[diarmaid]

Hi all,
I have bought the HobbyCNC Pro package with 200oz/in steppers. http://www.hobbycnc.com/

Im a complete noobie to this soldering and PCB business so thats why Im starting this thread. Even with the info available I wasn't 'exactly' sure what I was getting myself into buying the kit, so hopefully this thread will enlighten others who hope to buy it in future. Hopefully the construction will all go ok, and it will remove some of the worries that I had for others without experience buying a kit like this in future.

Also, Im hoping that I can get advice on what to an experienced person would undoubtedly be very simple problems.

So lets GO!

[diarmaid]

1

Here is the kit as it arrived. Plenty of packaging. Each component individually bubble wrapped and polystyrene balls scattered in the box aswell. It arrived in 3 weeks from the USA to Europe.

The box enclosed the Driver board kit, 3 stepper motors, a big blue thing which I believe is a powerlitic converter simply because the word 'powerlitic' is printed on it. A fan, a heat sink, two cables (One parallel port cable, and one just a plain blue cut cable of some sort), instructions.

Enclosed in the bag with the driver board are seperate instructions for it which you cant see until you open it.

Also shown are the soldering station and accessories I bought to connect it all up.

[diarmaid]

I will start with the Driver Board Kit. I will show the picture for each component so that people know what it is. I have established what these are through a process of elimination so if Im wrong someone more experienced please let me know.

Included are:
One (1) PCB 2 Layer with Top Silkscreen and Plated Through Holes.
Four (4) 6 Position Terminal Blocks (Blue Colour)
Four (4) 10K 6 Pin SIP Resistor Network (Black Colour)
Two (2) Two Position Terminal Block (Blue Colour)
Twelve (12) Jumper Shunts
1 Inner Anti-Static Bag containing : Three (3) 23 Pin Driver Chips - and - 74HC14 Hex Inverters

[diarmaid]

Six (6) BS250 PNP Mosfets. I believe these have '852' '50' written on one side but I dont have a magnifying glass and its VERY small.
Three (3) 10uF 50V Electrolytic Capacitor. These are Black with a grey stripe and '50V 10uF' written on them.
Three (3) 100uF 16V Electrolytic Capacitor. These are also Black and Grey, and are ever so slightly visibly larger than the 10uF ones. '100uF 16V' is written on them.
Three (3) 680uF 50V Electrolytic Capacitor. These are Blue and Gold and are quite obvious because they're so big.
One (1) DB25 90 Degree Male Connector.

[HobbyCNC]

Six (6) .1uF ('Micro Farad' I think) Capictor. I believe these have '852' '50' written on one side but I dont have a magnifying glass and its VERY small.
Three (3) 10uF 50V Electrolytic Capacitor. These are Black with a grey stripe and '50V 10uF' written on them.
Three (3) 100uF 16V Electrolytic Capacitor. These are also Black and Grey, and are ever so slightly visibly larger than the 10uF ones. '100uF 16V' is written on them.
Three (3) 680uF 50V Electrolytic Capacitor. These are Blue and Gold and are quite obvious because they're so big.
One (1) DB25 90 Degree Male Connector.

The upper left hand corner are the BS250 mosfets NOT the .01uF caps
Using the pictures on our website will help in identifying the parts also!

[diarmaid]

Six (6) 10K 1/4 W 1% Resistors. As in the instructions these can be identified by the coloured lines on them (Brown Black Black Red Brown)
Three (3) 100K 1/4 W 5% (Brown Black Yellow Gold)
One (1) 6.04K 1/4 W 1% (Blue Black Yellow Brown Brown)
One (1) 750 1/4 W 1% (Violet Green Black Black Brown)
Two (2) 249 1/4 W 1% (Red Yellow White Black Brown) (Photo not shown sorry)

[HayTay]

1 Inner Anti-Static Bag containing : Three (3) 23 Pin Driver Chips

diarmaid,

HobbyCNC used to use the Sanken/Allegro SLA7062M 21 pin driver chips in their original 4AUPC kits. Checking up on your pin count, I just went to their website to investigate the HobbyCNC Pro kits and your right, the new chips that they are using are 23 pins.

