Hey everyone! I just bought one of these from an individual whose main user passed away. He knows nothing about the unit, as it was a joint effort operation, and he only dealt with the CNC machines. This device is the one with the microdog USBKey, but the original control board was replaced with one from http://electronics-shop.dk it’s the bigbear 2XX as far as I can see. Looks like this https://bigbear.dk/help/stepcontrol/lib/usb_stepper_2xx.jpg
Now my question is, does anyone know about this controller? And if so, help me out! I can’t seem to get it to show up on my laptop I’m using, though the green and red lights work on the controller (red seems to mean that drivers are installed and correctly communicating if I read correctly).
Few other points:
I can manually fire the laser by turning the knob up, but the te st laser button does not work.
When powered up, stepper have power going to them as they’re difficult to move, as all nema17s are while voltage is applied.
Any and all suggestions! Or should I bite it and buy a new controller such as RAMPS?
@Brandon_D ramps isn’t worth more than 20usd because it’s an old 8bits slow processor. if you want 6 x speed for 5x price allowing acceleration for good raster then you will save a lot on material, then you will realise you had made the good choice. also C3D is a drop in replacement, not a weekend’s killer.
I’m extremely familiar with 3D printers. I suppose I will have to pick one up… looking at that stepper controller that they used is far less conplex than any control board. I’ll look into it
From the write up on their website, you can send g code over USB to the controller. Supposedly the controller shows up as a com port in windows, not sure what software will connect to it however, I will do a little bit of searching to see what I can find. FYI, the C3D boards are in stock and it would only be a few days to get one. You might want to ask the original owners partner if there any programs on his computer that look like they were used with the laser. Obviously he was running something with it.
Yes. I have been through that site multiple times. I finally got the drivers installed, but the download for the control.exe is 0kb, and the site that sells them has a bad download link.
