What I intended to just take a few hours killed my whole weekend. I decided I better "professionalize" my electronics and wiring or else sooner or later take a big hit in the wallet. I would have enjoyed working on making the machine better, but it's painful to tear it apart when it could be making money. Also, the scary aspect of f***king something up.
Previously I showed pics of the cabinet my brother gave me. Pic 1 shows the loaded cabinet with wire I used to rewire my steppers....just trailer wire from truevalue @ .29/ft.
Pic 2 shows the electronics installed. This cabinet seemed huge until I started stuffing it with my gorilla stuff. Saved room for future features like spindle control, charge pump, limit and home switches, many relays....etc.
Pic 3 shows the switch panel. Don't know yet how this will evolve. I'm using the AL cover to proto both this and the signal input box. When I have a final design I'll make covers from 1/4 phenolic laminate and engrave the legends. Right now I have master power switch and indicator lights for pwr, 12V and 5V. There is an E-Stop switch that's not functional yet. Gotta think how elaborate I want that to be.
Pic 4 shows heat sinks I glued to the trannie with high temp epoxy. This thing gets pretty hot and I had the heat sinks laying around. After a trial run today, I'm pretty sure I'll have to vent the cabinet.
Pic 5 shows my first attempt at routing the stepper power wires to the gantry trolley. I used discharge hose (from truevalue again). It was too flimsy to support itself, so I helped with a bungie cord. Clamped for now till I figure what I'm gonna do. At least it's not hanging from the shop light now!
Pic 6 shows the e-chain I finally installed on the gantry axis. It only took 1m to cover the 34" travel of the axis. That leaves almost 10' to use on the big router. It is riding on a phenolic plate that I still have to cut to size.
The last pic is my control cabinet as it is today. Not the final product, but it's moving along. I'm switching over to Mach from tcnc and have moved my favorite computer into the shop. Have to tweak all my cut files now.
More to come.
Steve
DO SOMETHING, EVEN IF IT'S WRONG!