[Mountaincraft]

Here is what is available on the BOB....

ISOLATED SIDE
The primary side provides the following connections:
• 1 AC line power terminal block input
• 1 isolated 25 pin DSUB connector
• 3 isolated external sensor terminal block outputs
AC INPUT CONNECTOR
The AC input connector is a 2 pin screw terminal block. This input is used to provide 115Vac/60Hz line voltage to the onboard power supply. It is fused to protect the line feed in the event of an on board fault.

25 PIN DSUB CONNECTOR
The isolated 25 pin SDUB connector (P3) provides a means to connect a computer to the Parallel Port Isolator module. Connect the parallel port output on the personal computer to the DSUB connector using any standard, straightthrough serial cable.

AUXILIARY SENSOR CONNECTORS
The 3 isolated external sensor outputs are provided via 2 pin terminal block connectors (P4-6). The 3 isolated outputs are driven by external sensor inputs on the secondary side (P16, 17 & 18) The auxiliary outputs are TTL compatible. The logic states on the auxiliary sensor outputs follow the logic state on the auxiliary sensor inputs.

SECONDARY SIDE
The secondary side provides the following connections:
• 8 external sensor inputs
• 5 motor drive outputs
• 1 spindle drive output
• 2 SPDT relays
• 1 auxiliary power output
The secondary side also provides the following features:
• A selector switch to choose whether the remote sensor inputs are pulled high or pulled low
• A selector switch to select software good enable for the module outputs
• A selector switch to select motor drive X’ invert or not

EXTERNAL SENSOR INPUTS
Two of the external sensor connectors are standard Ethernet connectors (P15 & P16), and two are terminal blocks (P17 & P18). All 8 sensor inputs are provided with a termination switch that pulls them either high or low via 3.3K Ohm resistors.
Set the switch for the desired termination (either pulled Hi or pulled LO) using the figure below as an example to determine the proper switch direction.

All 8 external sensors are routed through a low pass filter to improve noise immunity.

[ger21]

Your breakout board. Do you have a .pdf manual you can email me?

[Mountaincraft]

Yes.. Shoot me your e-mail address again.. it's on the other computer...
Appreciate it!

[ger21]

cncwoodworker at comcast dot net

[Mountaincraft]

Just fired it off..
Thanks,
Mark

[ger21]

I have no idea what to do. I'd say ask CNC Routerparts if you can get a PWM output from that board. If not, then ask Roman how to convert the 0-10V to 0-5V.

[Mountaincraft]

According to the S-PID manual.. you can make a voltage divider with two resistors.. This makes total sense, but I have no idea what size I need to have as the minimum so that it doesn't draw too much current, or the maximum so it draws enough...

If it was an audio circuit, I'd say a couple 10K ohm or better resistors.. but I have 'no' idea about the impedance on the BOB or the S-PID...

[Mountaincraft]

And then I have to figure out how to get a 'run' signal to the thing through the BOB.. I'm hoping that I don't have to use one of those two relays for that.... I had other intents for them...

[vikingboy]

Are the "5 motor outputs" on your BOB just the step and dir pins to connect to the motor power drivers or is your BOB one of those all in one types ?

If the motor drives are simply the step and dir outputs, and I assume you dont need all 5 just use one of those either step or dir, check the manual for which pin its on and then in mach3 map that pin to the spindle pwm out.

should work I think ?


Andrew

[Mountaincraft]

Well, even if it 'could' work, the problem is that I bought one of the very first of these boards, and as such was sort of a guinea pig.. and of course there was a problem (not surprising really, considering I'm one of the first with a new line of product)... One of those 5 motor outputs, is a 'hardware' copy of one of the other outputs.. IOW, it takes a motor axis input from Mach 3, and duplicates it and allows you to reverse it all in hardware.. without using an extra mach 3 axis.. The idea is to use this for dual motor x Axis (or other dual motor axis designs)... but there was a problem with that hardware output.. So i used the 5th output as a 4th axis in Mach 3 to drive my other X axis motor...

Also, I plan to add an indexer in the future.. so when CNCRP gets the new revisions of the board with the hardware axis working and gets it to me, I'll still need to use that other axis for the indexer.. so using that as a fix 'now' would just put me in the same boat down the road... I'd rather resolve this for good now.. so I can consider it handled and not have to worry about it later...

[vikingboy]

OK, hmm I see, still shouldnt be a problem, by that quick excerpt you posted it seems they do give you access to the unused output pins, it just sounds a little confusing the way its described, you could always just open the Pport plug at the BOB end and 'hack' out the wire you need

Andrew

[Mountaincraft]

I think I'd rather add a second card and cable before I resorted to that... I can see how that could come in handy down the road anyways...

[vikingboy]

JUst had another read of the bit you posted, think I am making more sense of it now, the "isolated" side they describe must be the computer side of the BOB ie on the computer side of the opto isolaters, and the "• 3 isolated external sensor terminal block outputs" I am pretty sue must refer to outputs probably coming stright of the the Pport. seems they are pins 4 and 6 just use one of those on the terminal blocks and tell mach to run the PWM to it.

the only bit I dont quite get is the following line, anybody undterstand this:
"The 3 isolated outputs are driven by external sensor inputs on the secondary side (P16, 17 & 18) " ?

also, why is there a 115 AC input on that card ? is it just to power the card ?

