[baithog]

Has anyone figured out the pinout for the little blue manual control? I was in a hurry and managed to buy a 4-axis version for my 3-axis board. Of course it doesn't work, It appears that the controllers are all the same, but the cables are different. I was going to rewire the connector and took all the wires out... then I got called away for a honey-do, then unexpected guests, followed by a brain dump. (chair) So even if someone could could relate wire colors to pin # for their 4 axis cable, it would help. I really hate buying another one just to get the cable.

The drive board seems to be doing OK.

[hipdisk]

Has anyone figured out the pinout for the little blue manual control? I was in a hurry and managed to buy a 4-axis version for my 3-axis board. Of course it doesn't work, It appears that the controllers are all the same, but the cables are different. I was going to rewire the connector and took all the wires out... then I got called away for a honey-do, then unexpected guests, followed by a brain dump. (chair) So even if someone could could relate wire colors to pin # for their 4 axis cable, it would help. I really hate buying another one just to get the cable.

The drive board seems to be doing OK.

Hi

A quick search on e-bay gave me the attached pinout.

From this supplier:

CNC Manual Controller Control Handle For 4 Axis Board | eBay

Ofcourse I cannot be sure it is the same as your one but they all seem to be similar.

[hipdisk]

Hi Baithog

Also found the pinout for the 3 axis pendant which may be of some help.

[baithog]

Thanks. I was going down that path when I opened the pendant and saw this... OK picture doesn't embed... here is the link Pendant Board

The printing on the board doesn't match the manuals. The 4 axis cable also has the YEL & GRN wires shorted... not soldered, just stripped and twisted together. My best guess is that the X and Y enable inputs go to the pendant's EN1 and the Z axis goes to EN2. I'll drag out the soldering station later and try making it work.

[hipdisk]

Hi Baithog,

Good to hear you are making some progress. Is there any chance you can provide a diagram of the circuit for the pendant while you have it open??

[baithog]

Manual control now works. I don't know how long it will survive as it is pretty flimsy. The face label has already fallen off once.

I thought that I would take a shot at generating a schematic, but I think it is a lost cause. There are 3 IC's - 2 74HC14, and a STC 12C5A08AH.

The 74HC14's are hex Schmit triggers that debounce the switches.

The other chip is a 44 pin surface mount flat pack. All I found in a search was Chinese language sites and the ones I translated were offers to sell. The presence of a crystal and switch matrix leads me to believe it is a micro controller. So even if it is a 2 sided board and I don't miss any traces under the solder mask, I still would have no idea what the pins did or the firmware inside the chip.

All in all, I think the pendant is the worst of the package, and you could probably cobble up a better one with a handful of 74HC series chips.

[hipdisk]

Fair enough Baithog, I guess all you can consider is that you may have saved someone else some cash. From what you have mentioned and what I have read the mystery IC will have something to do with adjusting the step rate for jogging.

As far as a manual control goes I have gone really simple at the moment and I am going to see how a basic USB number pad works with Mach3. It works so far.

[danilo2]

in contradiction i've been told that the cheap blue 5560 board has worked for at least one person 'as advertised' but their use is not heavy duty Routing work.
Still 'gunshy' on actually buying one thouigh. BUT after lots (too much? :-) reading.
There are seemingly mountains of info.. going in all directions.. on this DIY CNC stuff. Too many hours spent reading /sleuthing has uncovered issues complaints with most all other drivers as well.
I liked the Linistepper gizmo initially. But it won't take Bipolar Steppers.. geez.
Pololu is attractively inexpensive but has low power limits etc.
Seemingly all have an Achille's heel somewhere :-) .. sigh.
At least below the Heavy Duty Commercial ($$) gizmos, which due to price points, I haven't bothered fantasizing on.
Keeps feeling like I'm treading on quicksand trying to aquire an adequate overview for an informed decision.
As in Buy once.. for at least.. a couple of experimental efforts.
Anybody have an affordable (cheapish) setup suggestion that won't turn around and bite me, a month into my project ?
Thanks

[Mariss Freimanis]

(Begin rant)

A human tendency is to believe in myths. It goes like this: "Someone must be out there who makes a drive that can get 1 horsepower from a NEMA-23 step motor with perfect precision and it costs only $9.99. Furthermore, this drive is utterly reliable and never needs support." The myth is if you dig hard enough you will unearth this undiscovered company that builds these fabled drives.

It sounds silly when put this way yet the belief in it is ingrained and enduring.

I would like to build such a drive but I can't. What stands in my way is the most universal law of the universe: There Is No Free Lunch.

I can design a cheap, high-performance drive that is unreliable. I can also design a cheap but reliable low-performance drive. What I can't do is design a reliable and cheap high-performance drive. The universal law of the universe prevents it.

