[scratch_6057]

Dave Rigotti, (Or Others with Knowledge of the HOBBYCNC Boards)

I am seriously considering the purchase of the HobbyCNC 4 Axis
Kit, however the one question I have is in regard to running a
4 axis board with only 3 motors.

If I purchase the 4 axis board and I only have a use for 3 axis at this
time, should I . . .

1.) Install components for all 4 axis and leave the 4th with no load
connected to the motor terminals? Would this harm / damage the board?
Does the board have ENABLE lines on each so that the 4th axis could be left
DISABLED until needed?

2.) Install components for 3 axis to start with and leave the 4th axis parts
locations open until I have a real NEED for the 4th axis?

The first option would be preferred, as it would lessen the chance of parts
being lost in the MESS I refer to as a shop.

If in the first option, it was required to hook a motor up to the 4th axis
TEMPORARILY for the purpose of testing and making adjustments,
I could live with that.

[diecutter]

I built the HobbyCNC 4AUPC rev.2 four axis board with all components and simply am ignoring the 4th A axis till needed later. I set the 4th axis v-ref to the same value as the other three axis, but I don't think even that is necessary. This board worked first try and pushes my $10.00 Ebay motors along at 80ipm with little heating after hours of use. Happy camper here.

[HobbyCNC]

Dave Rigotti, (Or Others with Knowledge of the HOBBYCNC Boards)

I am seriously considering the purchase of the HobbyCNC 4 Axis
Kit, however the one question I have is in regard to running a
4 axis board with only 3 motors.

If I purchase the 4 axis board and I only have a use for 3 axis at this
time, should I . . .

1.) Install components for all 4 axis and leave the 4th with no load
connected to the motor terminals? Would this harm / damage the board?
Does the board have ENABLE lines on each so that the 4th axis could be left
DISABLED until needed?

2.) Install components for 3 axis to start with and leave the 4th axis parts
locations open until I have a real NEED for the 4th axis?

The first option would be preferred, as it would lessen the chance of parts
being lost in the MESS I refer to as a shop.

If in the first option, it was required to hook a motor up to the 4th axis
TEMPORARILY for the purpose of testing and making adjustments,
I could live with that.

EACH axis independantly adjustable between .5 and 3A. Use 1, 2, 3, or all 4. EACH axis independantly adjustable for 1/2, 1/4, 1/8, and 1/16 step.

Dave Rigotti
HobbyCNC.com

[paulC]

Your option 1.
Build the board up fully and simply don't connect anything to the 4th axis.
There will be no current draw so won't do any harm.
Just don't connect / disconnect motors with power supplied to board.
Paul

[DIzZy]

I have a brand new 4 axis HobbyCNC rev2 board for sale. Assembled never used for $80 if interested.

[HobbyCNC]

I have a brand new 4 axis HobbyCNC rev2 board for sale. Assembled never used for $80 if interested.

Rev level 2 is the latest and greatest version.

HobbyCNC.com

[joecnc2006]

I am running the 4 axis board with three motors connected now on my CNC Model 2006, with the 200oz motors and power supply, the complete kit. Cutting at 80ipm. No problems at all with it, this is my second board, 1st one went with a cnc machine i sold.

Joe

[DrStein99]

Damn. I just bought my kit. Wish I read this forum earlier; that $80 assembled board is a good deal.

[tintruder]

Skip the HobbyCNC.

There are two very good alternatives to this board which use the same driver chips:

http://www.ohmikron.com/

and

http://www.cncresource.com/store/

These guys looked at the "state of the art" which used to be the HobbyCNC board (the 7062 chips are pretty new) and improved upon it in terms of form and function.

Also, read the posts concerning poor customer support and childish behavior by a certain vendor over at the Yahoo groups "CAD_CAM_EDM_DRO", "DIY-CNC" and then decide.

Note that until you buy a HobbyCNC board, you will simply not be granted access to the support group to look at the history of problems in order to make an informed decision about a purchase. You would be surprised how many people have to buy replacement SLA7062 chips from Dave at $15 each (lowered to $12 this week when I posted where they could be purchased for $8). Quite frankly, I believe more profit is (was)earned by the sale of replacement chips than by sales of complete boards.

The measure of a company is not how they provide service to those with no problems, but rather how they handle customers who do have difficulty, and here, HobbyCNC simply comes up short. Really short considering price gouging on spares.

Seriously, go with Ohmicron, CNCResource, Xylotex, Rutex or Gecko and spare yourself the headaches.

