New build with recycled parts on a ridiculous budget 120cm*60cm work area

[Clive S]

I ordered a 2nd BOB and PCI parallel port card would this give me the extra inputs I need?

You can if you can configure the pci PP ok but you are giving yourself a big learning curve.

Re the 5V then connect it to the terminals on the bob.

If it was me in your position with no knowledge on Linuxcnc then I would get the router working with Mach3 first. Remember you have also to build the game table as well. I think you missed your September deadline

[Desertboy]

You can if you can configure the pci PP ok but you are giving yourself a big learning curve.

Re the 5V then connect it to the terminals on the bob.

If it was me in your position with no knowledge on Linuxcnc then I would get the router working with Mach3 first. Remember you have also to build the game table as well. I think you missed your September deadline

October 18th is the day but we already planned around it ;)

Instead of struggling the plan is to try and hit November 18th and with my mates GF help going to get the cabinet installed whilst he's at work ;) It'll be a hell of a Bday surprise 1 month late lol but he'll never see it coming.

I'd rather make it right then make it crap even if I do miss the date, I already know I'm going to build at least 2 tables, the first one a mockup and the 2nd one hopefully will be the delivered item. I've spent a long time looking at joints for wood I think the key to making the table uber nice is excellent quality wood and good joints going to be a proper real wood table no laminated MDF shit.

I'm going to have a go with linuxcnc (I have compiled gentoo from source so not completely unfamiliar with linux itself) but if I can't get it to work within a couple of days I'll have to go mach 3 route but hadn't budgeted for a copy and also I like linux I get a kick out of open source. I always use open source software if appropriate so I have libreoffice and gimp which does everything I need it to unlike my friends that have crap pirated copies of office and photoshop to type a letter or resize images lol.

I've done some of the graphics for printing on the marquee plates, I'm going to embed them under the glass one below the monitor and one above it, monitor will be mount into the table.

This is one of them

getting my mates signature without him knowing wasn't easy lol but he wrote the game on the nokia phone so it seemed appropriate.

[Neale]

Another opinion...

5 BOB inputs is just enough. I'm assuming you are using microswitches here - it gets a whole lot more messy if you want to use inductive sensors. All limit switches and home switches can be wired in series to one BOB input except the X slave home switch which must have its own input. I would only use one X limit switch, BTW - that should be fine. One input for touch plate. One input for estop and fault signals in series. This is because a motor stall fault needs everything to stop fast before the gantry gets twisted sideways. And there's still one input spare!

If you really wanted, you could take the Y home switch to the spare input. This buys you the ability to simultaneously home X and Y to save a second or two during homing. I've done that on my machine just because it looks neat but it's hardly essential.

I'm afraid I don't know how slave axis homing works with LCNC - I switched to Mach3 from LCNC before slave homing became available.

I would take 5V to the 5V input terminals. The 12-24V input is for a separate PSU and you would need that to use the 0-10V analogue output for VFD speed control. Otherwise the BOB can't generate enough output volts from the 5V supply - common problem with 5V BOBs.

[Desertboy]

Another opinion...

5 BOB inputs is just enough. I'm assuming you are using microswitches here - it gets a whole lot more messy if you want to use inductive sensors. All limit switches and home switches can be wired in series to one BOB input except the X slave home switch which must have its own input. I would only use one X limit switch, BTW - that should be fine. One input for touch plate. One input for estop and fault signals in series. This is because a motor stall fault needs everything to stop fast before the gantry gets twisted sideways. And there's still one input spare!

If you really wanted, you could take the Y home switch to the spare input. This buys you the ability to simultaneously home X and Y to save a second or two during homing. I've done that on my machine just because it looks neat but it's hardly essential.

I'm afraid I don't know how slave axis homing works with LCNC - I switched to Mach3 from LCNC before slave homing became available.

I would take 5V to the 5V input terminals. The 12-24V input is for a separate PSU and you would need that to use the 0-10V analogue output for VFD speed control. Otherwise the BOB can't generate enough output volts from the 5V supply - common problem with 5V BOBs.

Thanks, that makes sense I'm going to have 2 mini towers next to each other one with a pc in it and the other with the PSU, AM882's and BOB so I can get 12v easy from the pc. In fact it's the same hassle to get 5v as 12v.

[Clive S]

I would take 5V to the 5V input terminals. The 12-24V input is for a separate PSU and you would need that to use the 0-10V analogue output for VFD speed control. Otherwise the BOB can't generate enough output volts from the 5V supply - common problem with 5V BOBs.

Neale As I understand it the 12-24v is also required for the inputs as well. I don't think the inputs work without it. (could be wrong though)

[Desertboy]

Neale As I understand it the 12-24v is also required for the inputs as well. I don't think the inputs work without it. (could be wrong though)

Do you mean the limit switches? I wonder if they work like on an arduino/ramps combo with pull up resistors (Which you can toggle on/off) I know the inputs from the microswitches are 5v on the arduino as I had to use resistors to get the 12v from the inductive sensor down to 5v so I didn't fry the arduino and disable the pullup resistors. But when you use microswitches you have pullup resistors enabled and wire direct.

I do have an inductive probe that works reliably at 5v but running at 5v's reduces the detection distance so I would use a chunkier probe at 12v if I go this route.

I think though decent quality microswitches fitted properly will have high enough accuracy I wouldn't see a difference in real world performance.

[Neale]

Plenty of people use microswitches, and that will probably be fine. I use inductive sensors, as much as anything for convenience in mounting, but in practice I doubt that you will have any issues. The other point is that once you start wiring inductive sensors in series to share a single BOB input, you need to make sure that you have enough volts to drive them as there is a bit lost in each sensor in the chain. I'm putting this crudely and hoping that the experts will let me off this time!

Do you have a pointer to any documentation on the BOB? My guess is that it will work fine with just a 5V feed. However, I doubt that the inputs have pull-up resistors as they are probably opto-isolated and pull-ups are a little bit trickier in that case. It's not like the Arduino where you connect directly to the input pins on the CPU chip. On the plus side, it's a bit more difficult to blow up a BOB than an Arduino! I strongly suspect that if you connect the switches (just one, or a number of them in series) between +5V and the BOB input, it will work fine, but I wouldn't guarantee that without looking at the documentation for the BOB, or even a sample "this is how you wire it" diagram.

[Desertboy]

Plenty of people use microswitches, and that will probably be fine. I use inductive sensors, as much as anything for convenience in mounting, but in practice I doubt that you will have any issues. The other point is that once you start wiring inductive sensors in series to share a single BOB input, you need to make sure that you have enough volts to drive them as there is a bit lost in each sensor in the chain. I'm putting this crudely and hoping that the experts will let me off this time!

Do you have a pointer to any documentation on the BOB? My guess is that it will work fine with just a 5V feed. However, I doubt that the inputs have pull-up resistors as they are probably opto-isolated and pull-ups are a little bit trickier in that case. It's not like the Arduino where you connect directly to the input pins on the CPU chip. On the plus side, it's a bit more difficult to blow up a BOB than an Arduino! I strongly suspect that if you connect the switches (just one, or a number of them in series) between +5V and the BOB input, it will work fine, but I wouldn't guarantee that without looking at the documentation for the BOB, or even a sample "this is how you wire it" diagram.

There was no documentation with my quality £3.30 (Delivered) BOB from China lol I found the pinout online for an identical board.

https://warp9td.com/images/BOB_Vendo...line/ST-V2.pdf

I have tried to tight ass my build but only semi successfully lol.