We have two automated surface-mount assembly lines each using 10,000 parts per hour Juki pick-and-place machines that crank out a new drive every 54 seconds per line. Labor is virtually nil; what there is consists of soldering in one electrolytic capacitor, programming the drive with firmware, screwing the drive to the mounting plate and screwing on the cover; 18 seconds takes care of that. Our manufacturing process, efficiency and production line equipment is equal to any in China, Japan or elsewhere.

Our drives have reputation for being expensive and it's entirely due to the cost of the quality components we use and the cost of after market service. Use cheap components and you get an unreliable drive. Use fewer components and you get a low performance drive. Don't take care of your customers after they have bought your product and they are up a creek and disgruntled. The same law apply to us and everyone else; you cannot get cheap, reliable and high performance simultaneously.

There is no undiscovered company anywhere that can break this law no matter how hard you search.

Corollary: The second most important law of the universe is: You Get What You Paid For.

(End of rant)

Mariss

[joeybagadonuts]

You cant beat the KL-6050 Bipolar Stepper Motor Driver for $40 bucks.

http://kelinginc.net/kl-6050.pdf

I don't know why anyone would want to spend $240 and not see much of a performance gain.

Happy New Year,

Joey B

[James Newton]

I liked the Linistepper gizmo initially. But it won't take Bipolar Steppers.. geez.

"Geez" LOL...

Bipolar is wildly over rated. It isn't the end all and be all. Especially in applications like a CNC mill where you want fast rapids, unipolar is at least as good, if not better than bipolar. The ONLY place where bipolar is better is A) when it's Bi-Polar PARALLEL and THEN only B) when you are worried about low speed torque. And Bi-Polar is more often serial or half coil than it is parallel. For more info see:
Stepper Motor Connection Options

[stragenmitsuko]

Folks , if anyone has a driver board fried or not , working or not with or without modifiactions they'de care to get rid of . Drop me a private meassage , I 'm interested in buying one .

I'de also like to add that I've been using a 3 axis version on a small desktop router without problems . Offcourse with the necessarry modifications .

I never cared for powering up or powering down in any particular way and sofar
encountered no problems . Could be just lucky I don't know .

Pat

[danilo2]

Welll :-) Having something to sell does get in the way . I have/had no intention of dissing "product'. I don't yet have near enough knowledge to do so.. yet :-)
No one's trying to gore Your personal mount.
I find there is a HUGE volume of info floating about, much of it contradictory.
How? can one make any kind of informed decision in this hailstorm?
As small example the Linistepper page (not picking on it, it just remains memorable) seems More devoted to how good a deal these are rather than providing clear detailed explanation of Product. How? it connects and what add on gizmos are required to actually use the silly thing.
Perhaps a self effacing detailing of advantages and disadvantages neatly laid out.. as if the reader was actually literate, only as yet uninformed.
Best adverts educate the reader .. then the product self sells, if it's worth having

As aside: IMO the Reason that the cheap chinee boards DO sell is due to the fact that they are promoted as simple plug 'n play.. No convoluted add ons breakout boards proprietary software etc etc etc.
No quagmire of info and myriad possibles.. just a ready to use product.. Accuracy of the product specifics seems left as a surprise tho.
Cheap price is only a bonus.. the promise of a complete package is the Real attraction :-)

[aarggh]

I fully agree with you that the contradictory opinions and info can be a quagmire and appear hopelessly confusing to a person new to these boards, but this is often the problem with being presented with a collection of various opinions. With the exception of very qualified people such as James or Mariss, and others, most other people such as I can only speak from our own personal experience, so its up to the reader to compare and assimilate the information in a way meaningful to them.

Another thing to keep in mind is that different countries have different voltage/phase and earthing standards and designs, so the same controller may not present the exact same issue to many different people, thus further confusing things. The wiring and earthing of their particular computer and machine and spindle also come into play.

As a person who lost a great deal of time and energy trying to sort out the issues with one of these controllers, I can say for myself that the old addage of "sometimes cheap is more costly" is absolutely true in this case. I probably spent 5-6 times the cost of a G540 in labour on mine. It now sits on a shelf collecting dust for now as I will probably use the case for parts. Or the day may even come that I tackle it properly as I do hate it when things get the best of me.

In short, run as fast as you can from these boards, IMHO!

Even if people do get them working, they are a far inferior product to the better controllers out there such as the G540 (and others that I personally haven't used so can't comment on), so having spent upwards of $2-$3k on a cnc machine that will be a never ending money black hole, in my opinion it's a false economy to then spend cheap on what will control the operation for it! I think in any sort of semi-production or serious environment it's definately not a risk worth taking.

cheers,
Ian

[Marc N Fournier]

The problem is discovering threads like this AFTER one purchased one of these cards trying to keep the costs down as this is only a hobby.

Mine just blew the Z axis. Pin 18 (VMA) on the TB6560 just vanished.

It all started with a buzzing Z motor that would not spin. Wiring was fine and swapping motors showed the Z Axis to be at fault. Decided to change switch setting to see if it might be this. I was carefull to remove AC on every switch change. this time the Z released the magic smoke.

