Hi,
I'm looking at upgrading the Smoothieboard 5XC on my OX to an OpenBuilds Blackbox controller due to the simplicity of the Blackbox design. However, I want to have it run my CNC spindle in addition to a laser (JTech 2.8W). Of course, only one would be used at a time. Is there a way to do this?
Thanks for any help!

 

yes please, im new to cnc and could do with it!nTx....

 

What plasma box is that please, i was thinking of using a plasma with mine at first but didn't know if it would be good enough. Tx

 

Hello, I hope this is the right place to post this question, I'm new to this size of CNC and have just purchased my kit for a lead 1075 from MakerSupplied in Denmark, I'm based in Spain but English, I have just spent the last two evenings going though all 19 pages of the posts on the Blackbox, My system is due to come with one.

One thing that I have noticed is that a lot of the photographs on here that show the black box , show it adjacent to the Gantry or near it, once of the things I was going to do was have a dedicated electronics PSU ventilated control box bolted to the wall rather than have any electronics mounted or near the Gantry.

Is there any reason not to do this? I was planning on using avionics plugs to run the cabling from the Gantry up into the box and then solder the black box leads directly onto the back of the avionics plugs. Basically every lead that goes to the gantry would have this. Steppers, Limits, Probe, Power, Mill, Laser.

I understand that the board itself does not support an Estop for obvious reasons as its all low voltage and E stops and normally on Mains , some people have made a temporary E stop using the "open cabinet" circuitry it would seem as well.

I come from Laser land and I am used to a rotational axis for working on glass bottles and round stock, now I have two powerful diode lasers so was planning to allow for one of these to be used on the 1075 as well, For the rotational axis we normally just pull the "Y" axis and plug the rotary unit into that, Any reasons why I should not continues to do that please.

The controllers we use are all GRBL anyway and I normally use UGS or Lightburn.

Just a few questions please if people wouldn't mind making any comments that would be great as my build is arriving shorlty and I want to start right straight from the start.

It sound like to me never having used anything other than GRBL that this new Black Box is a suped up much more powerful version of our standard grbl controllers with extras like relays etc. They all have limit switches already and I have spindle control on my small cnc.

The plug in socket relay extension that you sell , is that available in a european version please for dust control, lighting, Smoke evacuation and and so on?

Thank you for reading and getting very excited on the delivery of my entire kit next week, Many thanks, Neil Scott, Sitges Spain.

 

Is there a way to use all 4 axis and not set Y2 as a slave?

 

That is a cheapie CUT40 but if you haven't bought a plasma yet, get a Blowback Start unit. HF start systems can be mader to work, but expect to spend a couple hours sorting our EMI issues!

 

Absolutely! You can mount it whereever you want

Or stay in the Xtensions Standard Xtension Wire Set - 4 Conductor and Xtension Wire Set - 3 Conductor

Still applies! Axes Wrapping is awesome

 

Grbl is a 3 Axes only firmware. The 4th driver can only be slaved to one of the 3 cartesian axes

 

Thanks I have the CUT 50 amp model but its now more or less the same footprint as the 40 I didnt realise the cnc would hold a torch until I saw that post, It works very well but I guess there's going to be damage to the wheels and gantry though from the sparks etc.... Its was great to see it work.

I freehand cut a lot of lizards out of sheet steel here in spain, then age them and sell them on as wall decor for the villas here or lights, biggest i did was 3 metres long.....dress them up with a bit of brazing to give them the spots on their back, would be nice not to get burnt as much but the first machine is going to do wood and ali !!

Can you get away with lighter rails than the leadscrew or workbee for the plasma or do you need the same profiles....

