I would say the biggest difference is that the Black Box has higher amperage drivers so you can reliably use the larger stepper motors with it. That being said, I have never owned an Xpro. I have attempted to use a CNC shield with the same drivers that the Xpro uses (DRV8825 - unless it changed in V4). The drivers got real hot even with a large (household) fan blowing on them, the motors would get hot, and the machine would start missing steps. They are basically great 3D printer stepper drivers not CNC mill drivers (IMHO). I moved to DQ542MA drivers with an Arduino and all my troubles went away. It is a great set-up, but complicated for a new person like me at the time. Lots of soldering. The new Black Box looks like it gets you the amperage you need for high torque steppers with a simple plug and play hook-up for less than what I spent on 4 DQ542MAs and a genuine Arduino (or clone for that matter). When I build my next machine (CNC lathe), I plan to go with that. For my K40 conversion, I will probably use some older drivers I already have with an Arduino nano.

 

If you have missing parts, please reach out to http://support.openbuilds.com/support/home

 

Good stuff, still, counts for the next person reading it. If you need help, reach out to the store

 

As there is no specific E-stop input on the system is there potential for using the door sensor input? Any limitations or benefits to this? Could the door sensor input be used simply for a pause button?

 

Door signal pin is wired to Feed Hold pin (standard Grbl). If you enable Door a toggle switch could possibly work as play/pause. Else its only going to pause (feedhold)

 

I've been keeping watch on the forum, i think yours might be first to run
Exciting!

 

(; so the title is still up for grabs (;
(You only win my respect - but cant wait to see who is the first customer to run theirs hehe)


Oh, and i LOVE the photo!

 

Full volume is 3.2A RMS (minimum on the other hand is about 1A, so the dial in between isnt that sensitive) - but watch your thermals, at full tilt, climate depending, you might see the little red exclamation marks on the front come on (; - also at full power, those motors are SCARY! I dial them back out of respect for human limbs (; (And 44degC ambient summer)

Start with them upright, center, 12'o'clock - Once you start tuning the machine you can tune them a little higher as needed.

 

Chillimonster you've been beat!

OpenBuilds

 

(; No 2 will still count high in my books!

 

Congrats No2! You shall be remembered!

Using limits as an E-stop: Grbl is quite set on pin assignments, but you can dig through the source and check

However, I fail to see the point of a e-stop on the controller. It should be on the power, preferably the end of the extension cord closer to the door. I want to be able to hit the estop while running away! and it should cut power to EVERYTHING at once!

Wiring in the Abort on Grbl to an emergency switch, i just dont get it. By the time you hit an e-stop, recovering where in the job you were is unlikely, it already crashed, caught fire, gone off track, else why would you hit the estop? - it should be POWER

 

The Stop and E-Stop software buttons in OpenBuilds control are immediate in nature, good enough for an Oops I started in the wrong spot. Clicking play, moving mouse to stop is 50px away (;

 

Just out of curiosity, after loading the Gcode, does the Blackbox and OB program show how long the job would take?

 

B

BlackBox is aimed at beginners, thus have integrated drivers to make things easy to hook up.

For external drivers, why pay for a box with onboard drivers if you wont need them. Just get a cheap Arduino running Grbl. See Kyo's wiring videos

 

We had it in a for a while, but its surprisingly hard to estimate gcode runtime (machine acceleration, between different machines, makes huge differences) - so removed. It also slows down the gcode parser to calculate the move time. Easier than fighting with users who complain its inaccurate (;