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I was havin a poke around in the files and I noticed that the cal grid seems to sit in a maybe obvious way on the bed - spiyda probably figured this out already.

This maybe?

http://anagram.net/nuts/Versatronics/RVxS-grid.jpg

Also, blnkgrd1.sys and blnkgrd2.sys suggest that rvplace holds the grid and cal numbers as 56x56 matrices. I also found that there are 6,272 rows in the cal grid part of rvdata.dat - which also suggests (conveniently) 2 off 56x56 matrices of x,y points. 56 btw is 27.5 inches / 0.5 cal grid spacing (+1 to make it even) and note the first column of the various matrices (blnkgrd1.sys / blnkgrd2.sys / rvdata.dat) is always blank.

Anyone buy that?

Alan

Hi,

OK - in the 1st instance I've ordered some 3d-printed nozzles (professional prints not consumer-level prints) for tool 1, 2 and 6. These promise to be cheap - if they work OK that is. I'll need to make or buy some brass inserts and probably drill out the nozzle hole to the right size. Actually I was just thinking this morning that the brass insert may be overkill and that, in future, they might just be plastic all through if the prints are smooth enough - which they may well not be. If this approach works, and it may well not, it would be pretty easy to make the plastic bits of all the nozzles - the camera cal one would be harder though.

Alan

Hey Mike,

>>> I just set up two RV1s with consecutive serial nos ( 167/8)

Ah mine is RV1S_152 and it doesn't have the com ports populated. And if I had known you might offer a set-up service

>>> Polymax Nitrile 8x1mm seem to work well

Ah good I had some of those in my order.

>>> DO NOT MOVE THE FID CAM

Ah yes, I had seen this warning reading the old forum posts, but thanks for the reminder. Actually, I might not have been clear, I was just trying to figure whether I could make the Z-axis stop a bit higher and which thing dictated the max Z travel (board, feeders, toolpost, FID focus distance etc). I'm thinking the tool rack is the lowest legitimate position of the Z-axis and therefore the stop could be max 4mm higher. I'll leave it for now until the whole thing is operational.

Alan

Anyone interested in resurrecting this topic? Seems to me that spiyda was getting fairly close?

From a post way back: Ed: "Ed - a while back i offered to do a training session on how to do the cal.. not a single taker.......i will be selling the equipment for this soon. "

Err, anyone know who Ed was?

Alan

p.s. is drawing CAL05 the calibration camera mount? Also, is it possible to say where the various drawings came from - I'm wondering whether any additional information could be obtained from the same source

Hi,

If there's a working 10x8 and a 3x12+3x16 I would happily purchase.

Alan

Hey Jason, sure no problem.

I'll wait a bit before sending an order in to see who else is interested. The Tool 6 / 0402 / 0.4mm nozzle and the Tool 1 / 0603 / 0.6mm nozzle are the same except for the actual nozzle hole so it would seem to make sense to get a bunch of the Tool 6 ones and then just drill out to 0.6mm for Tool 1.

I'm also getting some test 3D prints done by Shapeways (i.e. better quality than home 3D print) in 'Nylon' and two other materials. The plastic bit seems to be coming in at £6-7 (plus VAT shipping etc) in single units. If anyone here is actively using their RVxS right now and therefore can give a more informed opinion than me, let me know and I'll send some along. They won't be here for a coupla weeks yet. You'll need to have some spare brass bushes.

On the subject of bushes, I think it should be fairly easy to make them out of 12mm OD x 1.5 wall brass tube (e.g. BT12/15 from http://www.metalsmith.co.uk/metals-materials.htm) but I'm sure there's a better machinist here than me who can comment?

Finally my tool / drawing / o-ring spreadsheet fyi: http://anagram.net/nuts/Versatronics/RVxS Tools.xlsx. Which brings up two questions - what is the bush with o-rings RVT07 for? And why does the camera tool have an o-ring?

Alan

Ah interesting, OK I'll figure out how much I can increase the stop by and put it up on here. BTW here's the 1st quote I got for the acetal part of the conical nozzles. Actually these can be black acetal, black nylon, or black 30% glass filled nylon (I remember somebody suggested that) for roughly the same price. Actually there's a warning on the GF stuff that it may warp afterwards.

Alan

>>> RV Setup and Gerber work OK on Win7 for offline setup, only RV Place is hardware-dependent

Interesting, I was having problems with those under Win 7 (64-bit). I even tried something called 'Win XP Mode' which is a sort of virtualised XP under Win 7 (who knew ) and it wasn't happy. No problem, just an experiment.

