[slammedxonair]

Well heres the story. Massajamesb get me interested in building my own machine awhile back. I started buying the parts he told me to get. Well I ended up picking up a dynatorch plasma table. But I would still like to build a router table as well for doing HDU and wood signs. Needless to say I have no idea whatever happened to him his last visit to the site was almost a year ago and he has not returned any of my emails.

Anyways if i can with out too much more of an investment would like to build a small machine that the table size could be upgraded in the future (my dynatorch takes up alot of my extra space), or I just want to sell the parts I have now. here is a pic of everything I have allready bought I really dont know how to hook any of this stuff up or how it interacts with eachother. Thanks for any help at all.

[slammedxonair]

So does anybody know how I would hook this stuff up and what I still need as far as the electronics are concerned? I know I need a power supply but is that it? I went over James old email i had saved but there was nothing there I didn't remember him talking about. Thanks

[dertsap]

overall it looks like you need to finish soldering your board and find a power supply .

your relay board will not connect to the drive board unless you can find some kind of splitter or run a second parallel port , to be honest what i would do is put that driver up on ebay and get some gecko's , Ive got the gecko 201 drivers and the same relay board as you and i absolutely love the combination , they have a sale on right now and their smaller drivers are pretty cheap

if you want a good deal on a supply then this may be a start , ive got a couple of these industrial supplies for my setup and they work nicely , if you look up the price of them its sick http://cgi.ebay.com/POWER-ONE-POWER-...1%7C240%3A1318

[slammedxonair]

Ok so is the following how everything should normally get hooked up:
PC into relay board, from there it goes into the driver board, and then into the motors?

Also what do you mean by a splitter? I would really rather try not to buy anything more than I absolutly need to to make this work. If I do build the machine I want it to be a budget build just for something different to do, which would also get used to make signs as well. I have pretty much all of my money tied up in my other metal fab equipment and the Dynatorch. Would I be able to build this with less than say another $200 into it? I allready have a router I can use. Thanks

[ger21]

What were you going to use the relay board for?

If you just want to get up and running, all you need is a power supply. PLug the HobbyCNC board into the parallel port, and wire up your motors and power supply to it. That's it. If you want to use the relay board to turn things on and off, then pick up a $20 PCI parallel port card and add it to your PC. The relay card would plug into this second parallel port.

[slammedxonair]

I really don't know lol Thats just what James told me to order when he was helping before he dissapeared off the site and stopped responding to emails. It might have been for the plasma because I was going to build a hybrid machine before I got my dynatorch.

So if a power supply and a small fan is all I need to get the electronics working than thats great news. Now I just need to figure out the power supply and all that pully and slide and gearing stuff lol.

[IQChallenged]

"I would really rather try not to buy anything more than I absolutly need"

Sounds to me like this just isn't a good time for you to build. I'd either put the stuff aside or just sell the stuff. Personally I think it's better to sell, use the money, but new stuff later. When you get ready to build contact me or someone to line out a step-by-step of going from a box of mystery components to a running machine. I've been where you are.

www.ProjectCNC.wordpress.com

[dertsap]

. Would I be able to build this with less than say another $200 into it? I allready have a router I can use. Thanks

the electronics is usually the bulk of the cost and you already have that .
slide cost will be minimal if you use the diy skate bearing slides and if your building an mdf machine then a chunk of mdf is $20
you can use ready rod for leadscrews which is dirt cheap until you can upgrade


the relay board is just to have the computer control you router on/off rather than having to turn the router on manually ,its only gravy and its not necessary

[slammedxonair]

"I would really rather try not to buy anything more than I absolutly need"

Sounds to me like this just isn't a good time for you to build. I'd either put the stuff aside or just sell the stuff. Personally I think it's better to sell, use the money, but new stuff later. When you get ready to build contact me or someone to line out a step-by-step of going from a box of mystery components to a running machine. I've been where you are.