Can you post the information printed on the new chips so we can tell what they are or is the information sanded off like in the pictures posted on their website? It's nice to have that information so that another (hopefully local) source can be found for the chips in case the chip packaging isn't sufficient to contain the magic smoke that makes them work.

[diarmaid]

The upper left hand corner are the BS250 mosfets NOT the .01uF caps

DAVE: Thanks Dave I have changed this. Your instructions are very good, but Im just doing this because as they say 'A picture paints a thousand words'.
I e-mailed you in relation to what I thought was the mosfets, but I see now was the .1uF 50V Capacitors which were in the kit but one short. This is the only problem I see with what appears to my untrained eye to be an otherwise excellent product.

HayTay: The chips say 'Japan SLA7078MR 6519 P'

[HobbyCNC]

diarmaid,

HobbyCNC used to use the Sanken/Allegro SLA7062M 21 pin driver chips in their original 4AUPC kits. Checking up on your pin count, I just went to their website to investigate the HobbyCNC Pro kits and your right, the new chips that they are using are 23 pins.

Can you post the information printed on the new chips so we can tell what they are or is the information sanded off like in the pictures posted on their website? It's nice to have that information so that another (hopefully local) source can be found for the chips in case the chip packaging isn't sufficient to contain the magic smoke that makes them work.

Local source? Not likely.
SLA7078MPR chips from Sanken.

[diarmaid]

There are different sets included with the Driver Kit, which each consist of three (3) items. I do not know which is which?
The only sets of 3 items on the contents list are the capacitors above, the resistors above, the driver chips and the following two items. Hopefully someone can clarify this. These two sets of items are:

Three (3) 2x4 Pin Header
Three (3) 1K 1/2 W Potentiometer

The three sets of items I cannot identify are shown in the pics below.
Thankyou.

The fourth pic I think is the .1uF capacitors. Can someone please clarify this?
If these are the capacitors my only problem with the kit so far which is a very minor one is that one (1) of these was missing. This is understandable when packing such a large number of different small components.

EDIT:
Ok, when I started putting it all together I realised that each of these only fits into its own hole, and each hole is numbered on the PCB so its fairly easy to figure out:

The first three (3) little blue things are the 1K 1/2 W Potentiometer's.

The second three (3) are the (Which Dave was kind enough to e-mail me to also point out):
1 x LM317 Adjustable Voltage Regulator
1 x 7824CV 24V Voltage Regulator
1 x LM317HV Adjustable Voltage Regulator
The different name of each one is printed onto it, so they cant be mixed up.

The third three (3) are the 2x3 Pin Header's. I discuss problems with these in a later post.

[HayTay]

SLA7078MPR chips from Sanken.

Dave,

Good to hear from you! For those following diarmaids HobbyCNC Pro assembly thread, could you enlighten us with the features and benefits of the NEW PRO driver board over the original HobbyCNC 4AUPC driver board. What, if any, performance gains in speed or torque, stability, etc. would someone expect to see when comparing the original HobbyCNC 4AUPC board to the New HobbyCNC Pro board, given the same set of unipolar stepper motors?

Oh, and the new board is ROHS compliant, too, which, if I'm not mistaken is one of the (many) reasons that diarmaid purchased from HobbyCNC (seeing that he resides in Ireland).

Judging from the many posts on this, and other forums, the Sanken/Allegro SLA7062M driver chips are very susceptible to a catastrophic failure. In the driver chips defense, it is usually a mistake on the part of the operator that causes the failure. Are the new chips that you are using on the HobbyCNC Pro board just as prone to user error or are they more forgiving?


Thanks!!!

[HobbyCNC]

Dave,

Good to hear from you! For those following diarmaids HobbyCNC Pro assembly thread, could you enlighten us with the features and benefits of the NEW PRO driver board over the original HobbyCNC 4AUPC driver board. What, if any, performance gains in speed or torque, stability, etc. would someone expect to see when comparing the original HobbyCNC 4AUPC board to the New HobbyCNC Pro board, given the same set of unipolar stepper motors?

Oh, and the new board is ROHS compliant, too, which, if I'm not mistaken is one of the (many) reasons that diarmaid purchased from HobbyCNC (seeing that he resides in Ireland).