I have known Ballendo of CNCResource as an on-line "buddy" for a couple years now and he is a consummate professional who eagerly and freely helps out other hobbyists with advice, information and his time.

Phil from Ohmicron has built a website full of free information which will help you build a functional CNC system, plus he answers emails promptly and professionally. I really don't know him well, but so far, I have a very good feeling.

On the other hand, Dave only answers until he has your cash. Try emailing him with a support question and he won't answer except to say "go to the Yahoo group". But if you say something he doesn't like there, he'll kick you out and you're SOL for support. Just like the schoolboy who takes his ball and goes home if you don't let him win.

[joecnc2006]

I take it you are not talking from experiance? and you have not put one of the HobbyCNC boards together. Well as far as Me i have gotten two boards from HobbyCNC and they worked out with no problems at all, If someone Blows a chip it is in my opinion their fault by not following the assembly instructions, you need to follow them and they are not hard at all. The instructions tells you in bold letters to check certain things before proceeding to the next step, and it also causions you about disconnecting things ie. motors while the power supply is on. which will blow a chip. To put it bluntly It is a Hobby Board hence the price, so if you do not follow instructions of course it will mess up on you. Like I said I have Two of them with no problems so for me that is the way to go if like most DIY'ers who want a machine for Hobby and some smaller industrial machines it forks just fine.

Joe

Skip the HobbyCNC.

There are two very good alternatives to this board which use the same driver chips:

http://www.ohmikron.com/

and

http://www.cncresource.com/store/

These guys looked at the "state of the art" which used to be the HobbyCNC board (the 7062 chips are pretty new) and improved upon it in terms of form and function.

Also, read the posts concerning poor customer support and childish behavior by a certain vendor over at the Yahoo groups "CAD_CAM_EDM_DRO", "DIY-CNC" and then decide.

Note that until you buy a HobbyCNC board, you will simply not be granted access to the support group to look at the history of problems in order to make an informed decision about a purchase. You would be surprised how many people have to buy replacement SLA7062 chips from Dave at $15 each (lowered to $12 this week when I posted where they could be purchased for $8). Quite frankly, I believe more profit is (was)earned by the sale of replacement chips than by sales of complete boards.

The measure of a company is not how they provide service to those with no problems, but rather how they handle customers who do have difficulty, and here, HobbyCNC simply comes up short. Really short considering price gouging on spares.

Seriously, go with Ohmicron, CNCResource, Xylotex, Rutex or Gecko and spare yourself the headaches.

I have known Ballendo of CNCResource as an on-line "buddy" for a couple years now and he is a consummate professional who eagerly and freely helps out other hobbyists with advice, information and his time.

Phil from Ohmicron has built a website full of free information which will help you build a functional CNC system, plus he answers emails promptly and professionally. I really don't know him well, but so far, I have a very good feeling.

On the other hand, Dave only answers until he has your cash. Try emailing him with a support question and he won't answer except to say "go to the Yahoo group". But if you say something he doesn't like there, he'll kick you out and you're SOL for support. Just like the schoolboy who takes his ball and goes home if you don't let him win.

[bkukowski]

I've built two hobbycnc boards and have had no trouble. They're great! Just ask hobbycnc related support questions through the yahoo group Dave (the owner of hcnc) has setup and you're fine.

[tintruder]

Your opinions are great, but both of you claim no problems, so you have no frame of reference to obtaining useful support from HobbyCNC.

By the way, when my board blew, I was one of two people that week who had entirely unexplained disasters when the only change made to boards which had been working fine for some time was to upgrade from 12v "testing" power supplies to 32v+ "operational" supplies. Vref checked, board working fine until then.

Quite frankly, during the time the board was working right, I had no qualms about Dave's service. I thought it was a great product. But once it blew, it became obvious I made a mistake in vendor selection.

Also note how many spare 7062s dave has been selling for $15 (just last week reduced to $12 when I posted a source that sells them for $8). It is clear he realizes there is a problem beyond what can be reasonably assigned to "user error" and instead of addressing and rectifying the problem, dave has decided instead to profiteer from it. Sort of like Ford not fixing the exploding gas tanks in Pintos.

Bukkowski, you can't get support from a group Dave kicks you out of for asking questions he doesn't like or is incapable of answering. Basically, dave has set a standard of support only for those who don't need it, or those who ask questions about problems he can blame the customer for. That isn't support, that's pathological.

