[joeavaerage]

Hi,
the ESS power supply is the wee green plug/socket directly above the silver Ethernet socket. The ESS requires a good stable 5V supply of about 500mA. Don't skimp, a good quality supply
is essential. An overvoltage excursion on the power supply input will wreck an ESS...and no come backs on that sort of failure.

The ESS has three parallel port output sockets, those are the three black rectangular 26 pin IDC sockets. In the picture above only one is populated, that is to say that it has an IDC-to-DB25
adaptor cable (ribbon) that plugs into the G540 directly. In one of the earlier photos there was a second breakout board plugged into the ESS, in addition to the G540. That will allow you to
have more inputs and outputs than a G540 on its own. The ESS has with all three ports operating has 51 inputs/outputs combined.

Warp9TD make the ESS sell the IDC26 to DB25 adaptor cables for about $10.00.

Craig

[kawazuki]

Thank you for the explanations - it is somewhat clearer now, although WOW those Warp9 boards are costly ! ! ! I spent a few hours yesterday rebuilding an old parallel ported PC running Win7 - its so cute and slow compared to current Win10
But to think up until two years ago Win7 was my daily driver OS! So, as I have a licenced version of Mach3, I'll continue with that, as I don't currently do enough work to warrant the expenditure for an ESS and Mach4. Thanks again.

[dazp1976]

Thank you for the explanations - it is somewhat clearer now, although WOW those Warp9 boards are costly ! ! ! I spent a few hours yesterday rebuilding an old parallel ported PC running Win7 - its so cute and slow compared to current Win10
But to think up until two years ago Win7 was my daily driver OS! So, as I have a licenced version of Mach3, I'll continue with that, as I don't currently do enough work to warrant the expenditure for an ESS and Mach4. Thanks again.

A lot of people do go down the old pc rote. I did for a few years until I needed more I/O and upgraded to a uc300eth system and laptop.

Thing is. If you get one with an i3 type processor and about 4gb of ram, the only difference tbf is the lack of a ssd. The ssd hard drive is the main reason win10 machines are quick in all honesty!!!. It's too much of a faff trying to get Win7 on ssd.

I think I forgot to mention that there is also an AXBB-E from cncdrive that is an all in one controller and breakout board unit that works with Mach3. Saves on space over an ESS and add-on breakout boards if space is a worry when the time comes.
Nothing wrong with the ESS, I just wanted the option of not being tied to Mach.

[joeavaerage]

Hi,

it is somewhat clearer now, although WOW those Warp9 boards are costly ! ! !

Mach4Hobby=$200, ESS=$190, combined $390.....that's less than one 750w servo or less than one quarter of one ground ballscrew........Mach/ESS is the cheapest part.

Craig

[kawazuki]

Hi,



Mach4Hobby=$200, ESS=$190, combined $390.....that's less than one 750w servo or less than one quarter of one ground ballscrew........Mach/ESS is the cheapest part.

Craig

Not when you already possess a Full Mach3 Licence, G540, Steppered & Ballscrewed mill and now a 'new / old' PC with Win7 on an SSD which just cost me some time! You also forgot the parallel ribbon cable and a power supply - it all adds to the costs!

[joeavaerage]

Hi,
a parallel port or even two of them cannot possibly hope to run my mill.

My servos require a step pulse rate of 416kHz to have them reach full speed and maintain a 1um resolution, that's 17 times faster than a parallel port (default 25kHz) can manage.

I have six limit switches and three home switches for nine switches, 1 probe input,1 Estop, 5 inputs for a wired pendant, and 5 independent axis alarms, all individually assigned an input, ie 21 inputs,
and I still have 10 to spare. A parallel port has 5 inputs, nowhere near enough.

I have 10 outputs for step/direction, so up to 5 axes, 2 outputs for the spindle (1 on/off, 1 PWM),1 Enable output (common to all five servos),1 Reset output (common to all five servos), 1 coolant pump output
and still have 5 to spare.

