[men8ifr]

Any recommendations, what do I need to look for, ebag has a 5 axis card for £5, do I need anything more?

[he1957]

Five axis for 5 pounds? Link please :-)

Depends on what capabilities you need for what you want to do.

Remember, the BoB is just a card for connecting the wires (sensors) between the machine and the Controls.

What do you want to do/make.
What Controller will you use?

Think about needed/desired control and sensing functions such as:

Motors (you mentioned 5)
Sensors - home for all axes, how about limit switches for these axes - do you need + and - sensing; can the home be used as limit in your situation and are they independant or wired in a series or parallel fashion?

Controlling motors, spindles, pumps (cooling, mist, vacuum table(s) or other), even a light on the spindle head can be useful

E-Stop is one not to omit!

Do you want to add anything else in future - allow for expansion. If you haven't had/used a machine before, you soon realise a "widgety thingy for what you do" might be nice :-)

[dazp1976]

Five axis for 5 pounds? Link please :-)

Depends on what capabilities you need for what you want to do.

Remember, the BoB is just a card for connecting the wires (sensors) between the machine and the Controls.

What do you want to do/make.
What Controller will you use?

Think about needed/desired control and sensing functions such as:

Motors (you mentioned 5)
Sensors - home for all axes, how about limit switches for these axes - do you need + and - sensing; can the home be used as limit in your situation and are they independant or wired in a series or parallel fashion?

Controlling motors, spindles, pumps (cooling, mist, vacuum table(s) or other), even a light on the spindle head can be useful

E-Stop is one not to omit!

Do you want to add anything else in future - allow for expansion. If you haven't had/used a machine before, you soon realise a "widgety thingy for what you do" might be nice :-)

https://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/5-Axis-CN...e2P:rk:10:pf:0
I use this on my Seig X2 and had no problems at all working 3 axis so far. 4th axis worked just as well on a bench test.

I haven't managed to get my system to work very well with Win7 yet but with Win XP it's faultless.

[men8ifr]

It sounds like a smoothstepper (which is maybe £20) is the same thing but a lot better? Not sure why though..

https://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/MACH3-4-A...m3ZI:rk:2:pf:0

[dazp1976]

It sounds like a smoothstepper (which is maybe £20) is the same thing but a lot better? Not sure why though..

https://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/MACH3-4-A...m3ZI:rk:2:pf:0

That's not a smoothstepper. They're more like £200 new.
That card is more or less the same functions as the £5 one. At least it's usb though.

This is a smoothstepper:
https://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/Ethernet-...lteq:rk:2:pf:0
Then what you do is link up a couple of those basic cards to it which then doubles the amount of input/output functions you have.

[men8ifr]

So is a smoothstepper required (and only for Mach3/4?)

What does it do?

[dharmic]

That £5 special linked by dazp1976 sits beautifully between my CNCDrive UC400-ETH card's LPT printer port output and the stepper drivers and spindle controller. I was dubious about life expectancy etc on something so cheap but at the price I could buy 3 just because. Hasn't missed a beat, the spares are sitting there waiting for other projects. It's happily

If your computer has a printer port, hook it to this, hook this to your stepper drivers and your VFD (if you have one, otherwise spindle control is manual) and off you go - easy.

If you have no printer port, don't buy an el cheapo £5 USB printer adapter because they won't work. The one linked to above probably will unless you have issues with current paths, latency and a bunch of other stuff that USB's terrible at dealing with. My machine came with a similar USB BOB and mostly worked, but I had some weird issues with it. Ended up replacing it with an ethernet one which has been rock solid ever since.

If you can stretch the budget a little higher, have a look at the Mesa or CNCDrive ethernet interfaces. AFAIK both have support for Mach 3, the Mesa supports LinuxCNC and the CNCDrive ones support UCCNC if you want to try something other than Mach3. They both work on the principal of letting the computer do all the trajectory planning ie number crunching but dealing with the timing themselves, so any jitter from Windows (or Linux) and the ethernet connection are taken out and you get a nice smooth drive. When I switched mine over the machine became noticeably quieter in motion and I was able to nearly double my rapid speeds.

[ger21]

No, Mesa bards do not work with Mach3. LinuxCNC only.

[dharmic]

No, Mesa bards do not work with Mach3. LinuxCNC only.

Ah, thanks Gerry. This is probably why I went for the CNCDrive board instead back when, I wouldn't have wanted to redo everything in one go (ie hardware AND software).

[dazp1976]

That £5 special linked by dazp1976 sits beautifully between my CNCDrive UC400-ETH card's LPT printer port output and the stepper drivers and spindle controller. I was dubious about life expectancy etc on something so cheap but at the price I could buy 3 just because. Hasn't missed a beat, the spares are sitting there waiting for other projects. It's happily

If your computer has a printer port, hook it to this, hook this to your stepper drivers and your VFD (if you have one, otherwise spindle control is manual) and off you go - easy.

If you can stretch the budget a little higher, have a look at the Mesa or CNCDrive ethernet interfaces. AFAIK both have support for Mach 3, the Mesa supports LinuxCNC and the CNCDrive ones support UCCNC if you want to try something other than Mach3. They both work on the principal of letting the computer do all the trajectory planning ie number crunching but dealing with the timing themselves, so any jitter from Windows (or Linux) and the ethernet connection are taken out and you get a nice smooth drive. When I switched mine over the machine became noticeably quieter in motion and I was able to nearly double my rapid speeds.

I did the same. Bought 4 of them and still on my first one. Haven't used the spindle control side as yet.
I'm not confident on usb types either so for future upgrade it has to be ethernet.

What I'd like to do in the future is run an ethernet controller into a couple of these boards.
Then use one for the entire mill up to 5 axis and the other to run coolant and a custom made tool changer.
I reckon the tool changer itself could have 3-4 axis. That's thinking way ahead though.
Could even end up tying in 3 boards to an ESS depending on how much kit is attached to the machine.

[ericks]

I have been using one of these 5 axis boards on my 6040 after the more expensive Homann designs board failed. It's been working very well.....i also installed one on the machine i am busy building.

[men8ifr]

I have been using one of these 5 axis boards on my 6040 after the more expensive Homann designs board failed. It's been working very well.....i also installed one on the machine i am busy building.

One of which card?

[ericks]

One of which card?