New Machines?

davidimurray · Post by **davidimurray** » Fri 13 Oct , 2006 11:40 am

Hi

Just wondering what machines Denford were currently producing. I don't see the Triac listed anymore - have you stopped making it? If so how come - just curious as I love the design of this machine.

Cheers

Dave

Post by **Denford Admin** » Sun 15 Oct , 2006 12:10 pm

The majority of the castings in the Triac are now being used on the Triton.
The major change being the use of hardened rails and carriages, instead of dovetails.

The Triton is now pretty versatile, in that rapid 3D prototyping can now be achieved with advancements to the control, steppers and using rails (less friction).
Denford have made quite a few for industrial customers who seem very happy with the performance for the price.

Matt · Post by **Matt** » Sun 15 Oct , 2006 16:42 pm

I can't find any info on the Triton. Can you post a link or picture?

Sounds interesting.

clarkea1 · Post by **clarkea1** » Mon 16 Oct , 2006 10:25 am

Brochure attached for Triton - it looks a nice machine

Alastair

Steve · Post by **Steve** » Mon 16 Oct , 2006 16:52 pm

The Triac and Triton are both in the process of being redesigned.

A new machine will be released in the new year! It will improve on both the Triac and Triton.

Watch this space for a full specification and photos

Triac whizz · Post by **Triac whizz** » Tue 17 Oct , 2006 10:50 am

I hope you keep in mind the home workshop guys when you're designing it, i.e,
breaks down into easily managed chunks for carrying up the garden, with retracting castors
has more travel in X Y Z,
spindle motor easily replaced with a larger motor,
replacement parts can be got from B&Q on a sunday

And I'm available to test the prototype at short notice

Post by **Denford Admin** » Tue 17 Oct , 2006 12:53 pm

Our design aims have been:

High performance solid construction,
Design and redesign the castings to be more cost effective and rigid - requiring less machining,
Quick and simple assembly,
Increased working area,
Commonality of parts wherever possible

Our control / software and drives are now more than capable of making the most of the machines.

So .... watch this space

davidimurray · Post by **davidimurray** » Wed 18 Oct , 2006 8:15 am

Out of interest, what is the idea behind having castings made? Generally everything seems to be going towards fabricate and machine or machine from solid.

Also any clues on what goodies are going to be offered - rigid tapping, 4th axis .....?

Cheers

Dave

Post by **Denford Admin** » Wed 18 Oct , 2006 18:16 pm

what is the idea behind having castings made?

From what I've learnt chatting to the designers, there are two major reasons:

1. Cast iron is far better at damping vibrations, whereas steel fabrications will "sing" and vibrate along with the cutter. Seems like the tried and tested methods are the best !

2. Lower cost - once the patterns are made, the actual bits are much cheaper to make as there is less machining and labour involved.

As for options, the 4th axis is available now, although I'm not sure how long it would last cutting steel

Heavy machining would need a different 4th axis attachment.

Rigid tapping could be possible as we have fitted high speed, constant torque spindle drives with encoder output to the Tritons in the past - it'd just be a case of doing the software the same as we do for the lathes' threading cycles. It'd all depend on other priorities and whether it is asked for (by someone wanting hundreds

)

davidimurray · Post by **davidimurray** » Thu 19 Oct , 2006 8:23 am

I will certainly agree with you - its nice to see a company going for quality over cost. I occasionally get involved with castings for steam engines and I know the cost can be horrendous! Unforunately, I must admit, that the quality of some of the chinese castings I've seen is getting very good.

On the control system side is this developed in house by yourselves? I take it you are aware of the G100 being developed by Geckodrive, they are also working on the unstallable stepper motor.

Cheers

Dave

Post by **Denford Admin** » Thu 19 Oct , 2006 9:50 am

Had a quick look at the Gecko G100 - looks OK for the money.
However, we've worked for years with Baldor to get where we are with our current controllers:
the Nextmove ST which has 3 axis 2Amp steppers built in
and the NextMove ES which is a 4 axis servo (3 closed loop servo, 1 stepper) controller.
Over the years we have worked with them to add some impressive features the main ones being:

300 vector move buffer for rapid contouring, which also scanned ahead to automatically reduce speeds around corners (this has got rid of stalling problems when 3D contouring at speed).
The move buffer is kept "topped up" via USB, so you never get any pauses in machining - all moves can be blended together smoothly.