[joecnc2006]

By the way, when my board blew, I was one of two people that week who had entirely unexplained disasters when the only change made to boards which had been working fine for some time was to upgrade from 12v "testing" power supplies to 32v+ "operational" supplies. Vref checked, board working fine until then.

I imagine you did reset the vref per powersupply. personally i use this forum for question more than the yahoo group, simply becasue yahoo groups are not as much to my liking. everyone is intitled to their opinion, and the yahoo group is privately maintained, so when i have questions i just email hobbycnc and wait for a responce, I would say if you want to use other boards go right ahead. but the number do speak for them self, and dave has sold alot of boards, so i would say the ratio of good working boards are way higher than blown chips and non working boards. For the money it is worth it to me.

Not that I know much about CNC Machines, I'm a beginner and hope to have a good machine one day. and hope to have more that just over 800 post on here.

Joe

[dertsap]

Skip the HobbyCNC.

There are two very good alternatives to this board which use the same driver chips:

http://www.ohmikron.com/

and

http://www.cncresource.com/store/

Phil from Ohmicron has built a website full of free information which will help you build a functional CNC system, plus he answers emails promptly and professionally. I really don't know him well, but so far, I have a very good feeling.

On the other hand, Dave only answers until he has your cash. Try emailing him with a support question and he won't answer except to say "go to the Yahoo group". But if you say something he doesn't like there, he'll kick you out and you're SOL for support. Just like the schoolboy who takes his ball and goes home if you don't let him win.

http://www.ohmikron.com/ looks to me like a bad joke , the guy is paisting them on ebay ,nobodies buying , i emailed him asking how much to ship to canada he said that his shipping system hasn t been set up yet to calculate shipping to here ,anyone knows that it takes 1 minute to check the usps website , looks to me like the way that company works is if a guy bids 10 bucks and wins shipping is probably 100 bucks the box its in is 50 bucks the tape will be 125 bucks ,
come on im in Canada not China , i can throw a stone from my deck and hit washington state , and this clown can t tell me shipping costs

those guys are total fly by night clowns in my opinion

i dont have a hobbycnc , but obviously you haven t read the number of posts from many members who are quite happy with their setup

[txcowdog]

I had problems building two boards fromDave and not because the instructions were not clear or the boards were inferior, it was just because I was a dumba*s. Dave fell all over himself and went well beyond the call of duty to get me up and running and did not charge me a dime for fixing what was an obvious problem that I created. I have never received such service after the sale. I can't say enough good about the organization that Dave runs. Great product and he never gives up on you even when it is obvious that you are a moron like I was.

[RickOmatic]

I have known Dave a long time. My Rickomatic mill (check out the photo section) still has and runs on an original Hobby CNC board and motors. When I first built the machine I had built the Maxnc driver board. The software and service were, to put it politely "Dog manure". I then found Dave's website and purchased his kit (at the time 50 bucks!) built it and had problems. I e-mailed him and he called me at work the following day! He was ready to ship me a ready to go board to replace mine! What service! The problem I found out later that day was my computer ground and not the boards fault. New computer and it's been running great ever since! I feel Dave has "tired" of all the people who just like to cause problems. Another problem in any application is trying to push the limits of the hardware. Sometimes that lets the "smoke" out also...I would just like to say that if it hadn't been for Dave, the Rickomatic might not have gotten finished and I would never have had the opportunity to do all of my "Cheap and Free" cnc talks! See ya at the cnc-workshop next week! Rick
www.cnc-workshop.com

[joecnc2006]

I have known Dave a long time. My Rickomatic mill (check out the photo section) still has and runs on an original Hobby CNC board and motors. When I first built the machine I had built the Maxnc driver board. The software and service were, to put it politely "Dog manure". I then found Dave's website and purchased his kit (at the time 50 bucks!) built it and had problems. I e-mailed him and he called me at work the following day! He was ready to ship me a ready to go board to replace mine! What service! The problem I found out later that day was my computer ground and not the boards fault. New computer and it's been running great ever since! I feel Dave has "tired" of all the people who just like to cause problems. Another problem in any application is trying to push the limits of the hardware. Sometimes that lets the "smoke" out also...I would just like to say that if it hadn't been for Dave, the Rickomatic might not have gotten finished and I would never have had the opportunity to do all of my "Cheap and Free" cnc talks! See ya at the cnc-workshop next week! Rick
www.cnc-workshop.com

here here, nice post, well as you can see one or two bad apples out of hundreds are pretty good odds to me for sure.

