Turning Off Your ShopBot

[ron_moorehead]

Hi,

I have a question, how many people turn off their ShopBot at night. I have a PRT Alpha and almost never turn my machine off. Normally I only will turn it off during power outages and most the time it turns it’s self off, and if I am going to be gone for a week or more from the shop. I do run my machine almost daily for three to four hours. I have seen some post lately about people turn their machine off each night. Does it hurt it to leave it on? I was just wondering.

[harryball]

I give my bot an hour or so after I finish cutting before shutting it down. We have large numbers of thunderstorms that just popup in the summer and sometimes even in the winter. I never want to be concerned about rushing back to shut the bot off. When I'm working in the shop all day, I'll leave it on all day even if I'm not cutting for more than a few hours.

Leaving it on should not harm the bot, being on during brown outs, surges, ligtning strikes etc... will greatly increase the odds of damage though.

/RB

[Brady Watson]

I leave my Alpha on all the time...it's been on for about 3yrs straight
The PRS Standard gets shut down every night though...and if you have a spindle, you'll want to turn off the control box to save hours on your cooling fan.

-B

[mikeacg]

RB,

What is your reasoning behind waiting to shut it down? I just got my machine so I am looking for anything that will help me make it last.

Mike

[harryball]

Cool down and temperature normalization after running. Also, I may want to do some more work and just don't know it yet :-)

Without a spindle I probably wouldn't care as much, but I do want the cooling fan to cool the internals of the spindle. I don't fret if I need to turn it off sooner nor if I leave it running overnight so long as there are no storms.

/RB

[mikeacg]

I have a spindle too so I will remember to heed your warning.
I am working a day job so I don't have the luxury of more work after I think I am finished at night (The city has a 10:00 pm curfew on noise - I can't wait to move back to the country so I can run my sawmill and now the ShopBot).
I designed my first job in Aspire and ran it - my first job on the Buddy as well this afternoon. I am buzzing! As soon as my batteries are recharged I will post pictures. Two digital cameras and neither one was ready!

Thanks RB!

Mike

[magic]

No matter how small the drain on the power is I go around and unplug everything I can and turn off circuit breakers at night.

My electric bill last month was 43 dollars and I'm in an 1470 SQ' industrial building.

[erik_f]

you must not live in NY state the taxes on my electric were more than that

[dana_swift]

I cant think of any reason the electronic equipment associated with our bots should be cooled down prior to removing power. When the power is off it will cool down to room temperature by itself. The latent heat should not damage any nearby components. Having warm electronic equipment does not benefit accuracy or anything else.

Mechanics on the other hand can benefit from being warmed up and cooled down slowly. Incorrect viscosity of lubricants, as well as differential thermal expansion can wreck bearings. So it makes sense to cool down the router/spindle, but not the electronics.

I keep my bot powered any time I expect to make cuts, but when it comes to clean-up time the power comes off until the next bot session. (My bot is an alpha also, although I don't see that as a factor.)

When an individual cut is finished the router shuts down without any specific cooling period, even though it may be beneficial to do that, especially after a long workout. It may be instructive to measure the router temperature with an IR thermometer to see how warm it gets when it is cutting at near capacity. (anybody happen to know?)

So if you want to leave your bot on when it is not cutting, it just costs a little electricity. Leaving it on for long periods of time just accumulates on the bill. Either way its really just a personal preference.

D

[dauntless]

I am going to start leaving my bot on for the duration of each pattern cut, to see if that stabilizes where it thinks it is.

It often takes me 3-4 days to complete cutting a pattern, which can be up to 2' x 7' x 6", and involve 3 or 4 tool changes. I run my bot up to 10 hours a day, but have been shutting it down each night. The next morning the Z is always lost, and usually the X and Y as well, which entails a laborious process to reacquire "home". Hopefully, leaving the bot on will retain its position better.

[dana_swift]

Stan, I wasn't speaking of maintaining the setup overnight. Currently setups are always lost when the bot is powered down. The ability to re-setup accurately depends on how you determine the zeros in the first place.

In order to get higher precision setups I have been switching to a method that touches off shoulder bolts in the BT-32 table grid. I am using a modified "center in hole" routine, which is "center on bolt". Its still under development, but looks very promising. I will post details when I am using it as my new standard operating procedure. My hope is I can achieve a 0.002 consistent position between resets, but I have not measured that yet. Stay tuned-

This new method allows the machine to be shut down and setup restored complete with all X,Y, and Z zeros. In the meanwhile I leave the machine on (and vacuum) until all related cuts are finished so nothing moves.

D

[dauntless]

Good stuff, Dana...thanks! I, too, was thinking along the same lines, and told my wife yesterday that I plan to establish a 3-axis reference point by making a center-punch mark on the home-end cross-beam next to the waste board. That way at the start of each project I can record home's position relative to that point, and almost no matter what befalls the project I can always rapidly and accurately reacquire home.

As it is, I am now 19+ hours into an estimated 25 hour project (two more tool changes to go), and by not turning off the controller, the alignment appears spot-on. I can quit and shut down the pc, but by leaving the controller on and the tool where it stops, and writing down the code line number, restarting is a snap.

Stan

[bcondon]

Stan and Dana

Could you set the gantry to 0,0,0 at the end of the night, shut down and then after powering up,
enter a Z3 so the machine thinks it is 0,0,0 where you left it?

does the gantry move at all on starup and shutdown? I have not seen this in my short usage...



Something else I have been thinking about is related to flexible manufacturing where I want to manufacture 15 standard products. These products would have their own removable waste board and their own vacuum hold down. In this case, the entire waste board will come off the machine. To realign, I was planning on placing
a point on each end of the waste board to realiagn as 0,0 and 24, 96. Any reason this would not work?

[dana_swift]

I suppose that might work, but just one bump and all bets are off.

Its easier to re-zero everything in my opinion and be safe.

What I do is mount custom vacuum fixtures for each part I make. They bolt to the BT-32 table tapped holes. I don't change the spoilboard, just the individual vacuum fixtures. Using shoulder bolts to hold the fixtures and the built-in prox switches I have done what you describe without the need to keep in setup overnight with the power off.

The new system will be one step better as I can touch off the fixtures so if any movement or repeatability problems with the prox switches happens it is compensated for.

Good luck-

D