It's begun....

[Washout]

Hi All,

Build has been on a bit of a pause since my last post, partially due to waiting for a new circular saw (read more powerful and able to take my Bosch 210mm metal cutting blade), which I also needed for some other wood projects and also due to finally selling my house, which means I will (fingers crossed) be moving to premises with a nice 30x15 foot workshop :-)

Anyway here's a quick couple of pics of the wiring work in the control box (re-purposed rack mount servre case) progressing and its now pretty much complete, with the remaining XLR sockets wired to the BoB, which will be used for limit switches and spindle relay (need to find out how the latter is wired i.e. at the VFD directly if it has one built in or whether I need to grab a seperate unit). The second pic shows the mains on/off switch, which was a nice fit into a 3.5inch drive bay blanking plate.

Stuff I need to do in the control box are decide if I need the short CY cables shielding earthed (probably not) and work out where the parallel lead will go.

Which also leads me to a few questions:

1. What kind of parallel lead will I need, as there are data transfer and printer types and IIRC 1 is 25 pin straight through and the other has a pin 1/2 swap like a nul modem (been a while since I've used a parallel lead on anything).

2. Also has anyone run a 3metre parallel lead and is this likely to be an issue?

3. Finally has anyone used this unit? Zapp Automation Ltd - Stepper motors & Stepper Motor Drivers - Servo motors and Servo Motor Drivers - Ballscrews & linear motion products. : PLCM-E3 CNC Controller (For use with Mach3) [PLCM-E3] - £150.00

From reading up on it, it doesn't seem to do more than provide conversion from ethernet/USB to an existing Parallel port BoB (or BoBs), but using my structured cabling to connect the PC to the controller box is appealing.

Tomorrow I will likely attempt to chop my ali plate for the Z axis and the spacers to mount the gantry to the X axis bearing units.....will report back after that...

Later


Chris