Parts needed. Power supply and USB board.

[ukracer]

When you say they are throw away do you mean its not possible to buy new boards and use the same power supply and then connect them to the motors in the CNC bed??

This for example?? (first one I found) http://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/3-Axis-DIY...item51c3886595

I realsie to make life easy I will need that

UC100 USB motion controller Will these not replace the motor controllers in my cheap chinese box? http://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/CNC-Router...item5d477c7b0c (if they are dead?? But if I need a new control board I am wondering if I should get this http://www.shop.cncdrive.com/index.php?productID=367 and 3 stepper drivers assuming my motors are OK and compatible. I am trying to learn which parts does what , as much as save money. I hope you understand :) Regards Andy T

[JAZZCNC]

Hi Andy,

Ok what you have there are 3 motor drives and breakout board that takes pulse signals from a 25Pin parallel port connector.
To use USB connection then you need some other way to generate the Pulses that the parallel port would normally provide. Unfortunatly due to the nature of high number and critical timings of these pulses you can't just use any old USB to Parallel converter as USB on it's own is far to slow.
Instead you need an external device which takes signals from the USB and buffers them along with other trickery and then generates timing critical pulses reliably and that's why you need the UC100 or some other External motion controller. These external motion controllers still connects to the 25pin connector on the Breakout board which is really just a distribution device to make wirirng easier but provide much better quality pulses at a lot faster rate than the parallel port can provide so this increases reliabilty and performance.
Unfortuatlly because of the complexity and critial nature of pulse timing there is no cheap way to get around the parallel port.

Regards what you have hardware wise then from the few pics you provided you should be set to go other than a little rewiring for maybe a E-stop etc.

Hope this helps.

[JAZZCNC]

I am trying to learn which parts does what , as much as save money. I hope you understand :)

Ok here's a quick 101

To make a working system you need 5 main components.! . . . Stepper motors, Stepper drivers ,Power supply ,Signal source and control software Ie: Mach3. With an optional but recommended 6th component being a breakout board (BOB) for ease of wiring.

Stepper drivers convert signals from the Signal source, Ie parallel port or external motion controller into eletrical energy to move the stepper motors a set number of steps commanded from the Control software. This energy is provided by the Power supply.
The Breakout board is an option to make wiring easy but can left out and wires taken directly from the Signal source Ie Parallel port cable but it's not recommended for number of reasons, mainly you can fry the parallel port or PC if energy is dumped back into the cable. For this reason BOB's are often opto isolated to prevent this happening so recommended.

Now you have everything but the signal source and possibly control software Ie Mach3.? As stated in my previous post the paralle port is the easy and cheap route for a signal source and USB or Ethernet will require a external motion controller to provide the signal source.

Provide these components are connected together correctly and stepper drivers setup correctly to match the motors then you should have a working system.

[ukracer]

Ok here's a quick 101

To make a working system you need 5 main components.! . . . Stepper motors, Stepper drivers ,Power supply ,Signal source and control software Ie: Mach3. With an optional but recommended 6th component being a breakout board (BOB) for ease of wiring.

Ok thats confirms most of what I understood. Just a bit confused about BOB. https://onedrive.live.com/view.aspx?...PSeNu5hZHOhv5k seems to show a BOB but also a controller conmbined ...
.....but is that what a BOB is and I have a really cheap one on the chinese CNC box??

[Boyan Silyavski]

To do what you intend to do you don't need a CNC.

- Solder 2 steel pipes to a base. Make a structure that slides on the steel pipes and will hold the work. Cheap geared motor at the top where at the same time holds the steel pipes together, steel wire from motor to sliding fixture. 2 buttons -up and down. Thats all.

-next step would be 1 axis Galil controller, 2 limit switches, program the controller, stepper, drive and PSU.


About the machine you obtained, its been said many times- change drives, psu, board. If it was any good it would not be in this condition on the first place. Who know how many times the previous owner exchanged and blew cheap junk parts. As you have it right now the wisest thing to do is buy what Dean suggested somewhere
http://www.zappautomation.co.uk/mx66...ng-driver.html, its BOB and drivers in one. So you will need PSU only.

