Advice on new set up for 6040 CNC machine

[Cousinit75]

Hi I have owned a 6040 CNC machine for about ten years now, but due circumstances I am only now getting to set it up properly. It did run and complete a job but since then I know windows 7 will no longer be updating next year,mach 3 does not like windows 10. Do I upgrade to Windows 10 and to mach 4?
As I have my CNC controller using a parallel cable if I upgrade to mach 4 do I need to change the inards of the controller to accept a usb system? Thanks

[john swift]

If you use the windows 7 PC just to control the machine and don't let it connect to the internet
you don't neet to change it
"If it aint broke don't fix it" comes to mind

At a later date if your windows 7 PC fails and you have to use a new PC
you can look at using a windows 10 PC and motion controller ,like a UC100 USB Motion Controller ,
that plugs into the machines printer port connector to save modifying the machine

A more expensive and involved upgrade would be to go for some thing like a ethernet smoothstepper

John

[Cousinit75]

Hi John. I think I'm looking to sort it with the least amount of grief and the most amount of longevity. I heard people having hassle going from parallel to usb so if it meant a bit of modification to cater for the usb I don't mind investing.

[Doddy]

I think you'd find a lot of support to upgrading to Ethernet, rather than USB - there are some people here that have had problems with intermittent issues with USB in a high electrical noise environment. To this end, the admirable UC100 can be replaced instead with the EC300ETH, EC400ETH or AXBB-E devices from CNCDrive - works well with Mach3 and their own UCCNC software. These can plug directly (with suitable cable, of course) into the existing parallel interface that you have on your controller.

[Cousinit75]

Thanks Doddy, I'm taking all and any advice on this as it's an investment for me to hopefully grow into something decent.

[Voicecoil]

If it were mine I would avoid Windoze 10 like the plague. I've had 2 apps stop working in the last 9 months after Windoze decided (even though I had automatic updates notionally switched off) to "upgrade" itself. Microsoft obviously have a "if it ain't broke, nobble it" kind of attitude.

[Cousinit75]

I think you'd find a lot of support to upgrading to Ethernet, rather than USB - there are some people here that have had problems with intermittent issues with USB in a high electrical noise environment. To this end, the admirable UC100 can be replaced instead with the EC300ETH, EC400ETH or AXBB-E devices from CNCDrive - works well with Mach3 and their own UCCNC software. These can plug directly (with suitable cable, of course) into the existing parallel interface that you have on your controller.

Hi Doddy. Is getting say the AXBB-E , a big deal or is it fairly doable for someone semi competent. Do i need to pull stuff out of my existing controller (boards etc) I managed to exchange a faulty motor driver without any drama.

[Doddy]

Give us a picture inside your control box to help us understand what you have.

You can find a recommended wiring scheme on the CNC Drive website. If you understand that, and understand what's in the control box then you should be able to work it out easily.

[ivan-mycnc]

I think you'd find a lot of support to upgrading to Ethernet, rather than USB - there are some people here that have had problems with intermittent issues with USB in a high electrical noise environment. To this end, the admirable UC100 can be replaced instead with the EC300ETH, EC400ETH or AXBB-E devices from CNCDrive - works well with Mach3 and their own UCCNC software. These can plug directly (with suitable cable, of course) into the existing parallel interface that you have on your controller.

This might be preaching to the choir, but I just wanted to echo the Ethernet sentiment.

[Cousinit75]

Sorry all for taking so long to reply. What with Christmas an all. Doddy you asked me for a pic, I am trying to attach one here.

[Cousinit75]

26991

[ericks]

The AXBB-E is easy to wire up and set up :)

[Cousinit75]

So, does this replace the small board at the top of the pic and the three stepper motor drivers?

[JAZZCNC]

So, does this replace the small board at the top of the pic and the three stepper motor drivers?

No the AXBB-E is just a motion controller and Breakout board. So this will allow you to connect to PC via Ethernet rather than parallel port and increase performance slightly. It will also offer more inputs and outputs along with spindle control.

You will still need drives for the motors which connect to the AXBB-E.

