Good afternoon all, does anyone know if there is a UK suppler at all??
Really really want one of these hehe.

 

Does this board support the probing feature of GRBL 0.9?

 

Got OX and xPro (not newest Nov 14' version) up and running. It's flashed with Grbl 0.9g. Printed Skapeoko test pattern with pen and noticed rough running (mostly on "Y" axis I think) where the large circle touches the exterior box (if you zoom in you can see the jagged lines). The machine slows down near these points, and you can actually see it moving roughly as it's running.

"Y" is by far the noisiest axis, not nearly as smooth as "X" or "Z"

I've played with current pots on various settings.

I've checked belt tension.

I'm currently running all steppers on 1/8th microstep (should I try 1/16 or 1/32 on "Y" and reset $101 appropriately?)

Can I have "Z" and "X" at 1/8 and "Y" at 1/16 (or 1/32)?




Really Big Pic of Test Pattern

 

Looks better than what I can get thus far from my Y axis (as well, odd eh ?)

What are the specs on your steppers and power supply ?

I have the CNC xPro with previous release of GRBL (0,8). My Y problem seems to be the steppers I bought are recommended for 24-48V power supply and I'm using a 12V. Any moves of more than an inch or 2, only in Y axis, falls short. Combine with X or Z movement and it gets worse ... but only the Y seems affected. I suspect, and hope, it's a lack of juice to the steppers.

I have two 24V on their way to me, first one to arrive will hopefully put me back on track.

Can the CNC xPro I have be upgraded to 0.9 ? I thought there was a bit of port swapping done between the two releases. I guess mine would just have the wrong screen printing for those few ports. Rest should be ok ?

Anything being done with the 'expension' port/bus on the CNC xPro ? Maybe the probe attaches there ? I believe a pendant also for 'remote' manual control ...

 

Currently using OpenBuilds Nema 23 steppers with a 24V 20A power supply. Like I said, I've tried the current at pretty much all settings and "Y" still sounds "rough"

I had no problem flashing the GRBL 0.9g. As far as the pin swap is concerned, I got this from Mike at SparkConcepts:

"It appears that the Zlimit pin will remain on the D12 pin unless the Variable Spindle Speed Output is enabled in the config.h file before compiling. It appears the linked hex file for 0.9g has not enabled the VSSO."

I'm using Universal Gcode sender which seems to work a little better than GRBL Controller, at least for me!

 

One of the two 24V power supplies should be real close now ... hoping for tomorrow so I can get back to my build this weekend, but it might be early next week with customs and the weekend so close.

Yes, the Y, A (Y clone) and X pots are actually at maximum setting. Z is ... at about 3/4. Prior tests were not doing long moves... at least not checking for accuracy on maximum travel. They were mostly 'warm ups'.

Yes, on the longer movements, the 'shortfall' seems quite consistent. Shorter movements seem to be good. It only happens with both Y steppers, the others seem dead-on. So I am hoping it is just a lack of juice when controlling the 2 NEMA 23 at same time, as well as with one or both of the other two (X is NEMA 23, identical to Ys; Z is a NEMA 17). Most recent tests were with moves within a single axis at a time to 'debug' situation. I could disconnect a Y at a time, loosening the belt, to confirm ... but I'll just be waiting for the first 24V to arrive for now.

The 12V power supply used thus far is a 30 or so amps. The newb I am figured it was more amps that were needed.

So the precompiled 0.9g should be fine, pins and spindle control ? I'll go check the wiki in due time. Right now I don't want to introduce a change prior to figuring out my Y axis situation.

 

Hi Guys,

So after about 10 hours work I have got my Ox mostly together and wanted to test out the electronics.

I am relatively familiar with the mechanical side of things but am a novice with electronics. I have the new V2 model and it came with absolutely no documentation.

After a long while I managed to find some drivers from a random website and got it connected to my computer via Universal G-Code Sender. Are these drivers correct? http://www.ftdichip.com/Drivers/VCP.htm

I would be interested in seeing how others are configuring/setting up this controller with the Ox as I have managed to get all 3 axis running but am also have an issue with the rough sounding Y axis. @Sc00ter and @Izzy did you manage to find a solution to this?

Here's a link to a video of mine running. http://instagram.com/p/wVoa3PP7-j/

I'm also having an issue where during movement the power supply shuts down and noting will move until everything is powered off and the atx plug on the board is disconnected and reconnected again. I suspect this is an issue with drawing too much power from the psu, as if I set my current pots lower it doesn't seem to happen. Is this the case? My psu is rated at 15A I beleieve, should this be sufficient?

Cheers
J

 

Hi @Michael ,


Thanks for your response.