www.ProjectCNC.wordpress.com

Yea I had thought about selling it but I also thought about how much more money I could make if i could do routing/ engraving as well and I think that has out weighed the issue. Also thanks for your understanding in where I'm at. I'm very mechanically inclined and I know I can build this I just don't know what I need to do lol. Thanks

[slammedxonair]

the electronics is usually the bulk of the cost and you already have that .
slide cost will be minimal if you use the diy skate bearing slides and if your building an mdf machine then a chunk of mdf is $20
you can use ready rod for leadscrews which is dirt cheap until you can upgrade


the relay board is just to have the computer control you router on/off rather than having to turn the router on manually ,its only gravy and its not necessary

I probably dont need the relay board now because the router would be on most of the time it's running any ways, and the relay board was more important for the plasma system.

I guess I understand the basics of how the machine opperates because of the dynatorch but that is also a servo system. And also the majority of the cost is in the electronics and then drive system.

I need to figure out if i should go with a lead screw drive, rack and pinion(i think that is whats on the dynatorch) belt drive, or a chain drive. Would anybody be interested in letting me know the advantages / disadvantages of these drives and what all is involved in gearing it down?

Also I'm not sure what size table I want to build yet either if that factors into any of the drive systems as well. Thanks again.

[slammedxonair]

Will this power supply work? http://cgi.ebay.com/CNC-STEPPER-MOTO...742.m153.l1262

This is the driver board I have i think unless they have updated it since I bought mine http://www.hobbycnc.com/products/hob...er-board-kits/
the power requirements are the same that are listed on my instruction sheet but I'm not 100% on what all of that means.

[slammedxonair]

bump

[IQChallenged]

Do you know the voltage rating for your motors?

[slammedxonair]

They are powermax II 1.8 deg step motors. they say is(dc): 2.8 A bipolar series
Vs(dc):35V
Po:56 W
1500 RPM
and model # M21NRXA-LSN-M1-02

Thanks

[dertsap]

the hobbycnc board you have is unipolar and wont work with those motors

[slammedxonair]

what does the bipolar even mean?

[YZF]

It may actually be possible to wire these motors as uni-polar.

A bipolar stepper motor will have 4 wires, two pairs, each pair connects to the motor coil. These have to be driven with an H-bridge (google this).

A uni-polar has a center-tap to the coil so it can be driven with two transistors.

I think the motors you have can be wired as uni-polar or bi-polar, they should have an 8 pin connector on the motor.

http://www.pacsci.com/support/documents/mtd/c-103.pdf covers your motor (I believe). page C111 shows the pinout (1-8). Your drive board documentation should have some diagrams showing how to wire to different motors...

[IQChallenged]

what does the bipolar even mean?

Let's do this thang. Let's build you a machine. Let me ask you a few basic questions. What kind of CNC device do you hope to have if you can get all this stuff up and running? Do you want a CNC end mill, or a CNC router, or what? How big do you want it to be? What kinds of tasks are you wanting to do? Do you want to machine metal, or wood, or wax, what? And there's nothing in the world wrong with building a tiny little device such as a table top router using a Dremel grinder for a spindle even if you're just doing it for fun. You could even use a spring loaded number two pencil instead of a grinder so that all you could do is draw things. That would be a great way to get going. You could buy your Dremel later. Let's hear about what you'd like to do. We'll walk you through it.

[dertsap]

35v motors will be tragically slow and the power needed to spin them motors at high speeds will over exceed the hobby board , you could sacrifice resolution for speed and gear up a belt system , but if you plan to use screws then it will be slowww .
also please correct me if i am wrong but isn't the hobby board only rated for 2.5v max

unfortunately the past information you recieved in regard to what you needed to purchase was outright wrong
you could post the motors and relay board on ebay and then purchase some low voltage motors so you can gain some speed , kelinginc sells motors relatively for a cheap price

[YZF]

also please correct me if i am wrong but isn't the hobby board only rated for 2.5v max

Looking on the HobbyCNC web site this board should be good up to 42V and will drive 3A. So it really depends on what kind of machine we are trying to build here...