ELEKTOR FORUMS

(This is mainly a translation of my posting on the Dutch Elektuur forum,
so sorry for any mistakes in this posting, because my native language is Dutch).

[ messages slightly edited for grammar and spelling - Editor ]

Well, on Thursday March, 22th at 11:41 am, I heard the doorbell.
Trough the window I could see a little man standing on my frontdoor, and on driveway I saw a UPS truck parked. My Profiler had finally arrived. My wife ordered the Profiler as a Christmas present, on the day my January 2007 edition of Elektor arrived, somewhere mid-December.
(This is a very long time for getting a device like this delivered,
I did have REF1 ! (But UPS also made a mistake, actually the package
was also delayed several days, caused by UPS)

I started unpacking everything, and all my 3 desks were cluttered with pieces of the Profiler. (All 3 desks do measure about more than 4 meters and 60 centimetres)
In the box is a letter, stating where you can download the assembly instructions, the actual software and additional information.
(I don't think Colinbus would like it, if I state that URL in here)

First thing I did, was verifying if every piece was actually delivered, following the "list of components" which I downloaded.
This took me almost an hour. I noticed that the amount of a certain type of screw did not match with the component-list.
I emailed Colinbus, telling how many screws I had, and what is on the list. Within an hour, I received an email back, telling me that the suuplied amount was correct, but that there was a mistake in the component list. After this, I started building the Profiler.

Everything turned out well, but there are also a few errors in the assembly instructions. I mentioned these errors to Colinbus, and they told me that they were going to fix the manual. Yesterday I downloaded the manual again, and I saw that some of the errors had been fixed, and that they also updated the component list.
(example of errors: Some screws for fixing ball-bearings where not shown in the manual (these are not yet fixed, but with a bit of common sense, you will see this problem yourself), another problem was that some screws had to be M4 instead of M3 (this is fixed in the manual)).

When I came to the point of soldering the wires, I noticed that small pieces of black heat shrink sleeving were not included. I don't think they will include it in the still-to-be-delivered Profilers. I ran to a store here in our small town, and bought some of these "shrink tubes". At lunch-time I left my hown for about 1 hour and half to get lunch with my wife. At 9 PM the whole Profiler was finished, including cabling etc ...

So, after this, it was time for a first test. I connected the Profiler to the PC and I installed ColiDrive. After a few 'dry' tests, I noticed that everything worked well. I did not notice any blacklash on X-,Y- or Z-axis. After the dry test, I installed a milling bit, and a piece of MDF wood. (on top of the MDF baseplate)
I milled some little squares and triangles on that MDF plate, by directly controlling the Profiler manually with the ColiDrive software.
This turned out really nice

Oh well, after this, I was satisfied, took a shower, ate a pizza with my wife and watched some TV.

Next day after work, I showed the Profiler to my wife, and showed again a few rectangles and triangles processed using manual control.
My wife, not as technical as me, asked me if it also could make circles. Sure, it can make circles
So, I installed ColiLiner (conversion program for Gerber & Excellon), I drew a big circle in Eagle, exported a Gerber file, imported it into ColiLiner, and noticed that I could not export it to a file for the ColiDrive software, because the ColiLiner software needs to be activated with a license. *#@!* It was Friday after work, so already about 6 PM, I was sure I would not get a license before Monday.
I emailed Colinbus for the activation key, and the key arrived after the weekend, so during weekend, I could not use the ColiLiner software.

I noticed that Gerber, Excellon, HPGL & DeskProto where also file types that I could directly import into ColiDrive. (according to the file filters in ColiDrive).
So I tried to import Gerber & Excellon directly into ColiDrive, no luck, errors in the software. Aargh!
After that, I fired up AutoCad, installed an SPHGL plotter driver from within Autocad, and I "plotted" a small drawing to a PLT file.
I imported this in ColiDrive, and it actually showed up, but when I tried to mill it, the ColiDrive software simply didn't do a thing

Oo well, there is also a "mill holes" option in the ColiDrive software itself, so I milled some small holes with this option, but my wife told me I could also do this with a drill, and that she wanted to see a larger circle. Hmm, I found an option "circle" in the ColiDrive software, so I wanted to try this one. I gave it a diameter of 10 centimeters. I did choose a milling tool with a depth of 1 mm, and started to mill. I was very dissapointed, the Z-axis did go down, all the way ! Even the head of the FERM-tool was completely pushed into the MDF-plate ...

(Long post, I will continue in a new post ...)

...

So, after revision 2 of the software, I'm able to actually do something with my machine.
I found a GIF file on the Internet:
http://users.telenet.be/wauters_pauwels/world.gif
(not the best quality, I agree ...)