No, unfortunately the drivers did not install automatically on my Macbook or on my Dell PC. It would be great if they did! I assume it tries to download them from the internet, maybe it has something to do with the network I am on at work.


The PSU I was using was quite old and I think it may have been faulty. I have since purchased a Zalman ZM400-LE and it seems to work well. Oddly enough though, even with the PSU turned off, if I plug it into the xPro board via the ATX socket, the fan spins up automatically. It seems like it is getting power from the USB, via the xPro board.


J

 

Working on completing my first OX-like build, and have started playing with the xPRO controller. One of my goals is to not have a PC connected during an entire job, so I've been experimenting with Raspberry Pi controlling xPRO, with wifi to Raspberry Pi.

So far it looks very promising. I have been able to get Universal GCode Sender, Grbl Controller, and Chillipeppr all working on RPi.

Universal GCode Sender (java) is a bit of a resource hog, so performance can be sluggish and keeps the RPi CPU pegged. However, Grbl Controller runs incredibly well, and hardly consumes CPU resources.
Running Chillipeppr on Mac connecting via serial port JSON server on RPi also shows great promise with minimal CPU required.

All somewhat theoretical now, since the OX is not yet finished!

Just waiting for one more UPS delivery...

 

Question on probe with GRBL 0.9g on V2 XPRO. From the GRBL docs, this is supported on A5. Looks like A4 and A5 are available on the onboard connector? Not sure what the (default active w/I2C -> jumper set) means!

Regards,

John M

 

Hi Mike,

Could you detail the procedure for setting up the RN42-XV Bluetooth on the xPro??? (baud rate stop bit etc...)

Also, in reference to the "Y" axis running rough, I tried the settings you recommended ( try running at 1/4 ustep, reduce step pulse to 10-15, and reduce acceleration to 25 and see if these help with the chatter/roughness ). This seemed to help some but I really need to mill some aluminum and look at detail around a radius...will get back to you when I do!

Thanks
Scott

 

Quick post on setting up Raspberry Pi to control CNC xPRO.

First, CNC xPRO can be controlled by a few different methods. Most common seem to be:

1. Universal gCode Sender - https://github.com/winder/Universal-G-Code-Sender
2. GRBL Controller - http://zapmaker.org/projects/grbl-controller-3-0/
3. Chilipeppr - http://chilipeppr.com/grbl

As I started experimenting with these solutions, and not wanting to keep a laptop or other PC tied up in the workshop, I realized that all of the listed controllers worked on Linux and Raspberry Pi.

So, I set about installing each and seeing how it worked!

For Raspberry Pi, I have a USB cable connecting Pi to xPRO, and a wifi dongle in the other USB port. (The new RPi B+ model has 4 USB ports, the one I'm using is a 2 port Model A version).
The xPRO is powered by an ATX power supply - http://www.amazon.com/dp/B002HREGRM/ (cheap, and I also use this model for my 3D printer/heated bed)

The installation of all of the controller software is pretty well documented at other sites, so I won't go into detail there. Suffice to say that all of the three methods worked.

Now for the remote part. All of the above methods worked, with monitor and keyboard plugged directly in to Raspberry Pi. However, I didn't want to have a monitor/keyboard in the garage either! So, I have three different methods of remotely connecting to the RPi over wifi. I'm sure you could set this up with bluetooth as well, but I worked with what I had on hand.

Remote options:

1. VNC. Run a VNC server. RPi natively supports TightVNC, and you can connect to it with any remote PC running a VNC client.
2. RDP. Run an xRDP server on RPi, and connect via RDP.
3. Xwindows. My personal favorite. Just launch an Xwindows SSH session from Mac (ssh -X), and you can run UGCS or GRBL Controller in a window on your local machine.
4. Chilipeppr. Chilipeppr will connect to a remote serial port using a serial port JSON server. This can easily be downloaded from the chilipeppr GUI via browser on RPi. Then you can connect to the remote serial port from any remote PC via web browser/chilipeppr.com

Thoughts on each solution:

1. Universal gCode Sender - works well, but java is a bit of a resource hog on RPi. CPU stays close to 100%
2. GRBL controller - works well, no performance issues. You have to compile directly on RPi, there is no pre-packaged binary. Takes time, but well documented at zapmaker.org.
3. Chilipeppr - Serial port JSON server is simple to install and launch. Once it is running on RPi, no problems connecting with chilipeppr.com/grbl on my MacBook.

Hopefully this will give you a good starting point. I'm sure the same thing could be done with BeagleBone, or other small controllers, but I happened to have a few RPis on hand.