Andrew

[Mountaincraft]

It's the first version of this card, and I think there are some legacy things that aren't going to be there on future versions.. but I found that whole outputs are inputs thing very confusing as well.. Almost as if they don't do anything but 'isolate'.. but it might just be bad wording...

There is an on board power supply that takes 120v in and provides a 12v output to power the card and also for other uses, like powering the relays..

[vikingboy]

yer thats the strange thing, another thing is that the pins they say are outputs for auxilliary 4-6 are usually used for motor drive pins on a BOB ?

I am sure there must be a way to get at the pins somehow though. It may turn out easier to just make the little voltage divider circuit, I had a quick look back in the thread as I am sure it was in here somewhere but I couldnt find it, the pages with a fair bit of info on it are around 600 or so.

Andrew

[RomanLini]

Craigjh- congrats on the nice install. The router sensor looks fully workable, as proven by the "spindle view" bargraph readings.

Your enclosure looks neat and very self contained! I'm assuming it's for manual (Knob) use only so it looks like you have everything you need all in the one box!

I'm not totally happy about the 5v supply being 5.5v to 5.3, these are generally considered not "regulated" as such. However the SuperPID won't be damaged by 5.3v in operation. One issue with a 5v supply that might vary in voltage is if you are using PC control, as the voltage is used to set the router speed so if the PC 5v is different to the SuperPID 5v it can cause speed fluctuations. In your case if it will always be used in knob mode this will probably not be an issue.

If you had the desire to rebuild the little power supply then the general advice is to use a plugpack that produces about 9v DC, then use a common 3-pin 5v regulator (7805) which is as simple as 9v going in one pin and regulated 5v coming out another pin.

One thing I would like you to check is if the router has a "soft start" feature? In the 2nd image in your post #1190 there seems to be a black box in the top of the router, above the router switch. If this contains electronics (if the router has a soft start feature) this needs to be bypassed so it does not interfere with the SuperPID speed control.

Mountaincraft- OK you got it running under manual control, that's great now we have to get this PC speed control bit working.

If your BOB produces a 0v to 10v speed control voltage that has the same ground as the ohter outputs then it should be a simple matter of using 2 resistors in a voltage divider. That was shown in the SuperPID v1 instructions but seems to have been left out of the v2 instructions! If you need 2 resistors then values of two 22k resistors should work fine. Put the two resistors in series, then 10v goes to the top and the middle will be 5v. The result is a 0v-10v to 0v-5v converter.

Gerry probably has the best idea, if you have access to a PWM signal on the BOB that shares the same ground as the SuperPID 5v ground, then you can put that PWM signal directly into the SuperPID using the diagram (as Gerry stated) on page 23.

It's not clear to me from your descriptions of the BOB which pins are easily accessible for you to connect to the SuperPID or what is "isolated" from what, but I have a feeling you can not easily connect to the PWM pin in the parallel connector so (if that is right) the best option might be to use the dedicated spindle speed connector and two resistors as discussed.

Anyway there are 2 options there that should work, the best option will depend on how those pins of your BOB are connected within the BOB.

Are those BOB instructions available to download from CNCrouterparts?

[Mountaincraft]

RomanLini said:
"Are those BOB instructions available to download from CNCrouterparts?"

No, unfortunately, there was a problem with the BOB, so they have taken it down until they get it resolved and new boards made... But I can e-mail them to you if you give me your e-mail address...

[Mountaincraft]

I think that the only way I can do this, is to use the voltage divider and the spindle output of the BOB, and then use one of the BOB's two relays for the 'run' signal... There is 'one' remaining input to the BOB that I haven't used for homing or probe inputs yet, that I 'might' be able to use for returning a tach signal later.. I think that when I rebuild the table, I'm gonna just figure on adding a parallel port card so that I can have more inputs and outputs...

I kinda had another purpose in mind for the relay I'll be eating up.. but I guess I can always use external relays and have that relay control them... That might be easier wiring wise anyways...

So I guess it's okay to use cat 5 cable for the spindle and run signals?

[Mountaincraft]

Well, I found some 32K resistors this morning, but they're 10%.. and as such there's a pretty good difference between them..

Of the precision resistors I had, I had a choice of 4.7K, 10K, 47K, and 100K (as well as 500K and 1M)... I matched a pair each of the 47K and the 100K.. I can't imagine what it would be a problem to use either, but since 22K was suggested, I figured I better run it past those in the know...

[Mountaincraft]

Okay, so I believe I have this wired correctly.. But I'm a little confused how to set up mach 3 for it...

The spindle input of my BOB is on pin 14 of the parallel port... So I went into Config>Ports and Pins>motor outputs and I enabled 'spindle'.. I set both step and direction to pin 14 of port 1.. is this correct?

Then I went into config>ports and pins>spindle setup.. and set the thing to Use spindle motor output, PWM control, and base frequency of 50.. I then went into config>Spindle Pulleys, and set the first four pulleys to min of 0 and max of 18000.. The S-PID instructions don't say 'which pulley' to set up...

Okay, that should cause speed control right? I put two 47K resistors across the spindle output of the BOB (@ the input to the S-PID), and tapped off the point between them and hooked that to the 'pot' input of the S-PID...

I also ran a pair of wires from the ground-run terminals of the S-PID to a relay on my BOB.. I hooked it to the NO contacts.. This relay is controlled by pin 17 of the parallel port.. I have 'no idea' how to assign this in Mach 3 so that it will send the appropriate signal to the BOB through pin 17...

Anyone have any idea how to do this?

Thanks,
Mark