what we are hoping to end up with let's hit play and we're going to come in here with the 5/16 tool we're going to bore that hole and we're going to come in with a/ inch tool tool number two we're going to nibble that pocket away run some chamfers and that is all that the program is going to be this is what we're hoping to end up with now I'm just going to select all the tool paths here so try to remember like these lines here all the blue and yellow lines try to remember what those kind of look like because if we do everything right we're going to be able to preview all of this and see exactly what this looks like in the actual centroid control itself so um this is great now we've got to generate some G-Code so we have to postprocess this this is the important part where we've got our centroid post selected um I'm going to name this program 104 we're going to post it and I'm actually going to save it onto my server um I've got a sonology Nas at home so instead of running back back and forth from the computer that I program on which is this one and the CNC control computer I've got sort of a central server uh I don't have to run back and forth of a USB stick it's really nice but uh if you don't have that you know you just put it on a USB stick and you sort of you upload it to the USB stick on this computer and then you plug it into that CNC computer I was showing you earlier uh and you upload it that way but after we post it it gives us a preview of the G-Code and yeah this is mostly just a whole bunch of stuff that's difficult to understand but if you take a close look at how everything is formatted uh here in solid works we have 2D Contour 1 2D adaptive 2 2D Contour 2 2D chamfer 1 and those are the things we want to remember so we have 2D Contour one and then we have 2D adaptive 2 and then we've got this is sort of a long one because it's a TR coidal there's a lot of code there but here we go 2D Contour 2 and then we have the 2D chamfer one so these are sort of the things we want to remember because we are going to jump to these lines of code when we want to modify the program um in the centroid control so that's all good let's go back over to the control and upload this program oh and one more very important thing is this Triad this is our work coordinate offset this is one more thing we're going to have to show the CNC machine before we can start Machining this is the point in this program where X which is the red Y which is that green arrow and Z the blue arrow they all equal zero exactly at this point and that point is at the top dead center of the stock so it's at the top surface of that the piece of wood it's directly in the middle of it in X and directly in the middle of it in y so we're going to use the probe uh on the CNC control to show the machine exactly where that is once we put the piece of wood in the vice before we start Machining all right so we've got the probe loaded back up into the machine and here's where we got to tell the machine machine that or tell the control that our work coordinate offset is right in the middle so it's at the top surface of this block and it's right in the middle of it like sort of from X to along the x- axis it's in the middle and along the Y AIS it's in the middle so we're going to run some probing routines to show the machine where that work coordinate offset is so we head back over to the centroid control this is the main menu uh sorry this is the main menu we are going to go to setup and now instead of setting up our tool those are already done we're going to set up our part and we're going to go over to probing and we're going to probe in uh as a web so first we're going to find the center in y and right here you can see this graphic it's oriented correctly but if we go down here and click Orient you can see that that graphic is sort of flipping around but we are going to park the probe below the piece um so we're going to run a web probing routine to find the middle of it so Let's uh let's go over here we are going to jog the machine over so that the stylus is sort of sitting in a position that is similar to what it was in that Orient graphic that we just saw we're going to park it right about there and then we are going to say that our web width so that piece of wood I know is 1 and2 inches I'm actually going to overshoot it a little bit we're going to put 1.75 here and you're going to see why in a second and this is the clearance amount so we're going to have the probe run into the into the piece and then we're going to have it move up half an inch to move over the part so that is all good we are going to grab the pendant and when we hit cycle start it's going to start moving here so we're now probing the piece we come up over we moved up half an inch we are moving over it it moves 1 and 3/4 in now going to run into it from the other side so we probe both surfaces and now the probe is going to park itself right in the middle of Y so when we go over to the control when the probing routine is finished we get this message saying the center of the web is um X 1. n945 we don't really care about that we care about why it's parked itself right in the middle and the middle of the piece is y 02668 and we can see here in y we're at 0 2668 so we want to set this to zero so what we do is we go back and next axis this is X so we're going to hit next axis till we hit Y and then we are going to go over here bottom right and hit set and when I hit set you're going to notice Y is going to go to zero so when I hit set Y is zero that's great that's exactly where we want to be so we're going to probe again um we're going to probe it in as a web but this time we are going to reorient this graphic so that we find the center of of X and so we're going to have the probe sitting sort of to the left of the piece and let's go over sorry and I know the piece is let's verify how long our work piece is it is 3 in so here this time we're going to do 3.25 I always like to overshoot it a little bit you don't have to clearance amount will keep at 05 that's great so let's bring the pendant over we're going to go X we're going to jog the machine over go down and z and when we're ready to start the probing routine we're going to hit cycle start and the same thing's going to [Music] happen we're going to move over the part go all the way to the other side and this is the same routine except we're running it in X instead of Y so the exact same thing is going to happen just in a different direction that's good we touch the other side and now the probe is to come up half an inch just like we asked and it's going to park itself right in the middle where X is so going back over to the control