-- John M

 

Does the CNC xPro driver being sold in the open builds store have integrated an spindle speed controller? If not how could you add it? Thanks!

 

That would be fantastic! I just ordered a board and I will definitely need some information on how to add this feature.

 

Was running into similar issues and John suggested tweaking the step pulse, step delay, acceleration, feed and seek rates. It worked miracles on myOX, still using 1/8 steps though. I'll need to tweak a bit more. For now, I have :

• step pulse set at 10
• step delay set at 25 (just guessing for now, down from 50 !)
• acceleration set at 150
• feed rate set at 2500 (was using 1500 before)
• seek rate set at 5000 (was 3000 before)

I also tuned the current pots for X and Y down to about 80% at this time. John mentioned he had 'success' with that down to 60% or so. So I'll tweak mine down a bit more.

What I now notice is my Y seem to randomly stall, but in unison now. Note : since they each have a driver chip (the original Y and the mirror A), one could have a single Y driver shut down while other keeps on going ... unless there is logic somewhere to catch that situation.

In any case, I'm down to a temperature issue with myOX :

8.3.7.2 Thermal Shutdown (TSD)
If the die temperature exceeds safe limits, all FETs in the H-bridge will be disabled and the nFAULT pin will be
driven low. After the die temperature has fallen to a safe level, operation automatically resumes.

And the Y do come back 'on line' within a second or so my garage being real cold lately. So I need to install the heatsinks and fan !

The problem is that the g-code keeps being received and processed by xPro, the logic most likely would loose track of tool position anyways (no feed back of current position possible ?)

Should the CNC xPro at least force a pause while the thermal shutdown is set, letting things cool down before it goes back to processing the incoming g-code ? Or should it do as if a limit switch was hit and kill the job ? The first option sounds like it could work (but I don't know much). Either way, not much value in keeping the other axis moving ...

 

What feed rates are folks using for...
Aluminum=F????
Polycarbonite=F???
Wood?=F???

 

Just to report back in this thread : myOX is now running 'great' ! The magic was adding the heat sinks. I did not take reading of the chips temperature before, sufficient to say one or more of the four drivers were going into thermal shut down. Reading after the install of the heat sinks ranged from 50c to 70c.

As anyone noticed the A motor driver gets warmer than the Y driver by about 20c (!) Any particular reasons for this ?

Next is installing at least one fan to further cool the heat sinks and driver chips.

It will be a Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year for myOX after all.

 

Hi All,

My Ox seems to be running quite well, have installed homing limit switches and the homing cycle seems to run well.

I have a couple of questions:

Is it possible to speed up the feed rate for the homing cycle?

Also, It seems that the "Reset Zero" button doesn't work in Universal Gcode Sender V1.07, I get "error: unsupported command".

Although it works fine in V1.06, my workflow is as follows: Turn on machine, use $H to run the homing cycle, Jog to a desired work Co-ord position, Press Reset Zero button to set my Work Co-ord, Run Gcode program.

Has anyone experienced this issue in V1.07??

Cheers,
J

 

Any updates on the tutorial/parts list? Is this more or less the same as on a TinyG? I bought a quiet cut spindle with a separate speed controller. Will I need anything else? Thanks!

 

Hi guys,
My ox is almost complete, and I'm still trying to get the setting right, getting closer. Ive noticed that I'm losing one of the Y axis drivers, warping the frame, and making sounds that bring a sweat to my brow. I have a fan running, but obviously I'm going to add some heatsinks. Just want to know what sort of adhesive did you use? I'e read that the arctic silver is about 5 times better than loctite which is 10 times better than superglue. Trouble is getting a supply of it.

hoping have a great Christmas.

 

where did you get the heat sinks?

 

I just use some heat sink (heat transfer) compound, not really glue as such. It's the stuff used for CPUs and such in computer circuits. It eventually dries 'hard' but is not impossible to separate (which glue, especially superglue, will be).

 

I used these heatsinks (8.5mm x 8.5mm x 5 mm) and this "silver" compound (comes with two small spatula) - it's more of a grease then glue. There is a slightly larger (11mm x 11mm x 5mm) heatsink here which happens to be a tad cheaper as well (!) Wait, even cheaper still are these (11mmx11mmx5mm as well). All free shipping to your front door if you are willing to wait a couple of weeks or more to get them (it's not worth paying for 'faster' shipping since it goes through the same handlers : post offices and customs).

 

Look on Amazon for VGA heat sinks. I got a 20 pack for under $6, with adhesive already applied. Just peel and stick!

http://www.amazon.com/Cosmos-Alumin...TF8&qid=1419744706&sr=8-1&keywords=Heat+sinks

 

darn already ordered from bangood...