Sam,
You said programing the controller was a learning experience. Can you elaborate a little on that? Im not a technology guru, to say the least!!!! Im an old man with a young mans wants.

If you had access to CPU, would you still buy the stand alone controller or just the controller board to connect to computer. (My wife works on cpu's so I have access to them.). If you think stand alone, which would you go with now vs the one you used?

I was thinking maybe a hybrid router/plasma.. Any comments on that? I watched a viedo on that and it would be really cool to do both on one machine.

 

Hey Sam,
Im about ready to make the plunge!! What controller do you think you would get now? Any other different things you would do?

 

Hello all! I am new to the forum, but I have enjoyed reading all of the good info on the site. I am the son (and the one with the brains) of chuck in this thread. All joking aside, I will be helping him with this project and both of us are stupid especially about cnc routing or anything involved. However, we are pretty persistent!

I will have many questions as well, but my first is about the designing software. I have just started using autodesk inventor. I have been using it to do some 3D printing. I assume that you can use this for cnc? If so, is it a simple process to convert the design to a compatible form for your controller? Do you convert it to g code in order to rout it? Thanks again for any help!

 

Great minds think alike!!!

My build is slightly different, 15mm width steel reinforced PU belts run internal to the C-Beam with tension plates on either end of the C-Beam to allow full tension. T12 screws on the High Z axes as well.

Still working on the X axis system, I am considering rack / pinion as well as belt, waiting to see which will be more cost effective, probably belt drive.

Custom Gantry plates also use 8mm bolt wheel sets for extra rigidity (no danger of coming off the rails) and allow me to position the Z and the X C-Beams towards the back of the gantry. This gives extra space on the X axis and puts the Z gantry nearer the centre of the X 'High Z' gantries' so less twist should occur.

Fortunately in the UK we have the option of longer than 1.5M c-beam so I can fit a 3M straight in for the Y axes if I want to but the joint method of two of 1.5M c-beams would still work well a long as alignment was given a lot of attention.

 

That is a very interesting build.

 

Hey Sam,
Can you take a picture of the x axis motion actuator mounted. And any other pics you can. I've ordered parts, so now I'm getting nervous. You have a piece of vinyl siding, I guess its just a shield for electronics? What about the wiring going to the ceiling?

 

How did you decide the location to drill the idler pulley locations?

 

Sam,
You said you used arduino in a previous cnc router. Would it work with the setup you just built? What about a raspberry pi? I don’t know much about them but I think they are similar to one another. Assuming you could use one of them, would you need the control board (like the one you suggested to chuck in earlier post) to go with them? I know these are stupid questions, but I’m a little lost when it comes to controlling this thing...

 

Thanks for the awesome dust boot recommendation! Price is also amazing! I purchased one by the same company and its coming tomorrow!! Most boots are $100+ ridiculous!

 

What hardware did you used between your gantry plates on the x - axis?

?mm screw - plate - shim- wheel - shim - ?mm spacer - shim - wheel - shim - plate - locknut?

Thank you so much for answering all of our questions!

+Edit: Is this information in your step file?+

 

Would a raspberry pi 3b+ be able to control the stepper motors through the gpio pins? I have read the raspberry pi will control stepper motors, but I am not sure they will handle the amperage draw of these motors? Would you need the raspberry pi and a controller board to handle the amps? Thanks!

 

I like it! Thank!

 

Typically the rpi would be used to push the gcode to the controller that drives the stepper drivers (using cncjs, for example) - so no, the rpi will not control the motors, but can act as a passthrough to get the gcode to the controller

 

ok Im really slow; so exactly what do you need to get from cpu (thats what Im planing on using for now), to run the nema 23 stepper motors.Or maybe I should be asking to run the entire machine. If its a controller board, which would you use for this setup .Sam told me to research and I did but still confused. Thanks

 

I agree with Peter - the Blackbox will get you up and running in no time.

 

So if you get the black box, would you still need the dm556 drivers? It says it includes drivers?? Also, if you get the black box you would be limited to controlling 3 axis. If you ever wanted to upgrade to control more than 3? Thanks all!

 

BlackBox is essentially an Arduino Uno, 4 DM542s, a relay and a bit of terminal plug IO in a box. You shouldn't need anything else.

If you want more axes in future, the best bet right now is either LinuxCNC (control runs on PC, needs parallel port and/or expensive BOBs) or grblHAL (runs on a 32bit ARM micro board, should be cheap, needs external drivers etc). But you could probably get some support with the latter from @phil from seattle. Seems to (I haven't looked into it too hard yet, I use LinuxCNC) take the best parts of LinuxCNC and simplifies them using grbl, which sounds ideal for a lot of projects.

 

What length of screws did you use to secure the c-beam to the XL gantry plates?

 

Excellent! Thanks for the pictures too!

 

Hey Sam,
Got several questions for you. Bet you didnt know you were opening up this can of worms.
Trying to put this together by pictures is tough on an old dumb man.
1. In the pic I see a piece of aluminum angle under the plate running down x y axis. Not sure what its for.
2. Did you just drill and screw through the aluminum plate you made into the c-beam? The one you used to mount motor.
3. I was thinking of letting cbeam hang over table 3-4 inches. I built table 5x8. That would give me a little more length. I think the c-beam is plenty strong enough for that. Your opinion?
Thanks for all your help
Chuck