My Foreman Elite came last week. My electrician came this morning and installed the subpanel and dedicated circuits for the machine. The machine is built and ready to go. I’m so excited!
It has a 2.2kw 220V water-cooled spindle, chiller, and all the bells and whistles. It’s time to start learning! It powered up, homed, and jogged fine. I installed the spindle, VFD, and chiller. I was all set to spin up the spindle for the first time. I powered up the machine and homed it. I noticed that the VFD was not on. All connections are made and it’s plugged in. The switch above the power cable is on and switching from auto to manual doesn’t do anything. It’s dark. I watched some videos on YT and they are pretty good, but I can’t figure it out yet. It’s late and I’m tired. I’m going to call it a day and start fresh in the morning. I’m just trying to figure out where to start the learning process. LOL It’s going to be a long journey, but I’m up for it!
One other thing I’ll throw in, looking through the machine settings and such, I noticed that you can set the machine for inches or metric. I had always used inches until I got pretty deep into 3D printing. I started doing everything with that in metric. I even started doing a lot of my woodworking in metric. In my research during my decision on which machine to purchase, I saw several people reporting that when they switched their machine to metric, it gave them a ton of trouble and they couldn’t just go back to inches. I don’t plan on going back and forth but I’m a little bit scared to change from the default inches to metric before I even get started. Is switching really a problem?
I have only ever used metric and have never had issues.
I am not familiar with switching units, nor what could have caused issues for others.
I think if you choose metric in all your software, and set up the machine correctly for metric, you should be fine.
usually the machines compute in metric internally and use a formula to convert from and to inches, but in engineering, and many other sectors, like medecine, military, vehicle construction, machinery, science, etc., metrication is a fact und the USA switched to SI units a long time ago. The strongest resistance against metric units seems to be in the construction sector. The USA were one of the first nations to turn their back to the kingdom’s units, opting for freedom units, the SI units, like France after the revolution. See Metrication in the US. So if you’re used to metric, you have practically entire mankind with you.
Thanks! That helps a lot. It’s a long journey, but once I know everything is up and running, I have to get a plan together to start learning Carveco and general machine operation.
I got up this morning and started troubleshooting. There is 220V at the plug when I plug in the VFD. It is dead and won’t light up. I don’t see a fuse anywhere. Is there possibly one inside the enclosure?
I have no experience with the that vfd and its plastic housing and wiring, but a VFD is a device intended to be mounted in an earthed control cabinet. On the door of such a cabinet, you usually have a power switch, an emergency stop switch, and a reset świtch which requires to be pressed to restart after the release of the emergency switch. Here you can see all three from the back in the VFD cabinet’s door:
