ROLAND CAMM-2 PNC-2300A Conversion?

**Chimestrike** · 24-10-2016

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?

**John S** · 24-10-2016

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.

**Chimestrike** · 24-10-2016

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?

**John S** · 24-10-2016

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

**Chimestrike** · 24-10-2016

Fair enough lol, so if I went for a mach3 board with stepper drivers and then removed the standard control board and wired straight to the mach board which I'm assuming is the same principle?

**m_c** · 25-10-2016

Yes.
However, any kind of board with inbuilt drivers will usually not be ideal. Certainly the older TB based boards were pretty unreliable, however I suspect given this application you won't be pushing the stepper driver chips that hard, so it shouldn't be a problem. Most problems seemed to occur when people were trying to push the boards to the voltage/current limits.
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GRBL with suitable stepper drivers would work, but you'd need to see if it will do what you need it to. Although I've looked at GRBL, it was only a quick look a while ago, so I have no idea of it's current capabilities.

**Chimestrike** · 25-10-2016

To be honest it's not going to be doing hard work its mainly going to be a bit of engraving and some pcb work mainly with the odd bit of thin cutting, so I would guess its not going to have a hard life in that respect. It's mainly to overcome the fact that 'dr engrave' while being great for the early 90's is a bit useless now and well I want to keep the machine going and this seemed a good plan.

GRBL would be good as I have a board, but I really don't know as both will do the job and it's really going to be for my hobby builds so nothing too critical as such.