The ESS has 51 inputs and outputs whereas a parallel port has 17.

I made my own breakout board and it requires three ribbon cables, which I made myself, cost $8.00. I also made my own power supply using recycled transformers, so the cost of the power supply drops
to $12.00.

I have already planned and part way through designing my second breakout board which will have a number of improvements over my first one. One of the improvements is that the ESS will plug directly
atop of the breakout board, no ribbon cables involved. Second improvement will be a sixth step/dir output for my secondary spindle that I may have a coordinated C axis that I can use it for rigid tapping.
Note that will still have on/off and PWM for my regular spindle.

I am going to use dedicated (AEIC7272) line driver ICs for this new design, and they cost $12.00 each, and I'll require three. This is an improvement over the dual channel op-amps I used in my first design.
I'm also going to use a different transformer for the power supply, I've already bought it, a 30VA toroidal type, cost $22.00. All up I expect the new breakout board to cost $120.

All of these costs pale into insignificance to other costs I have incurred, for instance I had the axis beds ( three of them, 115kg each) cast for me in grey cast iron, cost $2350.00 So you can see when I say that
Mach4Hobby/ESS are a small cost....I mean a VERY small cost to the overall project.

Craig

[dazp1976]

Not when you already possess a Full Mach3 Licence, G540, Steppered & Ballscrewed mill and now a 'new / old' PC with Win7 on an SSD which just cost me some time! You also forgot the parallel ribbon cable and a power supply - it all adds t o the costs!

Faff with Win7 on ssd. Why?.
I still run WinXP if I'm using parallel. It's a perfect marriage. Can use a Celeron cpu, 4gb ram, and an old IDE hdd, and the machine will still perform flawlessly.

In fact, I still have 2 spare pport pcs for the mini mill stashed (2004-6 models) that I got for pennies.

Now I have the PM type mill though, my mini has sat idle.
Had to do the upgrade to the UC300eth on the PM.
36 out / 49 in / plus, 2 in / 2 out analog channels.
I do plan on using them, that's if I don't get fed up hobbying over the next few years.

Getting a laptop prepped atm to replace the pc because it's cheaper to run.

[kawazuki]

Not sure what 'faff' you are experiencing using Win7 on an SSD? I've used SSD's for OS drives for years - the last iteration before the switch to 10 was a dual boot SSD having XP and Win7 so I could choose OS to suit either my CAD / CAM software
that only runs on XP and use 7 for virtually everything else without problems. I haven't tried running the CAD/CAM software on my 10 PC using XP emulation - maybe for another day.

[dazp1976]

Not sure what 'faff' you are experiencing using Win7 on an SSD? I've used SSD's for OS drives for years - the last iteration before the switch to 10 was a dual boot SSD having XP and Win7 so I could choose OS to suit either my CAD / CAM software
that only runs on XP and use 7 for virtually everything else without problems. I haven't tried running the CAD/CAM software on my 10 PC using XP emulation - maybe for another day.

I'll have to do a bit more reading and practice.
Tried doing 7 using Rufus a couple of times brfore but couldn't boot it to ssd from usb.
Ideally want my retail discs put onto boot media.
Playing around with 10 from SD card atm but bios isn't adding SD as a boot option (HP).

At least I know 7 can be done. No updates means no sudden software fails.
Currently using pc dual boot XP / 7 on standard hdd.

When it comes to CAM I reckon spikes on the 3D graph shown in task manager in Win10 are causing me crashes when simulating some of my toolpaths

[kawazuki]

Currently using pc dual boot XP / 7 on standard hdd.:

I'm no computer whizz but if you have a dual boot HDD working, i'd pick-up a Samsung 870 EVO SSD and use the included cloning software. Once that's done, unplug the HDD
and swap to the SSD and you won't spot the difference apart from faster boot times. Unfortunately their SW only clones to Samsung drives but as they are good ones its not such a bind!