Let The Fun Begain, New build on the Table.

[Bush Flyer]

There was nothing in the instructions from cnc4you about shielding, I now need help, do you shield just the wires to the stepper motor, or do you shield the stepper motor wires from the limit switch wiring.
What a mess there is over £70 of wiring there including the plugs.
And here was me thing I was smart keeping all the wiring neat and tidy, Now how do I fix this. Do I let the wires loose is this good enough just leave them loose in a cable track or can you get screening to fit around the cable on the out side of the insulation on the power wiring and of course you need to earth shielding do you earth the shield at one end or both.( On google search I found some mesh but was £30 for 5 metres and you get Tin-Plated Copper Foil Shielding Tape from 3M its about the same price what would you use or is there something better?) Will I have to rewire the inside of the control box or is it just the wiring to the stepper motors and the limit switch's?
On another search I found Guitar Pickup copper foil tape would this work and do I shield each of the four wires from the stepper motor separate?

[Swarfing]

For the cost of that Mesh you could buy some CY cable and be done with the problem?

[JAZZCNC]

Ok well first before you start ripping it apart just do some better cable management.

Separate the signal wires from the Power wires and run power cables together.
Don't cable tie the signal wires together just run along side each other lose.

Shielded cable is the proper way and should really be used and like Swarf says just buy CY cable if you do.
You'll find it here cheap enough and just use 4 core 0.5mm or 0.75mm. CY Cable
Only ground one end at the control box and make sure your control box uses star grounding. IE all grounds to same spot.

But it doesn't always follow that because you haven't used shielded cable you'll have problems it could work fine but you are much more open to interference and corruption of data signals without it. . . . I suggest you try machine and if any strange happenings like Z axis lifting/dropping or false limit or E-stop signals then you'll be getting noise on the lines.

Regards which wires to sheild then it's motors and limit cables, any cables that send signals. Following on from above, if you have trouble with noise then chances are it will be the limit cables that cause it because they tend to be the longest run, effectively acting has a big antenna sending and receiving signals. Similar applies to the Stepper cables because they are long.

Main thing is to keep power cables away from signal cables and shield any signal cables. This esp applies to spindle cables if your using a VFD which are very noisy things.

[Swarfing]

Shielded cable is the proper way and should really be used and like Swarf says just buy CY cable if you do.
You'll find it here cheap enough and just use 4 core 0.5mm or 0.75mm. CY Cable
Only ground the ends at the control box and make sure your control box uses star grounding. IE all grounds to same spot.

Note he just means one end of the cable and not both. On the other hand you may get away with it and it all work fine? i did on my first one and that was a can a of worms. Saying that set it up right first time and you will have less problems to sort out later (spending hours guessing what the problem is).

Bloody nice job by the way and a credit to the build so far. You have worked very hard ;-)

[JAZZCNC]

Note he just means one end of the cable and not both.

Ye I did and corrected it now has wasn't clear was it. .

Bloody nice job by the way and a credit to the build so far. You have worked very hard ;-)

Ye and I'll second that has well.!!

[Bush Flyer]

Thanks for the help, I have had a look at that CY Cable, I wish I had found that before I had started the wiring, Never mind I will separate the wiring to see if I get away with it . But first I will have to make new bench for the machine then I will be able to try it too to see how it works, But in the end I will slowly change the wiring to this CY Cable starting with the limit switches.
My thanks again Mike.

[Bush Flyer]

Well it's been a while since I posted a update. I have done some cable management and separating the wiring, Also I have made a table for the CNC to be bolted down on and also store the controller and computer underneath the CNC Router. I Bought a new monitor and mounted it on the wall above the CNC. I loaded in Mach 3 and now there life. I Quickly made up a spring pen holder and it drew it's first picture I am so chuffed. I got the computer from a friend that he had windows XP on it that had never been used since 2005. I was going to use the same computer to run the Mach 3 program and the CAM program, but find it's not practical. I will have to build another computer to run the Cam program like Artcam express as my laptop crashes when trying to run Artcam express and I also tried Vectric cut2D but the Graphics card in the laptop could not handle the program. It's some thing that I did not budget for. I have a case and some other parts already so it should not be to bad. All that I am waiting for now is some cable tracking from china and some single and double flute bits and I can try some cutting. There is some parts I will improve like replacing the wiring but for now it's running.
My original budget that I worked out was for £1200 so I said it would cost a Total of £1500 when finished But I made some changes as I was building it so now the cost when finished including a second computer will be nearer the £2250 mark, it's so easy to get carried away, I built this to so that it would cut parts for my RC models but I have already started think about building a laser CNC, this has turned out to be another hobby on it's own.