ROLAND CAMM-2 PNC-2300A Conversion?

Morning All,

I've been thinking as it will be a little bit longer till I can get my proper CNC built that I would pose the question about my little ROLAND CAMM-2 PNC-2300A as some of you may know it runs some Roland proprietary based software called Dr Engrave which to be honest I find a pain to get to to what I want it to do as you can't set anything properly (or I'm too dense to do it right)

I'm wondering as I've seen older post about people converting these to run better be it by replacing the EPROM or the controller board itself, if anyone could recommend any changes or mods I could look into for it?

I did debate a GRBL conversion and still have the board for that, but I stopped when I realised I may have issues controlling the spindle (correct me if I'm wrong).

But any help suggestions or help would be greatly appreciated.

Cheers

Rich

I hacked a CAMM-3, not hugely difficult because I had the circuit diagram and I was able to disassemble the Z80 code in the EPROM's.

Other people simply hacked into the stepper drivers and wired in MACH-3 losing access to all the pretty little bells and whistles.

The stepper software broke the motion down in to a series of straight lines and it was really neat. I ripped it off shamelessly. When you add accelerations and decelerations the following lines can affect what you do in the current line. Their trick made that easy. I had great fun writing an emergency Pause Restart but I become boring.

If you are not a total geek Mach-3 is the way to go :anonymous:

Am I missing something or is it really as easy as just rewiring in something like this Mach3 controller board like the one in the link?

http://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/5-Axis-MAC...3D322283133685

Cheers

There you go using the e word and the j word.

Both e and j depend on how savvy you are :eagerness:

I have no issue with the wiring or electrical side of this so savvy in that respect(to a point lol), I just wondered if it was as simple as replacing the controller side and rewiring up to it or have I missed something vital?

As all the other parts motors, psu, etc.. are still there

The hard bit is isolating the step and direction signals on the bpard for the inbuilt drivers.
If you can do this then yes it is easy.

Forgive my lack of correct wording on this, but are you referring to the 2 wire pairs on the stepper motors or do you mean wiring on the controller board that I pick up?

On the breakout board for a 3 axis machine you will have 6 outputs X, Y, and Z, step and direction.

You will need to find out where these 6 wires need to go on the internal Roland board so that the board can power the steppers.

Failing that you will have to throw the Roland board away and fit three new stepper drivers that you have a wiring diagram for. Then wire the logic side to the breakout board and the output side to the existing steppers.

In the long run this may be easier as you then have known and replaceable components instead of a very old Roland board that could crap out at any moment.

Chances are the Roland board is either full step or half step at best. New drivers will give you micro-stepping to get a smoother drive.

So in theory, if I wired directly from the steppers to say a grbl board that would be all it needed as that has the stepper drivers and also the grbl firmware on the arduino, then just control the spindle with a relay or similar?

No idea I'm not into garbled boards and arduino's