advice on upgrade to 5 axis control

Hi,
I am currently running my (X,Y,Z,C) cnc based rose engine using a 4 axis breakout board connected to the parallel port. I am in the process of adding at least another axis to my machine and possibly a further axis again to make a 6 axis machine. So need to upgrade the electronics. I currently use a standard pc running emc2. Can anyone suggest a good 6 axis board, bearing in mind that if possible I want it to be fairly future proof. I have an inclination to try running the whole show from a raspberry-pi (when I get one ) or alternatively something like the intel DN2800MT motherboard.

thanks

Alan

Hi Alan

Bit cheeky but I would love to see a picture of your rose engine. I am a woodturner hobbyist and ornemental turning was one of the reasons I decided to build my cnc router.

Regards
bruce

go to www.otinexperiences.co.uk for info and click the about this blog link for a picture of my setup

alan

that website doesnt work right now.. dont know if you currently working on it or something ?

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Originally Posted by wilfy

that website doesnt work right now.. dont know if you currently working on it or something ?

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I was updating some stuff for a few minutes. You must have been unlucky and tried it then.
Alan

you need to add '/blog' to the above url to get around the Site under development/ads.

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Originally Posted by m_c

you need to add '/blog' to the above url to get around the Site under development/ads.

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Thanks for that and Sorry everyone, I thought I had auto redirection on the main page to redirect to the blog. Dont know where it went but will reestablish asap.

By the way anyone able to answer my original question and give me advice on a good 5-6 channel board to get.

Thanks again
Alan

you've got some beautiful items there Alan, very nice indeed.

Silly question if I may, on the home page of the blog, the pictures showing the cannibalised cast iron x-y table, does the cast iron assembly not flex the unsupported round rail at all??

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Originally Posted by alanb

By the way anyone able to answer my original question and give me advice on a good 5-6 channel board to get.

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Have a look here they sell some very nice BOB's and the PMDX 126 is a great board. http://www.pmdx.com/PMDX-126

Edit: Sorry just spotted you use EMC and this boards mainly designed round Mach3,thou it should still work ok.

OR here

http://www.cnc4pc.com/Store/osc/index.php?cPath=33

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Originally Posted by mocha

does the cast iron assembly not flex the unsupported round rail at all??

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I have not really tried it out yet together with the new tool post. And it is true that were I starting again I would use 25mm diameter rail and not 16mm as I did, I am sure it must a little. The table will be locked solid when cutting patterns. If you look carefully you will see that I have placed a screw based locking clamp between the two linear bearings on each side. The bearings and rail are just acting as a rapid positioning mechanism for the table. My reason for going with a heavy tool post is to dampen the vibrations I was experiencing. It may be that my real problem is not with the tool post but with flexing of the rail. I will not know until I have run a few test cuts. If there is still a problem then I will consider separating the headstock from the tool post rail and re-engineer tool side using 25mm rail as a minimum. However compared to standard milling, cutting OT patterns is a relatively gentle operation. The max cut you would take is 1mm and more often much much smaller than that. Also the work rotates very slowly up to about 5 rpm max and often at 0.5 rev per minute on finishing / polishing cuts which can be 0.01mm at max.

Alan