now we do care about X we don't care about y see Y is zero because we haven't moved it but X is um the the center of the web is at x- 21887 we're at - 21887 but we want to set that to zero for the same reason so we go back next axis oh we're at Zed we're going to hit next again here we go at X X and now when I hit set keep your eye up here at the minus 21887 hit set that's going to go to zero that's great now the last thing we got to do is uh we want to probe in sorry we don't have to do that we go next next we go to zed and then we're just going to hit Auto and when we hit Auto we're going to hit and then press cycle start um it's going to move the probe to the surface so here we go we're going to hit cycle start probe moves down touch a z and you'll see Z automatically resets itself to zero so now on our drro we have x0 y is zero Z is zero and when we walk over to the control we can see that the probe is touching the middle of the part that's exactly where we want to be that's the location of that Triad that we saw in Cam and so that's perfect we're done um showing the machine where X Y and Z all equal zero for this program so uh we're ready to run what I'm going to do is hit this uh tool check button again just to lift the probe up hit stop right about there and now um let's go and load up the uh let's go and load up the program we're going to load a file down here so we can either click load with the mouse or F2 on the keyboard and here we have to browse to our part and so this is where I'm going into um where my where the server is and I I put it in my centroid walkthrough it's program 104 and here we go we've got the program all loaded up here so we go to graph and check this out this is a top view of everything we saw so here's that hole that we're boring and here's that slot that we're nibbling away and we can even rotate this there we go so we can rotate this and we can see exactly what the CNC machine is going to do and this is really good to see because this sort of shows us that great the centroid control really understands what we're trying to do this is a good sign that our post is working correctly so that is all good to see but now to run the program we are going to hit Escape um we sort of just got out of that preview and we're going to hit run but before we do that let's go ahead and change let's get the probe out of here so now when we hit cycle start the machine moves up to the top of the Z position and we get this message down here saying tool change change the tool to T6 this is our 5/16 for flute and Mill so let's go ahead grab that tool that was sort of off camera but I put in that 516 tool I've also got this little hose here that runs air that just sort of clears away the chips we'll run a little bit of it and now I'm going to manually turn on the spindle so this is a little bit embarrassing because I should be controlling my spindle with the CNC controller but when I was setting this thing up I couldn't figure out how to do it and then by the time I figured out how to do it you know I'm my plan is to upgrade the spindle motor and run it with a vfd so I never got around to it I'm making excuses but I turn my spindle on automatically and then we're going to go ahead we're going to grab the pendant here we've inserted the tool we're going to hit start here start and we're going to start Machining so here we're boring that hole zoom in a little bit [Music] [Applause] [Music] and on the control okay so we're done with that operation we get a message in the control saying change the tool now to T2 the half in three flute cutter so let's go do that quick we'll turn on the spindle and now that we've changed the tool we're ready to go we can go ahead and hit cycle start [Music] now we could have been raping a little more quickly here it's keeping the tool down so it's sort of um it doesn't use the Rapids here but you can see it's doing exactly what we expected at the exact height that we expected because we set our height offset correctly and with wood you can always move more aggressively that's why I'm sort of we could have pushed it a lot harder here but so we nibbled that away and now we're going to come in with that finishing pass and see here we go this is you can call this a programming mistake we should have been plunging a lot more quickly here but anyway here we go now we're going to come and clean up that wall to get a really nice wall finish and when we go over to the control we're soon going to get a message saying hey let's change the tool now to the uh t338 Cher Mill so let's do that we're going to turn the spindle off and throw in that champer tool we're going to go ahead and hit cycle start and you're going to see all those Burrs that are left on top these Cher tools do a really good job of getting rid of that it just makes the part look a little bit nicer cleans things up a little bit for [Music] [Applause] us all right let's turn this spindle off and there we go that's the finished part that's exactly what we were hoping to end up with and check it out here's a dowel pin that I want to fit in here and I I intentionally did this I undersized this hole to show you that we can modify the program in the centroid control to clean up this hole to make this hole bigger so let's see what that takes so when we jump into our cam here we can see that the tool path that created that hole is this 2D Contour one feature and if we dive a little bit further into um that tool path in the passes tab here we can see that we selected this inverse wear option this is I guess a little bit of an advanced feature where uh we told the control not to listen only to the tool size to the tool diameter that we set in our tools tab here but we can also modify it in the control so if we go down to inverse wear it says identical to the wear option so let's go up to wear wear works as as if in computer were selected but also outputs g41 42 codes this lets the machine tool operator adjust for Tool Weare at the Machine Tool control by entering the difference in tool size as a negative number but we did inverse wear so it's going to be as a positive number but um so essentially we can rerun this tool path by and if we change the uh tool diameter offset in the CNC control it will actually make a bigger hole or a smaller hole depending on how we change it in the centroid control so let's go over and do that okay so to change the size of that hole we uh if we go into setup now we've got the same program loaded up the part is still in the vice if we want to change the size of that hole uh we go to setup and then we go to Tool and we go to our offset Library uh like we said that hole is 1 mm too small because