These boards are made with bottom of the barrel parts. Case in point, I discovered 2 different blue switch blocks to be defective. Tracing the switches I discovered a few that do not change from low to high so the selections end up being wrong. That is the nice part of having 4 axis cards, you have something to compare too.

It is not a fault with the TB6560 chip itself, but the use of cut rate parts and strange design implementation.

Marc

[aarggh]

The problem is discovering threads like this AFTER one purchased one of these cards trying to keep the costs down as this is only a hobby.

It is not a fault with the TB6560 chip itself, but the use of cut rate parts and strange design implementation.

Marc

Hi Marc,

I can well appreciate the costs involved when you step down the CNC path (no pun intended, well maybe!), but you may be better off cutting your losses when it comes to these chips. From the earlier posts it appears the chips were designed for other general and low power applications, but being cheap and in large quantities the Chinese started rolling out boards for CNC using them.

I can't comment whether the dead axis (which also seems to be a very common occurrence) is a result of the very particular power up/and/or down requirements, or lack of EMF protection, or something else, but to my mind having something like this occur while doing an important or expensive bit of machining, or while you pick that moment to leave the machine running (it is automated after all) to get a coffee or a snack, and it ruins the workpiece, the cutter, or even worse causes damage to the gantry, etc, is a real concern.

I think a more or less reasonably designed description has been posted earlier in this thread, or as reasonably as is possible for this chip anyway, so maybe search that and if yours doesn't quite come up the same design considerations, I'd seriously consider scrapping it, even though it's a hobby, and an expensive one at that.

Funnily enough, one of my earlier machines that I use for my PCB work, driving NEMA17's, has a 4 axis board based on the 8435 IC, and even though it's still a cheap Chinese board, it has been absolutely rock solid over the years. it just comes down to the suitability of the chip to the application, which it appears that while some people get the 6560 working, it isn't really that suited to this application, and the general design needs to be solid, which for almost all the ones I've seen anyway, the design is very poor. For all these reasons and more, I decided to shell out the money on a Gecko, as I came to the conclusion my time (and enjoyment) was worth more anyway, and after several weeks I still wasn't making chips and instead was getting utterley miserable about it! :violin:

Good luck with yours whatever you do Marc!

cheers,
Ian

[broomy]

I just spent a lot of time reading most of the posts,most Complete mystery to me.I started by buying kits,long hours learning to solder neatly-never been finished.{These cost more than a G540!}Bought a Gecko 540 ,had one question ,emailed Gecko,got an answer in about 12 hours.
That was about 3 years ago,its in a home made tin box on a home made router,has done approx 600 hours work.Never looked at the Gecko from the first day,wired it up wrong plenty of times,its bullet proof,works in a shed which is up 50C in some summer days,has a small cooling fan off a computer power unit running full time,a couple of louvers in the box and that's it!
Have had quite a bit of dealing with China,ask to buy -instant reply,have a complaint or query,stony silence.There is one guy most people I know deal with who is OK,but he is pretty rare in my experience.
This may help somebody that is undecided,especially in the US! Buy locally mate! Regards Broomy

[Thomeeque]

4) Manufacturer's marketing departments over-spec the devices they sell. A good example is the L297 / L298 chipset. It was touted as a 2.5 A rated IC even though no sensible engineer would ever use it with motors over 1 Amp.

Hallo Mariss,

I'm trying to be sensible engineer, but I'm building my first CNC and I did never build too much stuff where big currents were involved so far (maybe except simple LM3886 based audio amplifiers).

Could you please be more specific about L298N issues? I was planning to use these chips (two per one stepper in PARALLELING OUTPUTS configuration) to drive 57STH56-2804 steppers (2.8A per phase). My plan was to put them on heatsinks and place them into ventilated case (old PC PSU case with 80mm fan).

Thanks, T.

[Mariss Freimanis]

The L298 uses Darlington connected transistors for the bridge outputs. Darlingtons have two flaws for use as a switching type drive output; a high Vsat and slow rise and fall times.

1) Vsat (the voltage from collector to emitter when the transistor 'on') is somwhere between 1.5 to 2 V. Since it's a full bridge, motor current has to pass through two of these devices. This results in 10W dissipation per bridge (2 times 2V times 2.5A) or 20W for both bridges.

2) Leisurely rise and fall times exacerbate switching losses (simultaneous high voltage and high current) which add further to the already prodigious power dissipation.

3) Requires external high-speed (trr < 100nS) 5A rectifiers across each bridge transistor.

Mariss

[Larken]

Ya, the L298 needs external diodes and the run really hot. (This driver is a 25 year old design, btw)

The L6203 is a excellent driver 50volts @5 amps, mosfet (costs a bit more) and you need 2 but runs cool.

I use the L6207 and find it works well, up to 50 volt @3 amps/phase and quite tough.