Judging from the many posts on this, and other forums, the Sanken/Allegro SLA7062M driver chips are very susceptible to a catastrophic failure. In the driver chips defense, it is usually a mistake on the part of the operator that causes the failure. Are the new chips that you are using on the HobbyCNC Pro board just as prone to user error or are they more forgiving?


Thanks!!!

Same performance can be expected as with the SLA7062M driver boards (4AUPC)

Added features of the PRO board are:
Idle current reduction after 10 seconds of no movement for each axis. Can be changed with a simple resistor value substitution.
99% less stepper hiss.
Now supports 1/1, 1/2, 1/4, 1/8, and 1/16 stepping.
Chips have built in protection from open or shorted steppers. This alone should aleviate 90% of the blown chips. Not impossible, just harder to do.
Same clear concise step by step instructions and our famous support via our Yahoo group for HobbyCNC customers. It stays on topic, spam is non existant and sports 1200+ members.
The chip is Sankens absolute latest technology in unipolar stepper drivers.

MOST all problems are due to not following the instructions (assembly error), poor solder joints, and just plain being in a hurry to get her up and running.

[toneV8]

diarmaid: Can you take picture of heat sink and can you scan instructions.

[toneV8]

Unfortunately I can not join Yahoo group for HobbyCNC customers so I can not see ''step by step instructions''.

[HayTay]

Idle current reduction after 10 seconds of no movement for each axis. Can be changed with a simple resistor value substitution.
99% less stepper hiss.
Chips have built in protection from open or shorted steppers. This alone should aleviate 90% of the blown chips. Not impossible, just harder to do.

Those features alone, would make it worthwhile to replace someone's existing unipolar driver board to the new HobbyCNC Pro driver board. Good work, Dave and everyone at HobbyCNC. This solution sounds like just what I need to "put under the hood" of the 2nd CNC router I'm building.

I can't wait to hear diarmaid's reaction when he gets his HobbyCNC Pro board completed and spins his motors for the first time. WhooHoo!!!

Doing a great job documenting the HobbyCNC Pro board, diarmaid, keep up the good work.

Thanks for the details Dave.

[HobbyCNC]

diarmaid: Can you take picture of heat sink and can you scan instructions.

Scanning the instructions is a violation of our copyrights. Please do not do this.

[Bertram]

Hi all, I have been a long time browser here, about to dive head first into a cnc router project.
Regarding the suggested transformer to power the hcncpro board, (Hammond, I believe), can anyone point out the difference between the Hammond and this one? http://www.mpja.com/productview.asp?product=7846+TR
Apart from the $40 price difference and the apparent R0HS compliance of the Hammond.

[diarmaid]

Hi all,

1: I will not post scans or copies of any documentation which I received. Dave and HobbyCNC have obviously put a huge amount of time and effort into what I am now thinking is their excellent product (See why in Post No. 27 below!), and I won't de-value that in any way so please don't ask again. ToneV8, you were not to know . I will take a pic of the heat sink and post it up. Im sure I'll have to install it at some point anyway.

2: Dave, thanks a million for the very prompt reply to my e-mail. I figured out the parts as shown by the now edited previous post, when I started putting it together. They only fit into one hole, hence foolproof! I can't find my resistor, but I can buy them locally for 15c and I probably did drop it and lose it myself so I dont want you to offer to send one or anything like that, but I might have to email you with my local .1uF choices to see which fits the bill best. If I post anything which infringes your intellectual property rights, or just that you would prefer not to be posted on moral grounds because you spent 6 months finding a part or whatever, pm me. I'm only trying to help people out.

3: Now back to business!!

[diarmaid]

I inserted the first 6 resistors in the slots indicated in the instructions and numbered on the PCB. Easy to find. Just stick the resistors in hole for example '1,2,3,4,5, & 6', and the hole number is also printed beside the hole on the PCB. You have to just bend the ends as shown in the one thats not inserted yet. You can see them sticking through at the back. And the third pic shows that like a good noobie I checked the resistance before soldering anything.

[diarmaid]

:banana: :banana: :banana: :banana: :banana: :banana: :banana: :banana:

My first solder deserves its own post! Here Im pointing at it

This isn't just my first solder on this board, its my first real solder EVER (Kinda)! They said I should practise first so I melted one glob of solder on a piece of paper, but that seemed kinda pointless so I dove straight in.