Joe

[Fodder1]

Ok,

I try not to get involved in this sort of thing, but I have to say I put a vote in for Dave. I brought a 4axis board from him. He shipped it to Australia, it arrived on my doorstep within 5 working days!!!

Oh it doesnt stop there. Becuse I am somtimes pritty stupid (but I can admit it, hint hint) I broke one of the current sense resisters. So, I emailed dave and then went for a surf to try and find some. Dave sent me the parts with out me even paying for them. I have just finnished setting up PayPal to pay him and that was 3 WEEKS AGO. Dave to his credit has not even emailed me once regarding the parts and postage over to AUS.

Service I cant fault. Sure the parts he sent me were cheap, but he didnt have to do that. Service is everything. I am a MCSE, CCNA, CCNP, CCDA and I have 15 years of working with everything desktops to server farms and when i find serive like that, I stay.

Now before I decided to buy his boards I looked around and sure I found people like you, (fancy posting a link to cheaper parts one HIS support forum, and has Dave DELETED that post, which I beleieve that he is inititled to?) but i found people like you to be in the VERY, VERY, VERY, VERY minor amount.

To be honest of the few people i found like you, most of them said, Dave dint do this, Dave didnt do that. After what i have read ALL OVER THIS FORUM I am pritty happy, that if my board does blow up, that it will be MY FAULT.

Please remeber that Dave does this as a hobby, sure it make some cash out of his hobby and I'll bet most to all of that goes into his time to design the boards and make them better. But havent we all started this with the idea of making money out of it in the back of our minds? I know i do.

Thanks Dave, if you are ever in Aus I'll buy you a beer!!! :cheers:

CH

[tintruder]

Fodder,

I realize many people are happy with their boards. My personal email however, suggests that a significant number are not satisfied but chose not to post publically because they don't want to have their online support terminated for daring to complain.

If I had received the type of support you describe, it wouldn't have been an issue. But HCNC just doesn't do that sort of thing so much any more. Occasionally, maybe.

From the email I have been receiving privately, it is clear many folks gave up and threw their boards in the closet and are now happy to hear they are not alone in their frustration. Many have decided not to deal with HCNC any more and are buying parts elsewhere to finish or repair their boards.

If an entire kit sells for $99, it's not being magnanomous to charge $67 for a new set of driver chips either, especially when Allegro wholesales them for under $4 each in reasonable quantities.

The fact that other hobbyist/businesses are selling the exact same chips for ~$8 (meaning HCNC charges 50% more) further demonstrates that customers who needed replacements for whatever reason were taking it in the tail end out of what is difficult to believe was anything but greed. One more chink in the "mister nice guy" costume. One more malfunctioning board in the closet.

By the way, one particular stepper drive designer who is clearly a head and shoulders above the rest (in orbit compared to some clowns in particular) actually did some design analysis of the SLA7062 implementation (which was posted on another site). Looks like the silk-screened 42vdc value is about 25% too high. As designed, if you're running over 32-34vdc, any medium-quick deceleration has a potential to blow up chips. With some modification, 34vdc can be made pretty safe. But no matter how you slice it, 42vdc is just too high.

From the above, it seems that many people who listened to HCNC advice and used higher voltage power supplies were fed information by HCNC which led directly to the damage of chips. Looks like reflowing the solder wouldn't have fixed or prevented the problems by any measure.

Sort of like when 1970s Ford Pintos blew up in crashes. Ford didn't do the five-dollar fix, though it would have solved the problem. Instead they tried to bury the issue and just said it was the customer's fault for getting in wrecks. They too got caught.

In any case, if you find you need the 7062 chips, go to www.cncresource.com. Theirs are about $8, and according to them, since I posted it on the HCNC site, they have been selling like gangbusters.

Looks like a lot of people who gave up out of frustration or lack of adequate support, and those who suffered in silence because they didn't want to be ridiculed for having problems (now known not to be their faults in many cases) are coming out of the woodwork to complete or fix their HCNC boards.

Any wonder why they are not patronizing the original vendor?

[joecnc2006]

tintruder,

you oviously have some personal issues on this subject and/or personal relations with your as you put it friend with other site, so stop the baby whinning and go on your marry way, enough is enough.

IT IS TIME TO MOVE ON AND HAVE A NICE DAY ! ! ! !

And please don't start this "oh yea well your a ******" its just plain silly.
One of the reasons this whole site is liked so much by others is that it does not have the "nah nah nah I'm better than you are" and hopefully the admin will just simple close this thread and we can be done with it.

Joe