Synchronise axes from an encoder input

Customisable "PLC" that sits on-board - running mutliple tasks independant of the PC

The price of these controls is not a great deal more than the Gecko, but I reckon the performance will be far superior.

How does the unstallable motor work ? Is it feedback which lets the drive know its just about to stall ?

davidimurray · Post by **davidimurray** » Thu 19 Oct , 2006 10:19 am

300 vector buffer - thats pretty impressive - on my software system at home I only run a 20 line buffer!

The unstallable project basically just has an encoder added to the motor. This is part of the G100 eventually. The great thing is that as one axis begins to slow/loose steps, the others will also be slowed to match. I know that the basic control loop is sorted - with work ongoing on the relations between axes. Mariss has undertaken a test whereby he clamps the motor shaft with a wet rag to prevent damage to the shaft. he then commands a move e.g. 100 revolutions and gradually tightens the clamp until steam is coming off the rag, as it does this the motor speed is reduced to get more torque rather than simply 'ignoring' steps. If he eases off the clamp the motor accelerates back up to speed and it does all this without loosing a step.

In all seriousness you should consider selling control systems - it is no longer a kitchen table industry. There are quite a few companies getting involved in it and the prices aren't exactly cheap. Most of the UK hobby machine tool suppliers seem to be selling CNC ready system for a few £k - normally 3 to 4 times the price of the basic machine. If you simply look at something like the Model Engineers Workshop they seem to have an article on CNC conversions in there every month.

Cheers

Dave

Post by **Denford Admin** » Thu 19 Oct , 2006 13:09 pm

you should consider selling control systems

The problem here would be the multitude of possible applications and we just wouldn't be able to support it all.
If you had a standard desktop mill or router, our software and control would support it quite easily. The problems will be disributing enough knowledge to support people writing their own Logic for toolchangers / guards / drawbars etc...

We've thought about it before, and I think the amount of support required, would out-weigh any benefit to us.

Maybe a core of expert users on a forum like this could work though - as long as the customers realise that they can't ring up for help after they've bought the "Denford Retrofit Kit" - unless its a faulty control

BTW - I like the sound of the unstallable motor more now - I've seen them in the past where they would simply stop the drive in order to not loose steps.

davidimurray · Post by **davidimurray** » Thu 19 Oct , 2006 14:21 pm

There is of course another way to look at - make the support your selling point. 'Yes we can do that for you sir but it will cost xxx'.

By the sounds of it, your biggest problem would be in catering for the wide range and agility in you control.

Are you aware of the Mach 3 SDK. Art has radically changed Mach 3 in the past year. You can now write a series of plugins that can communicate at DLL level with the Mach internals. Currently, Mach 3 in effect works like a front end, if your using the parallel port, you choose the parallel port plugin, G100 you choose the G100(ethernet) control. There are also others in progress like Galil interface cards etc. There is an enormous Mach community out there. So you could for example write a Baldor plugin for motion control, limit/home switches etc. Then when the user wants to add extras/expand the software they can turn the parallel port on and use that for I/O (or modbus!). Then the body of knowledge falls to the Mach community to get things sorted and reduces the burden on you guys at Denford. I imagine it as the best of both worlds. There is at least one USB plugin on the way. You can also use the plugins to import data to Mach as well, so you could pass data from Cam software directly into it.

Might be an interesting avenue to invetigate.

Cheers

Dave

Triac whizz · Post by **Triac whizz** » Thu 19 Oct , 2006 14:49 pm

This seems interesting, can the stepper drives be uprated? personally I like the sound of the servo version..

dave - I don't think you can use the parallel port when using one of the other plugins, at least thats my understanding from following the forum.

davidimurray · Post by **davidimurray** » Thu 19 Oct , 2006 15:09 pm

Triac Whizz - as far as I know at the moment it cannot be used but that is only becuase Art wants to ensure the stability of the G100 plugin first. I suspect there haven't been many requests for it so far else he would have opened it up.

Cheers

Dave

Denford Software & Machines

Denford Software & Machines

New Machines?

New Machines?