Retro fitting Masso Contrller to Chinese Water Jet Cutter

[jd]

Hello

I purchased and second hand water jets cutter which is approx 6 years old . The motion card which was controls by NC Studio on a PC which ran windows 7 failed after a couple of months. I made a few attemp to purchace a new card from the Chinese manufacturers ata costof $3000.00 .I finally decided to fit a Masso CNCcontroler.

I received the unit last Friday and began to get my head around the servo drivers ,servo motor, limit switched , imput, outputs and relays.

i have managed to nut out the wiring diagram of the servo drive and connect the 4 wire up for the X and Y axis

I have also managed to load the software provide and wire in the Estop and shut the door control off.

I have also wire in a SON switch and wired in the X and Y axis Alarm and assigned them in the inputs on input 5 and 6

When i hooked up the masso to the x an y axis on the servo drive i got movement in both directions

Initially the travel on the x axis was only 4 rev with the pulse setting on 400. I played around a bit and set both lead screw on 10mm which is the pitch of the screws. And set the drive pulse rev to 10,000 on the X axis and to 5,000 on the Y axis. This gave me 100mm of movement for the same readout on Masso Xand Y axis.

Not sure what the pulse reading should be or where to get the info from maybe this is something people can help me with.

My next problem is getting the Masso to read my limit switch signal. I have tracked down the 4 relays that are used by the by 4 of the limit switches that are in the home position i.e. bottom left. There are 2 limit switches for each home position i.e. 2 for the x axis and 2 for the y axis. The limit swithches are activated by an long metal strip which passes over the 1st sensor and then over the next. (Not sure why it is like this)

I hooked up the 1st limit switch of each axis to the input 1 and 2 to match up to the X and Y axis and activated the sensor , the relay was klicing but there is no signal coming thru on the masso imputs. I then try the second sensors but they didn t work either.

Each relay has a 24v supply and a common plus a wire from thr sensor coming in the bottom and one wire coming out of the top going to the original break out board.

Is there a simple solution to this problem.

If we can solve this it will also help me to wire in the HP pump and other signal that are controls buy these Relays.

Regards JD

 

[testyourdesign]

It sounds like a very cool project @jd. You might get better help from Masso support if you email them directly with your serial number information but I know they have been very busy lately. It's difficult to understand your specific machine setup. Can you please post some photos of the limits switches and relays on your machine?

If I recall correctly the pulse per revolution settings in Masso have to match up with the motor driver requirements. Look at the motor driver manufacture's documents for the correct pulse settings. You can adjust both the Masso and driver settings to get the right combination of speed and precision within the Masso pulse rate operating limit. Masso provided a wizard to help sort out the rest of numbers for your machine once you make the adjustments to the pulse settings.

If you review the Masso documentation carefully you will notice that they use Home Switches and simply set the machine movement limits using the software. Your machine may have additional mechanical switches that are used differently so you may need to make some adjustments. The Home switch tells Masso where to start from on each axis so its important to have them connected to Masso. Limit switches come in different flavors such Normally Open, Normally Closed, or both and they are sometimes connected in series. The Masso diagram shows Normally Open Switches connected to separate pins so its looking for +ve DC voltage at the its input pins when its running the homing sequence and the pin is not connected. You first need to test your limit switches to determine the type you have installed on the machine and decide from there if you need to replace them or if you can modify them appropriately. As for any existing controls or breakout board or relays I wouldn't connect anything to Masso that it does not need. Existing breakout boards or machine controls or relays are probably not needed for limit switches... Try would keeping as simple as possible then add to it later once its up and running.

 

[jd]

Hi Testyourdesign

Thanks for your help.I will check out the pulse requirements on the motors

I have attached a photo of the relays

Regards

JD

 

[masso-support]

its great to see people helping from the other side of the world, thank you @testyourdesign

@jd, mate you have made some good progress very quickly. Now the first thing is to do things in small steps because doing everything together will cause confusion.

STEP: 1 is to calibrate the axis so that they move the exact distance and in the right direction, homing or anything else is not important at this stage.

A few questions to be able to calibrate the axis:

1. Do you have ball screws on all axis?
   
2. What's each ball screw's pitch (how much the axis moves on one full turn) if you dont know then we can also help you find this info.
   
3. Are the motors directly coupled to the ball screws or if there is some ratio of belts or gears.
   
4. Do you know the settings in the drive that how many pulses it will take to rotate the motor one full revolution (this is the motor shaft and not the ballscrew or anything else)
   

 

[jd]

Hello Masso Support

I have ball screws on all axises the Y axis has a 2 start thread and the X a single start

the Y axis has a 10mm pitch but a 20mm lead so 1 turn moves the head 20mm and the X axis has a 10mm pitch

Both drives are connected with timing belts which i think are 1to1.

If I set the Y axis pulse to 10,000 i get the correct travel, I have the X axis set on 10,000 pulse and that measures correctly as well.

These settings don t seem to match up with the data from the Motor spec. But i am putting that down to Chinese manufacturing

So Iwould say that Ihave managed to calibrate the axises

I have also had the machine homing with a 5mm kickback like it should but i went to check its travel distance which worked, it thru the alarm but then wet to home it again and the machine just resets all the zeros. I can move in the plus direction but not the neg. I am guessing there is a setting that i have missed somewhere.

JD

 

[masso-support]

1. In the MASSO axis settings you now have distance per revolution set to: 20mm for Y and 10mm for X axis?
   
2. Next have you check that all the axis negative and positive motion directions are ok not moving in the wrong direction?
   
3. Can you please take photos and mark what direction is what (negative or positive) and where are the homing switches installed.
   
4. Please also share the MASSO setting file.