There are some boards like the Gecko G540 and Lead shine MX4660 which have drives and breakout boards built into one unit. They don't, however, offer an external motion controller so you'll still need this if you want to eliminate the parallel port.

That said I wouldn't recommend this route because if one drive fails it's not so easy to replace. Wiring separate drives into the system isn't a big deal and an ethernet motion controller is far more beneficial than a little less wiring.

[SoundsDigital]

I think you'd find a lot of support to upgrading to Ethernet, rather than USB - there are some people here that have had problems with intermittent issues with USB in a high electrical noise environment. To this end, the admirable UC100 can be replaced instead with the EC300ETH, EC400ETH or AXBB-E devices from CNCDrive - works well with Mach3 and their own UCCNC software. These can plug directly (with suitable cable, of course) into the existing parallel interface that you have on your controller.

I've experienced a lot of problems with USB. After trying lots of methods to shield it, by far the most effective fix has been to ditch the cheap USB lead and replace it with a quality lead with gold contacts and a ferrite choke at both ends.

[Cousinit75]

It's been a while since I replied on here. I have went the uc100 route ,but just can't get the right ports and pins set up. I have movement only in one direction on both X and Y and nothing on Z.

[JohnHaine]

First, I just wanted to say that I've just upgraded to Win10 on a new mini PC and UC100s on both my machines, with very few issues, so there should be light at the end of your tunnel!

My original setup had an XP machine with parallel port drive through a port changeover switch to lathe and mill. My first step was to just install the UC100 plugin, fire up the lathe Mach3 profile, select the UC100 on the dialogue box that came up, and I was away. The only config thing I changed was on the UC100 plugin control where I changed the pulsing rate from the default 100 kHz to 25 kHz (which I had selected for the parallel port). So all the port&pin configs that I had set up for the PP just worked with the UC100.

Then I tried the same route on the mill profile and again it just worked.

I then had a little detour where I explored the increased pulsing speed of the UC100 on the lathe to try to get smoother stepper motion. I found that I couldn't do 100 kHz as the stepper drives didn't have an appropriate microstep setting; and 50 kHz was hit and miss. I eventually decided that the drives were limiting the set rate and reverted to 25kHz and it works fine.

This could be something that is affecting you - if your Z stepper driver is a bit marginal try (a) reducing the step rate in the UC100 control and (b) increasing the "pulse width" setting in the motor tuning config box to its max (5us).

On the mill, which has more up-to-date stepper drivers, I have been able to increase the pulse rate to 100kHz and up the microstepping ratio, giving smoother motion.

End of part 1!

[JohnHaine]

Part 2...

You don't say if you have also changed the computer, say to a Win 10 machine, or if you reinstalled Mach3. After proving that the UC100s worked, I then moved to the Win10 machine. Though the machine was bought used, it had a clean Win10 install so I could start from square 1. I installed Mach3 from NFS; then went through the procedure for transferring the machine setup files from the XP install. The setup is saved, I think every time M3 runs, in a folder called XML backups. These include for example all the ports and pins assignments. So you take the most recent known good xml backup and (IIRC) you just put it in the Mach3 folder to replace the one already there. When I did that an re-connected to the lathe and mill, again everything (mostly) just worked. All the pin configs were just applied to the new M3 install.

The one tricky problem I did have was getting my XBox controller working, which I find invaluable for placing the tool for probing etc. This turned out to be because the XBox plugin used some Microsoft components that were in XP as standard but not in later versions. They can however be installed from the Microsoft site without affecting other Win10 functions, as detailed here:

https://www.machsupport.com/forum/index.php?topic=45733.msg290423#msg290423

[Cousinit75]

Quick update on my non movement of direction. I got the x and y sorted and worked out the z motor had actually seized up. So a few gentle taps with a spanner and it freed up. So I now have all direction on all axis. Now the real work begins.

[Cousinit75]

Ok as I said I now have movement. Although the homing and soft limit thing is now all squinty. I cant post picks in this bit of the reply to show all my current settings and when i went to start a new thread I got no page on my tablet.