4 Attachment(s)
Need Some Breakout Board Upgrade Advice
Hey Everyone!
I'm looking for advice or pointed in the right direction. I'm a newbie to CNC, but I really want to learn, so I recently bought a 2012ish Velox VR-5050 CNC Router from the company I work for. It has been sitting for the past few years and when I powered it on & tried to jog it nothing happened. It's an older parallel port setup and on the back of the control box shows green lights lit next to the Estop, A Axis & parallel port, but no lights lit next to the X, Y & Z axis. I've attached some pics. It's 3 axis with 4 motors.
Velox said the breakout board &/or the drivers probably need replacing, but they've been a bit unresponsive since their quote...
So anyway my question is:
1. Is now a good opportunity to upgrade to a 4axis USB or Ethernet motion controller?
2. Is that even possible with a bit of rewiring?
3. Would an Azteeg X5 GT 32bit Motion Controller with Bigfoot BSD2660 SPI drivers do the trick? https://www.panucatt.com/mobile/prod...r_p/ax5gt.htm=
Any help is greatly appreciated, thanks!! Sorry for the long message
Re: Need Some Breakout Board Upgrade Advice
You need to configure your LPT1 port first in your PC BIOS, also in the device manager you need to make sure there is an LPT1 port detected, that motion card is widely used for mass production, it`s a rock solid stable board, and can almost last a lifetime.
Re: Need Some Breakout Board Upgrade Advice
Those look like Gecko G251 drives, with a custom board.
The G251's are far better drives than the ones you are looking at, and are most likely just fine.
Did the machine come with the PC running Mach3? If so, chances are, as the previous post said, just a configuration issue.
Re: Need Some Breakout Board Upgrade Advice
Quote:
Originally Posted by
KH0UJ
You need to configure your LPT1 port first in your PC BIOS, also in the device manager you need to make sure there is an LPT1 port detected, that motion card is widely used for mass production, it`s a rock solid stable board, and can almost last a lifetime.
Hey KH0UJ,
Thanks for the reply! My brother is the IT server building guy so he will be handling the BIOS stuff :) Just to be clear, do you mean the original card that it came with is rock solid?
Re: Need Some Breakout Board Upgrade Advice
Quote:
Originally Posted by
ger21
Those look like Gecko G251 drives, with a custom board.
The G251's are far better drives than the ones you are looking at, and are most likely just fine.
Did the machine come with the PC running Mach3? If so, chances are, as the previous post said, just a configuration issue.
Hey ger21, thanks for the help!
They are Gecko something's for sure :) It's the original computer, but the guy couldn't remember the password, so I had to factory reset & reinstall windows 7 that was on it and reinstall Mach 3 from the disc that was in a binder from Velox. He also didn't have the serial/registration license for Mach 3 anymore so it's just in Demo Version mode.
So if it's not configured correctly, then it could make sense that those axis lights are off?
Re: Need Some Breakout Board Upgrade Advice
Yes. You have to go through all of the configurations before it will work. Also, it has to be a 32 bit version of Windows 7.
Re: Need Some Breakout Board Upgrade Advice
Quote:
Originally Posted by
ger21
Yes. You have to go through all of the configurations before it will work. Also, it has to be a 32 bit version of Windows 7.
Wow, Velox just replied saying "We actually have the license and profile for this machine in our archives, so I've attached them to this message..." at the same time you guys were helping, so I'll give that a shot for now.
Thanks so much for your help, I really appreciate it! ...and I'm already learning:wee:
