Yet another Chinese 3020 CNC upgrade thread!

[irving2008]

While sat on the riverbank fishing today I had plenty of time to think about this, especially seeing as I wasn't catching much.

I thought I could dismantle the Toshiba laptop that is running Mach3 and mount it inside the top enclosure. Perhaps ripping out the Motherboard so save space if needed. This would keep some of the cables/connections inside, keeping things neat. I have a 17" Iiayma touch screen monitor that I could use in place of the laptop screen. The only potential problem I see, is the metal enclosure might inhibit the wireless signal, (I use the network to send the Eagle gcode output direct to the CNC laptop) although I am sure I could get over this.

I also decided that I should probably go for 30mm x 30mm profile and make the whole enclosure slightly bigger too.

Regards,

Les

My only concern with that is cooling. Laptops use some clever heatpipe arrangements for cooling. Also hard drive etc connections usually rely on the case for support. Personally I'd buy a cheap motherboard/CPU/RAM combo, you can get some good deals online.

[JAZZCNC]

My only concern with that is cooling. Laptops use some clever heatpipe arrangements for cooling. Also hard drive etc connections usually rely on the case for support. Personally I'd buy a cheap motherboard/CPU/RAM combo, you can get some good deals online.

Yep I agree. Something Like this would do it nice.
Gigabyte E-350 AMD ITX Motherboard HDMI and VGA - GA-E350N-WIN8 - CCL Computers

[Pointy]

My only concern with that is cooling. Laptops use some clever heatpipe arrangements for cooling. Also hard drive etc connections usually rely on the case for support. Personally I'd buy a cheap motherboard/CPU/RAM combo, you can get some good deals online.

The laptop just had a large chunk of copper, & fan nothing fancy. It's a really old P4 laptop, that has no keyboard, and the hinges are shot, so it's not much use for anything else. Drives Mach3 and the CNC without any issues though.

Yep I agree. Something Like this would do it nice.
Gigabyte E-350 AMD ITX Motherboard HDMI and VGA - GA-E350N-WIN8 - CCL Computers

That's a good deal but....

• It means spending more money, when I already have a suitable laptop!
• I'd have to get a PSU in there somewhere.(The laptop brick would be easier to integrate)
• Don't like integrated CPU's (Couldn't work out if it could be replaced or upgraded)

Regards,

Les