[mhb]

In January 2013 I purchased a Limac R3103 Chinese router which came equipped with an RZNC 0501HBEE DSP controller. The router was fine, but the controller was not to my liking.

I had purchased a new Acer laptop in anticipation of running Vectric Aspire and the router from it. The laptop has a Windows 8 Pro 64 bit operating system which was not capable of connecting to the DSP. The newness of the router soon wore off and reality set in. I was having to go from designing on the laptop, saving to a usb drive, removing the usb drive and connecting it to the DSP, and doing the necessary key strokes on the DSP to load the file onto the controller This was a real pain to say the least.

I had some limited experience using Mach3 on a Windows XP desktop computer with a parallel port in the past, but nothing recent. I went in search of a solution to convert the router controller from the DSP to Mach3 running on a laptop. I settled on a CM106 breakout board from JI Robotics, the ESS SmoothStepper from Warp9, a XHC HB04 usb wireless pendant control, and the 2010 Mach3 screenset. The DSP controller was a single board controller. The SmoothStepper mounts unto the CM106 as a daughter board providing the appearance of a one board installation.

The CM106 has on board:
• 5V power for the SmoothStepper allowing the use of the single voltage 24V power supply already in the control cabinet
• A charge pump circuit
• Seven control relays
• A 0-10V PWM output to control the Fuling VFD spindle control thus providing variable spindle speed where as with the DSP I was limited to three fixed speeds
• It accepts the 24V input signal from the proximity switches that the Limac uses, most breakout boards only accept 5V

The ESS SmoothStepper allowed me to install a USB to Ethernet port on the laptop to connect to it while letting me use the laptop onboard Ethernet port to connect to my network.

I’m providing this information for anyone who may be in search of replacing a DSP controller or running Mach3 on a Windows 8 Pro 64 bit laptop.

Mike

[ger21]

Got a link to the CM106 board?

[mhb]

Got a link to the CM106 board?

I got mine off eBay and shipping was six days. If you scroll down on eBay, there's a link to the manual. I bought the SmoothStepper in the US. They sell the unit as a combo, but it was cheaper this way. They also have a website: CNC Shop for CNC Products, New & Used.

Mike

[spclaser3]

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