Hi, I'm looking at purchasing a WorkBee 1500 x 1500. The site I'm ordering from (I'm from South Africa) have the following options when it comes to controllers for this machine: GRBLDV8825 Mach3 - 4 Axis NVUM (Need to still purchase the Mach3 license separately) DDCS V3.1 I'm having a hard time to decide between these options. Any help would be appreciated. Also, does the choice of spindle I'm going use influence which controller I get, or doesn't it really matter? Thanks.
Do not get the GRBL Shield with DRV8825 drivers. It will not be an official Protoneer brand and instead will be a cloned and outdated version that was obsolete after GRBL 0.8. Not only is it obsolete, but it is under powered for a machine the size you want. The drivers will most likely overheat causing it to loose steps and therefore accuracy. I have no experience with the others nor do I know anything about their quality. If you want an actual controller that was designed for the Workbee and other genuine OpenBuild products that has drivers that are more than powerful enough for the size of machine you want get the BlackBox Motion Control System and it will be plug and play. If you need an entire bundle, then add this CNC Electronics Bundle to your list of choices, and do not forget to factor in product support after the purchase. You will definitely get great support from OpenBuilds. Here is a link to the Spindle documentation. docs:blackbox:connect-vfd [OpenBuilds Documentation]
Yeah grbl shield is mostly useless outside of 3D printers. The other two are Novosun options- one's a medium performance breakout board, one's a high performance fully integrated controller. There's likely some discussion about them on CNCZone as to whether they're actually worth having at all, I'd check out over there- they might be great, but we've had very few people here try them at all, maybe one or two that I vaguely recall. If you foresee needing a 4th axis at some point, you're kinda stuck with a non-grbl solution, but none of these options seem all that appealing to me. Ethernet SmoothStepper with Mach 3/4 is probably a more supported and robust way to go. Arduino + DM542 drivers or a BlackBox would be the better options for grbl-based 3-axis only work. In general, I'd be more concerned about belt drives on a pair of five-foot axes. Do they offer a screw version? And do they provide enough hardware to actually tension those screws into usability?
I am from South Africa too. The fedex rate directly from OpenBuilds is cheap enough to not go for the alternatives. Offspec plates that doesnt fit, out of spec bent extrusions, injection molded (instead of machined) leadnuts etc is going to drive you up the wall more than Loadshedding does. The fact that they recommend those control options is a warning already. Do you want to spend all that cash to have a machine that works, or a pile of stuff you have to buy twice to make it work? BlackBox was designed the South African way (; bulletproof as can be see docs.openbuilds.com/blackbox
Thank you for the replies. Lead CNC Mechanical Frame 1000x1000mm Open Source This is the machine I'm looking at. Screw driven. The BlackBox does seem like a much easier way to get up and running.
You touched on something I was also wondering about. What happens when the power does go out when a job is busy cutting. Does the location in the g-code get saved as its processed so that it can just continue cutting when the power comes back on or do you manually have to reset it?
Not at this time, but its pretty easy to edit the gcode, setup the modals and let it run further, as long as the machine has limits. Of course a UPS and clicking pause in time is even better
I like how they literally stole our pictures (; doesnt even bother taking their own photos. Doesnt bode well for good characters. The controller choice tells me they're reselling a certain chinese knockoff, adding profit to an aliexpress purchase, of a bad copy. you can do better!
If they're only offering AliExpress control boards, I wouldn't be entirely convinced they're not just drop-shipping the whole thing either?
Wanna have a laugh? Check their price to include a CNC shield and DRV8825s (; Currency converted by Google: these guys are taking a chance on us poor Zaffers! Thats a heck of a markup considering you can buy a knocked off cnc shield + 8825s (that are unable to drive your cnc, yet offered as an option) for about $10 on Ali) You can get a BlackBox and get it Fedex'ed to ZA for about the same price
Geez, I've spent so much time researching everything and trying to figure out the correct configuration etc. Is there a 1500mm x 1500mm CNC machine out there or is this wishful thinking? The things I want to cut are quite large and I would really not want to go under the Workbee 1510 size. Why is the 1510 Workbee on this site belt-driven but the on Ooznest | 3D Printers & CNC Machines | Parts, Kits & More is screw-driven? Can these machines use a spindle rather than a router? Should I assume the SPAM 3d machines are also inferior quality? Thanks for your help so far.
Lmaooooo... Two-fiddy for a CNC shield! Yes. There's a lot of EMI mitigation involved though. VFD's are extremely noisy. Based on the complaints I've seen here, yes.
