Monday, September 19, 2011

Wolfgang Engineering Spindle Arrived!

The Wolfgang Engineering TB-650 spindle and it's associated variable speed power supply arrived today.  The spindle and mounting hardware looks great.  A fine piece of precision machined goodness.  to be fair though, I can tell that the collet is indeed hand-made.  I can see a slight mis-alignment in one of the slots, but it should still work fine. 

The variable speed power supply is another story.  What I received was a standard 12V power supply, commonly available on Ebay, a "servo consistancy master" module and a tiny little electronic speed control module.  This was all contained within a generic plastic electronics box.  Unfortunately, none of the components were secured inside the box, so they were all banging around inside.  As far as I can tell, the servo module is used to generate a pulse width modulated signal that is fed into the electronic speed control that ultimately drives the motor.  By the way, the motor is the same type of motor that you use on a remote controlled car.  He must be an RC hobbiest to provide two components commonly used in that hobby.  So, if I had to do it over again, I'd look elsewhere for the electronics portion of this.  I suspect it is tested and works though, so we'll push forward!

I'm going to take the contents of the power supply box and just mount those to a piece of ply-wood and screw that to the wall.  This will also allow the power supply to get access to air for cooling purposes.  It had no chance to stay cool inside that electronics box with no circulation fan at least.

Unfortunately, the mounting plate for my Zenbot has not arrived yet, despite being ordered over a week ago.  I checked status with Shaun late last week and he told me that all his machines had been tied up and he didn't have a chance to get it done just yet.  He committed to get it done either last Friday or over the weekend.  I've yet to hear that it was done and shipped yet though.  I may end up having to make my own mounting plate if this gets delayed much more.  I prefer to have the official mounting that Zenbot supports if I can, but, we'll see.


Picture of the Wolfgang Engineering TB-650 that I received:


My home-made variable power supply arrangement.  The electronics all came from Wolfgang Engineering, but needed a better setup.  I mounted them to this board:

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