Honestly I do not remember. All I remember was looking through it and feeling like the time investment of trying to get it working was more than the cost of buying an ODrive. Owning two businesses, being a single father, and maintaining a few OpenSource projects only leaves so much free time. LOL
I have been reading this thread and happen to have a VESC, stock spindle + spindle motor, as well as one of the 190kV Flipsky 6054 brushless outrunners lying around. Did the Nomad stock spindle motor + VESC combo turn out to be any good?
If not, would the 6054 be worth the extra work of mounting? I like to imagine the increased torque would help in my aluminium and brass cutting endeavors, and the VESC + stock spindle motor seems like a very neat drop-in solution.
I don’t think anyone actually tried to cut with it, it was abandoned afaik.
I decided not to bother, myself. My plan is to do one of the following:
- Wait for @TonyDangerCoiro’s spindle
- And leave it as-is with the stock motor
- Or upgrade the motor to something beefier
- Replace the entire Z-axis carriage with something that can hold an AC spindle (e.g. Mechatron)
- Replace the entire Nomad with a machine better suited for milling metal (e.g. Shariff DMC2)
Hmm, I might just need to give it a go then seeing as I can revert it all to stock easily. Thanks!
@Vince.Fab @CthulhuLabs @Julien I stumbled on this video on empirical PID controller gain tuning that might be of interest to you and others. The internet is a wonderful thing!
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After looking again at the VESC data you provided for your Nomad motor/VESC load tests, it appears that the “Battery Current” in the associated file needed to be doubled to match what you posted. (The third chart in this earlier post is not correct, but apparently its too late to edit it now.) Here’s the results after doubling the input current. The values in your table appeared to be associated with your 4th load application.
So, you demonstrated that you could get 200 Watts out of that 78 Watt motor by driving it with over 500 Watts - that’s a lot of heat to get out of that small motor!
My guess is that the Nomad’s motor controller limits the current to a safe value of around the motor’s rated 4.17 Amps, which would provide this type of performance at the spindle assuming 88.6% net spindle/drive efficiency.
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@Vince.Fab did replaying the VESC Tool Logs in the software provide results like mine? How much of that stuff is available in real time? There’s appears to be so much free capability there (for monitoring and logging power, speed, accelerometers, etc.) that not using it would seem to be a shame. Some smart software guy, like @Moded1952, @CthulhuLabs, or @spargeltarzan could probably easily interface it to the machine controller (and software?) too.
Have you used that software to look at your MODKITA logs?
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I never cut with the stock Nomad spindle motor on vesc control, it had a hard enough time with heat soak in stock config.
And I have used the playback software but your graphs are better.
Time to get the Mod up and running again, just waiting for a custom spindle mount to show up. Also you might be interested that I’ve put a good amount of hours on the new Bantams outrunner bldc.
Do you know which outrunner? Is it belt drive? Pulley/gear ratio?
Assuming that you care to and can’t get motor current and speed from the motor driver (for cutting torque/force and power calculation/monitoring) you should be able to get it by using this stuff or maybe even this stuff. (With the voltmeter above since your Klein meter doesn’t have enough bandwidth.)
Might have already hooked it up to the VESC…might have seen huge potential power increase.
Its not my fault, they challenged me 
Replace it with an inrunner (to get the heat out) next? 
Hey all. I took a break from CNC stuff for a bit. Playing with my ODrive again and still running into issues with the 5.1 firmware. I cannot get anywhere close to the RPMs I was getting on 4.12. 5.1 though has sooooooo many nice features added that I really want to get it to work. Things like built in motor temp sensor support.
So ODrive just added a GUI that is super customizable. The data it is able to plot would make @gmack blush.
That is me graphing data for their devs so they can try to figure out why 5.1 is not working for me.
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Great - IMO BLDC spindles offer lots of advantages for CNC routers! It’s good to see the ODrive folks interested in pursuing it - thanks to you! 
Do they have data logging and replay too (like VESC)?
You can export as CSV the data from the graphs. No replay that I am aware of. It is a beta / initial release though so additional features will surely be added.
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So at this point the devs think that there might be a load issue on the ODrive Microcontroller that is causing me issues. 5.2 should have considerably lower load so I will try that when they release it.
Any chance they will provide a simple interface for speed/torque control on it?
That is actually pretty much in the GUI. You just have to add the controls you want.
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No direct analog or digital interface?
There are GPIO pins on the ODrive that can be configured to as ADCs and can control various settings. There is also a serial interface that my arduino is using. Not sure if that is what you are referring to though.