[locoind]

I started the process of building a machine a long time ago. At this point it's more of a principal build, in fact I don't even have anything to cut, but I feel like the build beat me before I even started...so here we are.
I'm about 95% complete mechanically, and I'm working on controls now. I'm trying to utilize some stepper motors and drives from Automation Direct. The part that is holding me up now is a break out board, and cnc software.
Mach3 seems like an obvious answer, and I do like the way it looks, I just haven't got it in my budget at this time of year. Any other open source suggestions would be greatly appreciated.
And for break out boards, cnc4pc seems to offer a lot of different combinations that would be very expandable in the future...again, budget this close to christmas for a project like this is just hard to justify.

[Al_The_Man]

Mach is free up to 500 lines of code, or EMC is free.
Al.

[locoind]

I made most of the parts myself, and I traded some favors for the other components. I built it small, but used larger parts...Nema 34. Just getting it running is the major goal for the moment, figuring out what to use it for will determine how big I'll grow it to. Longer pieces, and reinforcements depending on the final size, shouldn't be an issue.

[OCNC]

Don't bother with a breakout board. You'll save some money and quite probably some frustration. Get it wired and cut something.

Chris

[locoind]

I thought you had to have a breakout board to interface between the cam program and stepper drives? I've been researching trying to figure out how to run the motors without it just to reignite my motivation and have a moving machine. I'd appreciate any help to get this thing moving on its own.
Thanks in advance.

[harryn]

Extrusion builds always look nice, but they are expensive.

There is no need for a break out board, but I would put a dedicated parallel port card in your computer and use that for the TTL signals. The reason is that if something goes wrong, it is this parallel port card that will die instead of your computer.

You can split out the wires from your parallel port connection right to the driver connections without a break out board.

PMDX does sell some very nice breakout boards, but in addition, I think the web site has a standard numbering system layed out for the P port to driver connections. If not, I think I have seen them on the gecko drives web site.

[steve123]

You probably know this, but I'm sure you will have a problem with your Y axis stiffness. The problem won't be so much vertical bending, but racking/twisting. There is a large amount of space between the bolts and the bottom of the lower linear guide plate. That plate will flex like crazy! Try pulling forward on the Z, and you will see it move as the bottom plate pulls away from the Y beam. I would guess you could get over .050 deflection at the tool tip with only 10 lbs force, maybe worse! Ouch!
Here are some ideas to fix it:
I see from the back view that the Y extrusion is not very tall. You might want to make it taller (and thicker if you can), like 3060, so that bolts into it are closer to the bottom of the linear guide plate.
Another idea would be to get an aluminum plate (how about .5" x 3" (whatever your upright width is) x Y width, and bolt it up under your Y extrusion, also bolt into it from the side uprights, then bolt the bottom linear guide plate into the edge of it. That would help a lot.
Whatever you do with the Y beam, you can make it a lot heavier without a problem because you have those nema 34 motors pushing it.

Best Regards,

Steve

[OCNC]

I thought you had to have a breakout board to interface between the cam program and stepper drives? I've been researching trying to figure out how to run the motors without it just to reignite my motivation and have a moving machine. I'd appreciate any help to get this thing moving on its own.
Thanks in advance.

I would just download Mach3 and install it per the Mach3 installation instructions. Run it in Demo mode just to get the machine working. The Mach3 instructions explain very clearly how to hook up to the parallel port. There's also good support on the ArtSoft forum.

Chris

[r00t4rd3d]

You can get a TB6560 controller cheaply and use LinuxCNC software to get it up and running.

[ger21]

For $20, you can get a basic breakout board to make connections much easier.
DB25 Breakout Boards with Screw Terminals - Winford Engineering

As was mentioned, you can do a lot of things with the free version of Mach3.

[louieatienza]

CNC4PC sells a basic breakout board for under $10, which saves the frustration of trying to solder onto a D-sub cup (and soldering 18 tiny leads can be a pain!)

The thing is, some drivers need stronger signals than the paralel port can deliver, and some breakout boards are designed to also "condition" those signals. Also, some basic breakout boards are not optoisolated, so if there is no optoisolation in the drives themselves you run the risk of damage to your computer. As Harry mentioned, you can also use a parallel port card but I'm not sure that totally alleviates the problem. If you'te going to use an external motion controller (like a SmoothStepper) it has some of these features built in (except the breakout board, but they even make a breakout board for the SmoothStepper as well.)

As the others said, the free version of Mach is very handy. And if you hand-code your programs and are not making anything complicated you can easily sneak under the 500 line code limit.

[CarveOne]

You can generate a gcode file for each tool path. If the files are all under 500 lines each, you could merge (or append) the file contents into one file using MS Notepad or other text editor. Some manual editing will be needed, but a larger than 500 line gcode file can be created this way.

[locoind]

steve123- I did anticipate some, it was something I was planning on addressing after I got it running. I've been building this so slowly that I got a little over excited and wanted to push past it. It's not how the original design was suppose to be, but I've been learning a lot on the fly, as well as making changes. Thanks though, I do appreciate any input and suggestions. Another set of eyes never hurts.

I downloaded the demo of Mach, not being familiar with Linux, and already facing some 3D learning curves with CAD software, I didn't want to add to the mix just yet. I've always been a fan of Mach, strictly based on lurking on this forum for so long, the demo is going to be a great tool for the stage I'm at.

I do think I'm going to try pinning out the connector myself for the moment. I have a nice slant top Hoffman enclosure thats going to be repurposed for this project, once I get everything layed out and mount, I may switch to a break out board to keep everything nice and tidy in the cabinet.

I'm really anxious just to move this now. This forum has been a huge source for inspiration and help throughout this project. Just lurking and reading everything, I've adsorbed a ton of information. Thank you everyone for posting and especially to those of you who have or will reply to my build. Hopefully I'll have another update this week, and I'm shooting for a video of it moving by the weekend.

[locoind]

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