there's 20,000 all around the wall so the hole itself is 40,000 too small it was made with tool number six this is the height offset but we want to go over here to the diameter offset of tool number six and uh if we make it so we know it's 40,000 too small and so we are going to make it 45,000 bigger so that pin fits in so we go 0.045 we enter uh and then that's tool six yep so let's go ahead and save that let back out of it and now if we go to graph take a look at this this is really cool before it was you see now here how there's this Gray Line I hope you can see it on the camera there's a gray line and a yellow line This Gray Line is what we programmed but now we are stepping the tool out to be where the yellow line is now um and we did that by changing the tool diameter offset and just to prove it here let's go back let's go to setup tool offset Library let's go back to Tool six this 45 let's bring this back to zero just to show you let's bring it back to zero let's save it let's get out of here and then let's go back to graph and look that Gray Line is gone it's just the yellow we're not offsetting it by anything but if we want to offset it and if this is confusing I have a feeling I'm not doing a great job at explaining this but if this is confusing you can really just go back to your cam you can make the feature bigger repost the code or adjust that tool path if that's all you want to run and you can do it that way but this is just to show you that without reposting the code or let's say somebody else posted the code for you and you don't have access to C or something like that uh you can modify it all here in the control so that Gray Line on this spiral is gone let's go ahead and add it back in by going to setup tool offset library and then let's add tool six here let's add that 45,000 back in enter let's save it then go back to graph and we can see that it's back that uh the yellow has stepped up out away from that gray that gray is like what we programmed and the yellow is what we're modifying in the control the yellow is where the tool is actually going to move um and if we go into run we can also say Hey you know we don't want to rerun that whole program we just want to start the program at the point where that um where that specific tool path starts and so let's just go back sorry um let's go back to edit here let's see what line we want to start it at and here we go 2D Contour 1 I did this in the wrong way a little bit cuz it's the very first tool path so we could just kind of restart the program and then end it as soon as that first tool path is done but let's say there were tool paths in front of this we might actually want to start this um this G-Code at n30 let's remember this this line here I don't know if you can see it on the camera it's n30 so that's where we want to start the program uh We've modified the tool size so now it's going to be bigger so let's go to the Run menu when we hit search and in here here if we type n30 we hit enter okay and now it's telling us okay change the tool T6 516 for flute this program is starting at n30 and here we can see the gray that we programmed and the yellow that is stepped further out so let's go ahead and I've already put the tool in but let's start the spindle here okay we're running we're going to go ahead and hit cycle start oh turn some lights on here and you can see it's going to [Music] rerun and it's taking more material sorry I forgot to turn the lights on here it's a little dark you'll have to take my word for it but it is making that hole bigger just because we changed the tool diameter offset in the control we haven't reposted at any code we've just changed the tool diameter offset in the control [Music] now so let's grab this pin again see if it fits and it fits super snug with you know a few thousands clearance there with 5,000 clearance so that's really cool um and again if that's confusing you can obviously just change it in Cam and repost the code but this is a really way that the centroid lets you and I'm sure all CNC controls most CNC controls will have this functionality but that is really neat there and you can kind of change things on the fly as you like to modify little things here and there all in the centroid control so that's really it guys from a usability standpoint like just uploading code and making Parts uh that is about all that I do I I don't know that there's anything I didn't go over in this video that I do on a regular reg basis when making Parts there's obviously a heck of a lot more that the acorn can do that I'm not doing like you saw I manually control the spindle on the machine I'm not using the centroid to to do that but I am thinking of upgrading the spindle motor and I do have a video that I'll link in the description where I do test um like I run an AC motor through a vfd but using the centroid Acorn to control the direction of the spindle spindle on off the speed of the spindle and all that it all works perfectly the centroid post through fusion and HSM Works supports it beautifully uh in fact it's outputting that code anyway I'm just not using it um there's all kinds of other things that this thing can do but just from a usability standpoint I hope I was able to give you some insight on what it's like to be using the centroid Acorn and if you're using something else or if you're using the acorn and you do something differently than I do I'd really love to hear from you because I don't know really anybody with this hobby sort of in my day-to-day life and um I've learned a whole bunch from this community and if anybody else has some insight this is how I learn I hope I helped you learn something but I'd be real Curious to hear from you one way or the other whether you use centroid or something else uh if you've got some comments on what's better or worse what you liked maybe didn't like did I miss something um yeah it'd be great to hear from you and if you're not sleeping and still here thanks for watching and we'll see you in the next one guys

Channel: Adam D

Views: 3,056

Keywords: CNC, Machine, Manufacturing, Business, Milling, CAD, CAM, Solidworks, Fusion360, HSMWorks, Centroid, Acorn, Controller, Spindle, Motor, Control, Custom, Parts, Maker, Making, Hobby, Crafts, Masso, Mach3, Mill, Lathe, Programming, Design, Engineering, Cutting, Woodworking, How to, demo, project, garage, hobby, cars, welding, CMM, Computer, LinuxCNC, machine, robot, design, machinist, machining, PM30, Precision Matthews, Servo, Stepper, Encoder, Drive, VFD, DIY, Fadal, HAAS, Endmill, Tapping, cutting, metal, aluminum, steel, maker, making, program

Id: bvAuZfgSsnE

Length: 49min 34sec (2974 seconds)

Published: Sun Apr 21 2024