Lol! Gotta love the “WTH - did I get that for again?!? How long ago?!?”
missing/deleted image from Google+
I used an old PC case as my control cabinet for my CNC machine. Here’s a picture of it before I had all matching motor drivers http://i.imgur.com/2frKz9O.jpg
@Paul_Frederick very nice. Those drivers aren’t bulky like mine. Everything looks neat and organized.
@Robert_Hogstedt exactly! I was thinking it was something else I bought from there. I guess it’s too soon for those. I think I should be getting in some couplers sometime, but I think I have a fall back if they don’t arrive in time
@Robert_Hogstedt yes, I’d like to use a Dremel to cut some of the holes, but I may just use a piece of lexan or plastic
Once I get everything moving / working ok with Mach and LinuxCNC, then I’ll dabble with the Arduino / ESP8266, I’ve already built a crossover cable to hookup the Mega to the BOB, and power the Arduino from ATX 5V supply… But I have to stay focused on the machine itself first 
“On the highway to -Hey! Look a squirrel!” Lol!
While my drivers in theory don’t need heatsinking, it gets up to 50C in my workshop pretty regularly, so I grabbed a heatsink from the discard pile at work, that’s about 20x25cm. I bolted the four gecko drivers to it, along the long sides, and the interface board (parallel port breakout) on one end stretching between them. Then I put four standoffs at the corners of the heatsink on the electronics side, that screw to the power supply so its fan exhaust blows into that space, and covered the gap between the hs and the ps with aluminum sheet that’s almost touching, so the air blowing out along the gap prevents anything getting in. The whole works is the same size as the heatsink itself, and it bolts to the back of the mill column. (Small mill.) So far I’m pleased with it, although I have to do something better to filter air getting sucked into the power supply. Right now it just has mosquito netting over the intake, and I make a lot of aluminum dust, so I’m planning on putting a paper filter in under the mosquito netting.
@George_Allen
That should work… a few standoffs for spacing…
I might be totally shooting myself in the foot with my build, but it seems to be working ok… everything is totally grounded out, all negs are grounded…
@Robert_Hogstedt Yep. Don’t text & drive. Bad combo.
@George_Allen Thanks. It’s OK. I could have fussed with it more but I was more interested in getting going than anything else.
@John_Bump Yes, I think mine should work with the heat sink I took from the PC, but it’s not an exact fit to the gecko and I need some thermal paste and a fan that accepts my PSU voltage
@John_Bump 50C? My eyeballs would pop out if it got that hot. Yeah no way 50C is deadly heat. That’s 122F Here we consider anything over 98F a health hazard. No one can make anyone work in temperature hotter than 98F. Then it is elective. You can say OK I’ll do it, but they’ll jail people for making folks work in that kind of heat.
I live in a desert, so it’s not too bad, but electronics don’t like that kind of heat. My poor Swiss oscilloscope says ‘nope’ in the middle of summer and the middle of winter both.
When I began, in order to make it easy to work on, I simply mounted everything to a clean wooden board. It was very easy to work on, and did not require much up front effort, so I was up and running much quicker than if I tried to engineer the panel like I knew I would want to. Made for a low stress approach, knowing I did not mind changes along the way. Of course that was 18 months ago, and I never did engineer that enclosure. That board simply got bolted to the wall above the CNC’s final location. I used 2 door hinges so I can swing the panel outward and work on either the front or back. Worked out pretty well for not investing too much thought into it!
@Jay_Polo That sounds like the way I work. If I think too much about it, it’ll never get done
@Jay_Polo I try to make a balance of it. Of course, I’ve learned that I need to be more exacting when I drill into metal & less careless with live electronics
@George_Allen You can power fans with other power sources. I have a step down circuit in my cabinet that brings the 36V main rail down to 12V. Then I run all of my other electronics off that 12V rail. 12V is just a handy intermediate voltage level to have. You could have a whole other PSU. I’ve seen people that use a separate PSU for everything in their setups. To me that’s a bit over the top. But that’s not to say they’re wrong for doing it. It’s just not my style though. You have to find your own style for doing things how you want to.
@John_Bump I guess someone has to live in the middle of a desert. I can’t say it’ll never be me either. As I am getting sick and tired of doing yard work all of the time. How often are you really out there raking your sand? I bet you can let it go sometimes, can’t you? Living in a desert must be confusing for cats though. How do they tell their litter box from everywhere else?
@George_Allen Yeah, I know myself really well, and still fall into the same predictable trap… I always want to over-think and research - re-engineering my projects, even before they are finished. It can take forever to get something actually working that I can use and learn from, when I keep redesigning it.
Knowing that, I am much better off when I get some basic functionality working (but maybe not pretty) and then gradually make it better, even if I have to toss out some work and rebuild.