 

I

I prefer a solid machine - just always better to avoid having issues with sagging, or deflections under acceleration, etc. Belts are a little better for plasma (high feedrate) than leadscrew.
With the CUT40/50 its super simple, see OpenBuilds BlackBox 4X Documentation for wiring
The HF start puts out some EMI, but a couple ferrite cores around all wiring, and spacing the inverter and tip away from control electronics, gets you there most of the time. There are some other online hacks like putting a gnd wire directly to the tip to act as built in pilot arc, that you can checkout too, that cuts away a lot of EMI as the spark length is so much shorter - havent tried (or needed to) myself:
For example Adrian's: (Bad quality videos but quite a knowledgable guy)

 

tx ill take a look,

 

Will this grbl post processor work for a plasma table as well? States router in post

 

That would be great, I have X & Y only, no Z, work in Imperial, nothing fancy, turn the torch on and off when required, thanks

 

While surfacing my new spoilboard my cnc stopped a couple of times about halfway through (motion and spindle) with no error messages displayed and I was unable to move any axis until I unplugged the USB from to the Blackbox. After I was finally able to get the spoilboard sufaced I started on my grid lines and about 90% through it again stopped but this time all of my setting in the Blackbox were set to factory defaults. Glitch? Blackbox going out? Any ideas?

 

Loosing settings points to a brown-out condition (undervoltage)
So I would check, in order:
- Limit switch wiring, cross checked against docs.openbuilds.com (incorrect wiring can short 5v rail to GND)
- Power Supply
- EMI

 

Thanks for the reply Peter. I swapped out my z-axis on my workbee for the CNC4NEWBIE Z so I'll double check the wiring on the Z limit.

 

Hi Guys

Is there no PDF of the complete Blackbox 4x documentation that I can download? I see the html tree driven stuff, but this is impossible to print without going into each and every link to do so ... a single complete PDF of this would be soooooo much easier to deal with...

Thanks in advance...

 

I couldn't find one but i didn't dig too deep

 

Sigh... I know... I have looked and tried... really frustrating way of displaying the documentation, a script generated menu that is unable to provide a concise printable complete document...

oh well...

 

PDFs make it harder for us to support you, in no time theres old outdated PDFs floating around instead of users getting continuously updated, valid, and corrected information. Online documentation ensures its always up to date. Its mobile friendly, just keep your phone/tablet nearby

 

Ok... if you say so ...

Don't know why you do not have the option to print the entire document in a single go though... this current way sucks. Give the user the option rather than not have it at all.

Oh well... add to the frustration then, here I go to do each page individually... seems like a cop out actually...

 

While you are at it, also see gnea/grbl = if you insist on printed copies print out each of those pages on the right too for some bedtime reading.
Of course accessing all this content digitally would have been better (searchable, bookmarkable, up to date (2 updates just today already for example Limit switch documentation fault?) ) but oh well good luck

 

Is the ghost case giveaway over?

 

Peter, i finally bought the black box and have it up and running. i'm going to wire up the hall effect sensors, can the blackbox handle 2 sensors on each axis? would i wire them in series? thank you

 

Not tooo sure whether it should be serial or parallel: but i can't think how you would even begin to wire a powered sensor in series, so I'd guess parallel. Not sure it they would affect each other. Throw some trial and error at it, the Troubleshooting tab in CONTROL can be used to see if they work

 

thank you, i will post what i come up with.

 

Is it possible to use the open builds iot thing for the router with blackbox and use the jtech laser with blackbox at the same time? Or when I want to use the laser, do I need to unplug the iot connection to the blackbox so I can plug in the laser to the blackbox? Looks like they use the same ports.

 

Correct, they use the same port

- unplug is one option
- or add a double throw switch to swop the PWM/Spindle signal between relevant device: See docs:blackbox:iot-and-laser [OpenBuilds Documentation]
- or wire it to both permanently, but only switch on the relevant peripheral (for example if the laser doesnt have power, it will blissfully ignore the PWM signal)
- Keep in mind you have to change Grbl Setting: $32 - Laser Mode between swops too

 

Thank you very much. For the double throw switch, do you mean this?
Mini Power Switch - SPDT - COM-00102 - SparkFun Electronics
If that's not it, could you give me a link for what I need? Thanks so much again.