Kit's Machine

[Kitwn]

I've been quite busy lately doing Other Very Important Things, but managed to get back to my router today. The upgraded controller is complete with a nice new set of 4 and 8 pin connectors on top for the limit switches and motors plus auxiliaries respectively. The overall wiring is greatly simplified compared to the old version thanks to the controller being mounted directly below the machine on it's new welded base rather than on a separate trolley. Each motor and limit switch cable ends in a pug which connects directly to a socket on the controller case. The whole thing is still built into the same old PC case as before, electricity is not house-proud and will work just as well in here as in a swanky, expensive, lockable wall box from RS. Whilst the overall wiring is much shorter it is still possible to set up the controller on a table for testing and fault-finding as shown below. You won't find a dyed-in-the-wool wireless engineer throwing his oscilloscope or spectrum analyser in the bin just yet!

The basic machine arrangement now has the controller plus spindle cooling water pump and reservoir sitting on a shelf under the bed of the router with the spindle VFD attached under there as well. A relay controlled by the AXBB-E starts the spindle and switches the 240V mains on to the dust extractor. A mains distribution board on the frame allows separate switching of mains to the controller, water pump, VFD and dust extractor so that the whole machine is self contained requiring only a single mains power input plus relay switched mains output to the dust extractor and Ethernet connection from the UCCNC laptop to operate.
A safety switch is in series with the spindle/DE start relay to reduce the chances of a manual tool change affecting my ability to do Jimmy Page impersonations in the hours immediately afterwards.

UCCNC and the new AXBB-E are working as expected, setup being very simple as long as you read the instructions and remember what they say! I have yet to install a finely adjustable limit switch for accurate gantry squaring. A shiny new license for Vectric Vcarve Desktop is sitting on my shiny new Dell laptop ( the much--revered ten+-year-old HP laptop it has replaced is going to be used primarily for UCCNC).

My next quest is finding out what I can easily make with Vectric that I couldn't with CamBam and if I can use the $8 USB Nintendo game controller that Worked in LinuxCNC to control UCCNC or if I have to buy a new Xbox360 game console. The preferred UCR201 wireless pendant will have to go on the Christmas list for this year, next year, sometime, never or after I've found out how to make saleable items with the help of Vectric!

It's just possible I may actually be able to make something interesting over the next few days if it keeps raining and I can skive off the gardening and taxi duties for a few hours









Kit