>>> re having to assist the z axis when starting, you may find that the park position is way below any of the z axis heights used during placement. If that is the case, then you could do a quick fix and put a spacer on top of the z axis bottom stop so that it starts from higher up!

I see what you mean, that looks very do-able. Here's a snap of the lowest un-powered position vs the PC supports. Clearly the nozzles can't go much lower that the PCB in practice, but does the fiducial camera need to go lower? If not the end stop could be much higher - by 12mm maybe. I guess it still needs to trigger the bottom sensor.

At the risk of outstaying my welcome, can I ask this - there's a black plate above the head (red circle below) which looks like its just to keep light out and is usually glued to the top of the arm (unstuck in my case). On this machine, it fouls the orange belt a little. Is this normal, should it be thinner?

TIA, Alan

Thanks, interesting, then I'm guessing the latest OS that might support the two cards is maybe XP.

BTW I found that this ISD/SATA <-> USB device works well for slurping the contents of old IDE disks to somewhere safer:

"Bipra USB 2.0 to SATA/IDE Adapter Kit with Power Adapter for 2.5/3.5/5.25 inch SATA or IDE Drive"

https://www.amazon.co.uk/gp/product/B001A5SK56/

Interestingly the apps will start under Win 7 - but I have not got them to do all their file access OK yet.

For amusement here is the original Paul Mills patent:

http://anagram.net/nuts/Versatronics/WO8905566A1.pdf

Alan

p.s. The apps run apparently OK in Win XP without the same file access issues as Win 7 - this is without trying to access the camera or stepper driver cards.

>>> Win95/98 machines onto a network is getting to be something of a pig however

Ha ha ha - correct in one. The floppy drive doesn't work on this machine ... so I've tried, without success, an IDE<->SATA adaptor to read the hard disk and a TP-LINK PCI network card. There are various other odd adaptors / network cards etc on the way  There's some crazy stuff out there - floppy disk emulators that take USB sticks ... IDE/SATA<->USB links ... a US web site that focuses only on floppy disks and drives ... is that what they call the dark web? And I still don't have a copy of the calibration data off the machine yet.

I just ordered every type of o-ring for the machine (I count 5) from Polymax. The 'nozzle pickup' rings were a bit tricky and I ordered several sizes and learned a bit about o-ring % stretch and % squeeze  . Ho ho ho. Will put up my spreadsheet when I've checked I have the right ones. I'm also in the process of getting some nozzle quotes - I have a full set of nozzles but some are a bit battered.

Alan

>>> I don't think it's worth the effort of making it run under a later OS

It may well be folly, but I am keen to get out of the floppy / IDE / ISA era as it's hard to get replacement parts. Fun to see WIN95 run up again - it was a much more simple life then  and interesting to see how things have changed in 20 years. For mechanical you can still replace the wearing parts easily but modern-day PC / OS don't give you that luxury.

I have one question - the seller said that the known fault on the machine was that the z-axis needed to be 'helped to move up' at the start of the run and then it would run OK. I have noticed now, duh, that some of the arm covers are missing and the pinion is right on the end of the rack when everything is cold. So - does anyone have a snap or two of the arm covers so I can make up some replacements and does the pinion position mean anything to you? Reading between the lines it sounds like there was an ongoing fault on the arm. Some snaps attached.

BTW I saw some messages re replacing the rack & pinion - does anyone have any part numbers or manufacturers?

Alan

Hi,

We just recently bought the RV1S from Winsom Electronics in Somerset via Grove. We transported it last Thurs and have yet to look at it in detail. Assuming we can get it working to our satisfaction it'll be based in Somerset House in Covent Garden and we'll use it for fast turnaround of low volume projects.

It looks fairly clean and apparently hasn't been used for 6 or 7 years for production work. It looks like an old-ish model as it uses the two RS-232 ports on the host PC rather than on the ISA card and it's running WIN95 right now. The feeders that came with it were 2 off 10x8mm, 1 off 3x12mm + 3x16mm and a vib feeder and we ordered in from Grove a 3x24mm+2x8 feeder also.

I should say thanks to Mike for hosting this forum, and everone who has made contributions. I've scanned every RV hardware & software post and there's a wealth of useful info here.

One obvious question of course is whether it's possible to move it on from WIN97/98. I noticed this ISA->USB adaptor which apparently has a 'UNIVERSAL SOFTWARE LAYER'

http://arstech.com/install/ecom-prodshow/usb2isar.html

I guess the only way to know for sure it to buy one and see and I'll probably do this if/when we can get the existing hardware up and running. Any thoughts though? Any possibility of this working?

Alan