Looking for an CNC xPro controller board

[IanS1]

Is the gShield not repairable?

I'm not 100% certain this is possible at the moment but have you thought about using the Arduino with GRBL firmware to connect and drive external stepper drivers. I've got 3 Leadshine AM882 drives connected to a Arduino Uno at the moment, just for test purposes. I can drive them with code from the Arduino. This weekend I will try to drive them with the GRBL firmware and the GCode sender software. If you can wait that long I'll let you know if it works.

[centurian]

Hello Ian
I know this works as I've seen Mark Carew setting up his router with this same configuration.

Watch it here:

The shield is connected to the Arduino but I have yet to connect it up to power.

[IanS1]

Isn't he using the gShield in that video though? I'm thinking about not using a gShield but connecting the AM882 drivers directly to the Arduino with the GBRL firmware.

[centurian]

Never heard of it done that way before.

Let me know the outcome if you survive the raging inferno won't you.

Best of luck.

[Neale]

Seems a bit pessimistic! The AM882 claims to have TTL-compatible opto-isolated inputs, which sounds fine to drive with the ATmega chip on the Arduino board. Why put something else in between, unless it happens to make connections easier? Assuming it's a Uno board with a plugin cpu, worst that's likely to happen (and even then only as a result of a fairly significant fault elsewhere) is making the ATmega chip go pop. A 328P costs about £3, which is less than a typical breakout board!

The idea of cheap hardware plus open-source software giving better-than-PC performance for a fraction of the price of the cheapest motion controller is very attractive, and I would like to follow this one and hear how it goes.

[centurian]

OK mate
Was a bit over the top. But I'll stick with the GShield as its all I've got at present.

[Neale]

Ah, just done a bit of checking. I had assumed that the gshield was some kind of stepper driver interface. I now see that is a stepper driver card, aimed at lower voltage/power steppers than something like the AM882.

I'm not sure if your gshield is working, once the pins were straightened. If you have one of those in working order, then do you really need a whole new controller plus stepper drivers? Could you not use a cheap Arduino board to run grbl, and connect it to the gshield? I think grbl runs OK on an Arduino Uno, about £20 from Amazon. You would end up with something that's pretty well equivalent to the CNC xPRO, as far as I can see.

[rashedi]

May I ask if you used the xPRO controller as an Arduino board to control the stepper motors? I think the board itself can be identified as an Arduino UNO in IDE. Isn't it?