budget diy cnc controller question

[magicniner]

Make your own enclosure and use a breakout board and individual axis drivers - buy a spare axis driver, test them all and when everything's working rotate your spare occasionally. That way you have a spare when an axis fails on Sunday morning ;-)
Building all the mechanics first is a given, you can get it all working without steppers and add the electrics afterwards.
Regards,
Nick

[Davek0974]

High Integrated 4Axis Professional TB6600HG CNC Router Lathe Stepping Driver Set | eBay

Just popped on ebay and this tb6600 is the one id like to know about. Has anyone used it? Does it do what it says on the tin? If i remember correctly I am hoping to use nema 23 motors 566oz 4nm 4a the specs say it will work so just hoping for someone to tell me its not to good to be true

I thought I'd chime in with the voice of inexperience I am building my first CNC plasma table, a small unit 600mm square, I too looked at those all-in-one's but aborted the thought as I had a feeling I would be blowing a few drives due to lack of experience etc. Then I went and bought a set of three drives and a breakout board from ebay, the drives had TB6600 chips on them as in the all-in-one's.

After a day playing around, one of the drives went pop for no reason at all. I did some research and it seems TB6600 chips are crap at any reasonable current, I was running 36v/4.2A and they get *Very* hot which is likely why it failed.

I then bought a different drive, ebay again, different chip, but after messing with it for a day it didn't want to talk to the cheap breakout board

In the end I returned the whole lot of cheap crap and spent 3 times as much at CNC4YOU.co.uk, on three drives and a decent board. Their phone service is second to none and delivery was next morning, can't speak high enough about them

Being a small machine meant i could get away with not worrying too much about mass etc, this has been proved now as I can tune the drives to stupid speeds way beyond plasma usage and it still runs perfectly, on a big machine though I would have been more concerned.

Make your own enclosure and use a breakout board and individual axis drivers. Building all the mechanics first is a given, you can get it all working without steppers and add the electrics afterwards.
Regards,
Nick

Yes but bear in mind how the drive will be transmitted to each axis, my little build went through several "oh bum" moments followed by plan-changing and head scratching when realising that what i wanted was not possible

[Lee Roberts]

To clarify my previous post here,

My comments addressed the act of contributing to a discussion, not the quality or the specifics of that contribution.

It would be fundamentally incorrect to suggest another member should not contribute to a discussion, on a discussion forum. Irrespective of whether or not one considers another member to be a fool, no one has that authority here.

I refer you to the Forum Guidelines:

What you should NOT do:
5. Discuss or link to objectionable and/or offensive topics. This is not permitted and includes but is not limited to: things of a violent nature, pornography, sexism, racism and/or other discriminatory subjects, this includes things considered to be as a “joke”.

The forum rules/guidelines are there for the benefit of everyone, covering specifics for a very good reason.

Also perfectly acceptable, is to make a directly challenging, specifics targeting contribution to a discussion and is encouraged where a member considers it necessary.

.Me

[JAZZCNC]

It would be fundamentally incorrect to suggest another member should not contribute to a discussion, on a discussion forum. Irrespective of whether or not one considers another member to be a fool, no one has that authority here.

Yes Agreed but I didn't Call anybody a FOOL and Neither did I say anyone shouldn't Contribute. What I said and made clear was that posting Specifics to a new member without the specifics of what was required was misleading and the WRONG thing to do. This can be seen from my comment that some of what george said was helpful but to go into recommending specifics at this time was FOOLISH and potentialy costly or Dangerous.

You of all people being the Forum owner should be Backing me up on this kind of thing not telling someone they where correct to post what they did.!! . . . In this case you would have been better keeping your mouth Shut which you have seem to have been expertly doing on other matters for the last several months.!!

Hiding behind forum rules or guide lines is pathetic when what you should be doing is guiding from the front your self and backing up experienced members not doing what appears to be undermining them.!

In the interest of keeping the Post on Topic I've said all I'm saying about this matter now.!!

[PAULRO]

hi , i would like to build a cnc in the future but before i do i would prefer to gain some experience using mach 3 so i am building a cnc using floppy and c.d motors.the motors are 5 v . i don't know what type of hardware i need so if anybody has any suggestions or previous experiences i would like to hear from you . do i need a break out board ? what type ? any info would be greatly appreciated.

thanks in advance,

PaulRo.

[irving2008]

hi , i would like to build a cnc in the future but before i do i would prefer to gain some experience using mach 3 so i am building a cnc using floppy and c.d motors.the motors are 5 v . i don't know what type of hardware i need so if anybody has any suggestions or previous experiences i would like to hear from you . do i need a break out board ? what type ? any info would be greatly appreciated.

thanks in advance,

PaulRo.

You would do well to start your own thread, it would get more attention.

But to answer your question, floppy and CD steppers are often odd types, like 5-phase, rather than the standard 2-phase used in most cnc work. Also they have very little torque so unless your machine is just a toy don't expect to be doing much cnc'ing. Short answer is, without knowing what steppers you have its impossible to say what drivers would suit, but most off-the-shelf drivers would be expensive overkill. You will need some form of breakout board, suggest you look at a cheap one for now, e.g Upgraded 5 Axis Cnc Breakout Board For Microstep Controller + Cables + Software | eBay which includes the parallel cable...

[magicniner]

The last thing you need is experience using Mach3 using a system which is almost, but not quite, entirely disimilar to the one you need to use it with to acieve your eventual goal.
Mach3 just works, you're more likely to have issues with CAM, Post Processors etc. but you'll not find out unless you dive in and have a go,

- Nick

[Davek0974]

Download sheetcam, this converts DXF files into g-code which will run on mach3, then download mach3 demo license, at least you can see what it does when fed with g-code.

then you need a 2-d cad program to generate DXF files of what you want to cut, you don't mention plasma, router etc type of machine?

the motors really are the easy bit :)

if it's plasma, the HF interference will be your (and mine) major issue, read up on shielding, grounding etc

[Lee Roberts]

You don't owe anyone an apology Andrew, what you've said is spot on, though some puddings can't see past the bisto so it's probably fell on def ears

The components combined make up the "control system", Mach3 is just another component of that system, more specifically a gcode interpreter.

.Me

[andrew583]

You don't owe anyone an apology Andrew, what you've said is spot on, though some puddings can't see past the bisto so it's probably fell on def ears

Tsk. I must be losing my touch if I'm receiving positive feedback....