About the USB. You have got it all wrong there. It does not offer real benefit. If you read forums a lot you will see that USB controllers have problems. A lot.
You need a separate dedicated PC for the machine or you will constantly experience problems in the future. A cheap 20GBP PC from a boot sale will serve without any problem ever with LPT. Or Ethernet controller, if you really want something good..

If you insist on going on the cheap at least buy from somebody who can offer you support for what he sells http://www.zappautomation.co.uk/elec...ut-boards.html cause really if you buy cheap board from ebay or ali express i will congratulate you if you even make the board work. I know from personal experience.

[Clive S]

Ok thats confirms most of what I understood. Just a bit confused about BOB. https://onedrive.live.com/view.aspx?...PSeNu5hZHOhv5k seems to show a BOB but also a controller conmbined ...
.....but is that what a BOB is and I have a really cheap one on the chinese CNC box??

Andy What you have shown is just a BOB with a few whistles on it. BOB stands for break out board or in other words if you like a simple junction box. To keep things simple can you not put a PP card in you pc. You need to put some better pictures up. Have you tried to power up what you have? Are you happy playing with electrics?

[JAZZCNC]

Ok thats confirms most of what I understood. Just a bit confused about BOB. https://onedrive.live.com/view.aspx?...PSeNu5hZHOhv5k seems to show a BOB but also a controller conmbined ...
.....but is that what a BOB is and I have a really cheap one on the chinese CNC box??

Ok this a common misunderstanding new comers make when they see boards with USB connections.? . . . Clive is correct that's just a BOB which draws it's power from the USB, it doesn't take signals from the USB port only the 5V it needs to run.
This in it's self is not a good thing either as the USB port is unreliable at provideing a stable power source due to way PC's manage energy so turn off the USB port while in-active and because the board is only drawing power not signals the PC thinks no activity is happening so powers down the USB. If using USB you must change the PC's energy saving mode.
BOB's and inparticular motion control cards are best powered from a separate power source. Some BOB's can be powered by higher voltage source than 5V and will take there power from the PSU driving the drivers.

Also not all BOB's require power.? Those that do usually need it to power the opto isolators that protect the input and outputs or for powering on board relays etc.
Yours will either take it's power from the 24V PSU or not have any at all in which case it's a basic cheap n nasty BOB.!!

This one you highlighted before is a BOB and motion controller combined. http://www.shop.cncdrive.com/index.php?productID=367

[JAZZCNC]

Ok I've just looked at the video to see what the fuss is about. You don't actually need any steppers, drives or even a PC to control this.
A PLC would do this with no other hardware required other than a PC to program it then it's a stand alone unit.

The PLC would turn ON/OFF normal motors based on inputs IE button presses or switches and how it's programmed would determine the action it takes regards the time and direction the motors are ON/OFF for. It could be made fully automatic with Switches or semi via buttons. PLC's excel at these tasks.

It could also be done using relays and controlling via outputs/Inputs from the PC with no steppers or drivers involved. This means you could use the Serial port or the USB has there are no timing issues involved just simple ON/OFF signals. The Control software would then just turn ON/OFF outputs via G-code and using the Dwell and M commands for the time period required. It could also be made to respond to inputs Ie: switches or buttons so it's fully or semi automatic process.
In affect the PLC is the same with a inbuilt control software which you program directly.

Also an Arduino would be perfect for doing this simple task but would require a little programing.

[EddyCurrent]

Imagine a car engine with the table being a piston. Press a button and a geared motor does one revolution, stopped by a limit switch. This drives a crank that starts at the top, goes down, then back up, taking the table with it by way of a con rod. 'Depth of dip' is controlled by changing the height of the liquid container.
Semi automatic but cheap and easy.

[JAZZCNC]

Imagine a car engine with the table being a piston. Press a button and a geared motor does one revolution, stopped by a limit switch. This drives a crank that starts at the top, goes down, then back up, taking the table with it by way of a con rod. 'Depth of dip' is controlled by changing the height of the liquid container.
Semi automatic but cheap and easy.

Problem I see with that is it has many changes of height for the dip and these floats will require many dips so this will be slow. There needs to be some way to select the height of the dip for each colour also the paint level will be contantly changing as the paint level drops. This will need to be calculated for in the dipping process to be truely automatic process.