Search:

The only place I found that sells replacement driver boards for the 6040 (at least eh one Ihave) was https://www.omiocnc.com/accessories/circuit-drive-board.html.
Too much of a hassle to buy from...

Yes, you'll still need a motor driver.
If you don't have a multimeter, you could try connecting a pair of wires together and turn the motor shaft. If you short together a winding pair, the motor...

All the components were available on eBay or Banggood, quite cheap. I have the boards made at a Chinese board fab - about $25 for 10 (minimum order). Not too difficult to make if you're confident...

Have you seen the ELS project from Malte Knaust at muck-solutions?
I had some boards made a couple of years ago and built one for my Seig C8 lathe. Works very well.

The XYZ Carve is a bit of stretch if you want to do aluminium as the OP mentioned. A 400W spindle isn't up to the job. My XYZ carve has the Makita router as a spindle and has a number of...

Your wiring sounds OK.
I have a 6040 and a G540 and my home switches are configured as NC. The COM terminal on all 3 limit switches are wired together and to ground, the NC terminals are connected...

I've a C6 lathe and often thought about a CNC conversion.
Watching with interest.

You'll need a freight forwarder to arrange shipping. Most, if not all, Chinese CNC suppliers quote their price as FOB which means shipping to the nearest Chinese port only.
A freight forwarder will...

I pretty much copied that when I built mine :o .

Details on getting PathPilot to run with a parallel port can be found on the Linuxcnc forum. Very knowledgeable and helpful bunch.

Looking good!
When I built my controllers, I decided to add a couple of 12V fans blowing on the back of the G540. As I run a 48V supply, used a cheap ($4?) eBay DC-DC converter to provide the 12V....

In case you haven't already found it, this link to the G540 wiring from Homann is the way to go. ( a few minutes late it seems!)
I replaced the crappy, unearthed cable on my 6040 with a heavy duty,...

A very nice build indeed, will follow with interest.
My small mill is not CNC yet but I do use Linuxcnc (and PathPilot) on a Gecko based controller with a couple of CNC routers.

You can't go wrong with a G540.
Only issue might be in finding a PC with a parallel port to run it.

I have a G540 on my X-Carve and a Chinese 6040,

I have Win8/Fusion360 running on VMware under Ubuntu, no problems at all. Just be sure to assign a lot of memory to the VM and have a good graphics card.
The same VM also runs CamBam which, while...

I imagine any of the Atom based ITX/mini ATX boards would do the job. A bigger problem is finding one with a parallel port (unless you're using a Mesa board?)
You could check out the linuxcnc forums...

The pitch on the lead screw is (probably) 5mm. It's the same on the 3020 and 6040 machines (I have a 6040)
The metric example on the calculator spreadsheet is what you need to use. i.e....

The only second hand machinery sales place I've seen i Machines4u.
Freight to Coota is going to be a killer though,cheaper to hire a truck and pick it up yourself.

Correct, 16mm diameter with a 5mm pitch - at least on my 6040.



Correct.

I bought a G540 about 8 years ago, when the G250/G251's were released (bought some of those too.)
The G540 has been moved between several different CNC routers and has never missed a beat. Currently...

There are (at least) 2 USB options for Mach3.
UC100 and Smoothstepper.
Mach3 has drivers for both.

Your problem could be noise from the spindle,
Check that you have a good earth connection to the spindle. As supplied, most of the 6040 machines don't have any earth connection.

+1 for the Homann Designs wiring. Its how I have my G540 wired for my 6040.
Works well.

What driver are you looking for?

Some info on mastercam post processor here.

For Arduino based CNC, check out grbl
There are a number of simple shileds that are suppoted by grbl. cncshield is one. Available from protoneer's eBay shop or from 3dtek.xyz

Seller is actually called infoshine15. The store name is Ratt motor.
Pretty cheap price, even with shipping to Oz. If I didn't already have one ...

For a good guide to how steppers and stepper drives work, have a look at this document from Gecko.

Take a look at F-Engrave. Does a great job and it's free!

I thnik my CNC router needs a 4th axis and the G214 would be a welcome addition to the G540 it is currently running.