I opened up this gif in Adobe Illustrator, and with the panoticum vectorizer 1.2 plugin, I converted this GIF file to a vector image,
and saved it as an SVG-file:
http://users.telenet.be/wauters_pauwels/world.svg

I opened this SVG file in Microsoft Visio 2007, and saved it as a DXF file:
http://users.telenet.be/wauters_pauwels/world.dxf

In AutoCad, I created an SHPGL plotter, and set it to "plot to file". I opened the DXF file in Autocad, and created a PLT file trough plotting to a file:
http://users.telenet.be/wauters_pauwels/world.plt

You probably wonder why all these steps Well, I installed a standard HPGL printer driver onto Windows, and tried to plot to a file that way, but this doesn't seems to work ...
I'm lucky to have licenses for all these software packages trough the company I work for, but I'm sure there are cheaper alternatives.
(Maybe CorelDraw ?)

This PLT file, can be directly opened in ColiDrive and milled.
This is the result:
http://users.telenet.be/wauters_pauwels/profiler_experiment_3a.jpg
http://users.telenet.be/wauters_pauwels/profiler_experiment_3b.jpg
You will noticed that the "U.K." is not there, this is my own fault.
I forgot to change the milling tool in ColiDrive. ColiDrive was thinking that he was milling with a 6 millimeter tool, LOL ...

I also engraved my name in a mirror:
I created a text object in ColiLiner and exported that file, which
can be imported into ColiDrive:
http://users.telenet.be/wauters_pauwels/profiler_experiment_2a.jpg
http://users.telenet.be/wauters_pauwels/profiler_experiment_2b.jpg

Some pictures from my hobby room:
(It's actually our garage, and the car still fits into the garage)
http://users.telenet.be/wauters_pauwels/garage_1.jpg
http://users.telenet.be/wauters_pauwels/garage_2.jpg
http://users.telenet.be/wauters_pauwels/garage_3.jpg
http://users.telenet.be/wauters_pauwels/garage_4.jpg
http://users.telenet.be/wauters_pauwels/garage_5.jpg

to be continued ...

Thanks very much for your informative posting.

The term "Fit for purpose" springs to mind:
http://www.dti.gov.uk/consumers/fact-sheets/page38311.html

Thanks for the informative post and taking the trouble to post here in the english forum.

I would suggest you give Colinbus formal written notification of allowing them a fixed period of, say seven days, to supply you with a working software program else you would like to return the goods and expect a full refund of your money.

small update:


I'm now able to drill holes from an Excellon file correctly.
Problems was with trailing zeroes. when changing to leading zeroes,
the problem is gone

okidoki, I think I'm going to make my first PCB correctly now ...


best regards,
Kris

Kris, thanks for your posts and for good news!
I already mentioned in my post here http://www.elektor.com/default.aspx?tabid=29&forumid=23&postid=2113&view=topic
that I'm looking for a way to use Profiler not just for milling, but also for automatic solder paste dispensing and SMD pick-and-place. And now I clearly see that this idea can be realized!
Thanks again!

About the software, isn't the profiler just a CBR-40 in kit-form? According to Colinbus, they have delivered loads of the CBR-machines. Aren't they using the same software as profiler? Then why is the software still so full of bugs as to be close to useless for their intended use?

Stig

If you take a look at the screenshots in the January 2007 edition of Elektor, you see that these screenshots actually show different software than what's delivered with the Profiler.
The Colinbus User Interface is now called ColiDrive.
(that user interface looks the same for 99%)
The ColiLiner is something completely different.

In the first version that we received (2.2.0.13) with the Profiler,
there were even some development buttons and debug information available in the application.
All bugs I've discovered so far have been confirmed, and almost all are solved in the release of today. (2.2.0.19)

I don't think that this software was released with the CBR-40,
because even some basic functionality contained bugs.
(it's not that I do rocket science with the machine, until now my first concern was milling a simple PCB!)

But hey, the main developer at Colinbus is a good guy, he even worked during the Easter weekend to get the new release ready


Best regards,
Kris

I know ... actually, I had the same feelings

But it could be worse. Imagine that the software was OK and that the hardware was bad
Anyway, I was the first one to use the Profiler (REF1), and I think this project just grew bigger than they could imagine.
And you can use other software with the Profiler as well, or write your own ... (alldough it doesn't come cheap, it still is and remains a hobby project I think).

best regards,
Kris

Posted Bypeturj on 10/04/2007 15:25:57 The EMC2 program operates primarely through the parallel port of a PC computer and the signals are set up as a stepper motor step and direction signals. I belive, however, that there is also a serial port driver in there somwhere (and a source code).

I have checked out the EMC2 site (including the Wiki), and reasearched this subject a bit. AFAICT, EMC2 relies on having direct control over the motors the drives each axis, and any sensors required. There has been much talk of writing a driver / drivers for "intelligent" CNC machines (read: machines with a built-in controller, which accepts commands through an interface (for example, serial) to do its work), but so far, nobody has writen such a driver.
However, I would love to be proved wrong on this.

I am however wondering if the EMC2 could be adapted for the Colinbus Profiler by a knowledgable person. It seems to be simpler than writing everything from scratch.

The most often suggested solution when people asks "how can I control my (intelligent) CNC machine with EMC2" seems to be "rip out the controller and install a step / direction controller that can be controlled by a standard EMC2 interface".

If one replaced or reprogrammed the existing controller so that the machine would understand G-code directly, the choice of software would also increase a bit.