Can somebody help me out?
I’m building a cnc router. Mechanically it is almost done and now I have to choose a controller board. I want to have 4 axis, XYZ and a rotary axis.
I found a few who are affordable but two caught my attention.
These are:
Can someone give me some advise on these two boards?
My main question is witch one can handle the more complex shapes.
But any comment is welcome.
The create the toolpath I think about using Siemens NX.
I vote tinyG. Easy to get started and has plenty of features. Support your 4 axis and works through USB. Spin up http://chilipeppr.com/tinyg on your browser and the board is ready to roll.
From what I know, there is no support for mach3 software. There are some projects that mainly use chilipeppr to control CNC through a browser. Other than chillipeppr you have tgFx, which is the made specifically for tinyg.
depends on the size (ampere rating) of the motors you are driving. personally I’m going with reprap based electronics on my machine using grbl board. the motor drivers themselves can be switched at a later time with some mods to use the thb6064 or tb6600 drivers for much bigger motors. i chose this route for the usb support and the option of the motion control not being handled by the computer. thus somethingsmall like a raspi could be the “driving” computer.
This is a very interesting discussion, myself also new in CNC. I personally think the days for Mach3 and LinuxCNC are coming to an end - they rely on the printer-port as well as internal timing (in the PC).
The future lies with external controller boards, IMHO.
In fact, I too was looking into using Mach3 or LinuxCNC, but found out that the old PC that was just lying around didn’t have a printer-port - even though it’s 6 years, or something like that, old.
I thought LinuxCNC can run on real time kernels. You can always add controller boards and have timing on those boards.
There are two camps in the CNC world. One camp wants matured products that does exactly what they want repeatedly. LinuxCNC and Mach3 do this. Sure they have UI designed back in the day when UX was probably not a field. But they work. For machines that cost a in ten of thousands, the cost of the software is negligent. If you are going to run a business on these CNC, you want well-tested product.
The other camp are hobbyist CNC and software-based makers. With maker movement, there are a lot more hobbyist machine that can do things quite precise (depending on the application). There is an influx of more software developers into the world of hardware and electronics. These users expect their software to be well designed, more open, smarter. They have a different need and contribute to moving our community forward as well.
At the end of the day, unless you are into R&D and feel like staying on the bleeding edge or is inclined to do debugging and adding more features on your own, stick with a well-known solution. It saves you time (and time is money).
I see two camps out there too. For those who are truly doing traditional subtractive processes only like milling wood/plastic/metals and in a commercial environment I think Mach3 is the way to go. The other camp though is trying to take CNC way beyond subtractive processes, and instead do things like pick n place, laser soldering, laser cutting, 3D printing, etc. In the latter use case controlling additional devices in concert with the XYZA movements is key. This is the bleeding edge stuff. So, if you’re going traditional subtractive process I’d go Mach3. Otherwise, you probably need to jump into the modern approach of a USB-based controller and extensible software like ChiliPeppr.
I stand corrected re. Mach3 / LinuxCNC relying on the printer-port and internal PC timing. Now if only Mach3 were cross-platform and had a ready to use, documented USB interface (i.e. no need for plugins) …