AndyUK's Build - 1.2x1.0m Gantry

[AndyUK]

Thought it might be interesting for others designing their control boxes to see why I've made my new one like this and how it works. Also welcome to hear any improvement suggestions.

My typical workflow is:

• Turn on the CNC & PC (UCCNC Autoboots)
• Reset the EStops (Red momentary reset button lights when safety circuit is tripped) & Turn on the wireless (bluetooth) Xbox controller.
• Enable the motor drivers on the control box (Purple latch button - lights when motors enabled).
• By this time UCCNC has loaded, so use the Xbox controller to do a software reset on UCCNC (the start key).
• Home the CNC. This can be done by pressing the (white) Zero button on the control box. This button homes if the CNC isn't homed yet, otherwise it resets the X&Y position to zero if its lit up. The button only lights up when the CNC is idle (i.e. stationary not running a cycle or dwell), homed, and the spindle is off.
• Load the GCode using mouse & keyboard.
• Setup the work piece & do a tool change.
• Set the X&Y zero coordinates, positioning with the Xbox controller, then press the Zero button on the control box again.
• Set the Z zero coordinates using the touch plate by pressing the Probe button (Orange latch button - lights when a probing routine is running or soft probing mode is enabled) which runs the auto-tool height setting macro.
• Limits & work holding checks.... If I do somehow hit a physical limit (only really posibile at startup due to softlimits) the yellow LED illuminates to indicate an inductive limit switch is triggered. Pressing the latch button allows limits override until the switch is released, at which point the LED turns off. Softlimits can also be toggled at any point with this switch.
• Engage water pump if needed.... (Blue latch staight to relay in control cab)
• Press the cycle start button in to start the cut. The cycle start button is a green latching button that lights when a cycle is running.
• If needed, releasing the cycle start button will feedhold.
• Engage mist if needed.... (Blue latch staight to relay in control cab)

I've recently updated to Windows 10 just so I can have this wireless bluetooth controller. Expensive? Yes.. Awesome? Totally. I'm using Crafty CNC's Plugin to give extended functionality, I tried it a year back and wasn't too impressed, but after trying again and ironing out a few bugs I'm really happy with it now.

The left analogue stick gives up and down control over the Z axis, varying in speed cubicly between 0-50%. Holding down the left trigger at the same time changes this to 0-100%. This means you can quickly get to the right position, but have very fine positioning control as well. The right analogue stick and trigger do the same for the X and Y axis. I've set the ABXY buttons to also jog X and Y with feedrates controlled by the left and right bumpers, this is really helpful for large innaccurate rapids across the table, or if you want to be sure to constrain motion to just one axis.

The "Start" button on the controller is set to toggle the software reset on UCCNC. This is good to get things started, and is effectively an E-Stop button for the controller. The "Menu" button is set to toggle feed hold as a mobile pause button.

This leaves the 4 Dpad buttons free for assigning to other functions I haven't quite decided upon yet... :)

I've also got a docking station to keep the controller charged up and give it a nice safe "home"! - Oh and you see that single board PC sitting on my subwoofer? Thats what I run UCCNC on. Its a quad core i5 @ 2Ghz per core, 8GB ram, 256GB SSD and with some serious integrated graphics.