I finally bit the bullet and upgraded everything. Now I’m not messing around with cobbled together junk. I got a Smoothieboard 5x and upgraded to an Xcarve. I’m finally able to get some cuts on the machine that don’t suck! https://youtu.be/WiDUDXmEcQ4
Wow. Those motors look huge. What are they?
They are nema 23 unipolar motors wired as bipolar. These in fact http://www.alltronics.com/cgi-bin/item/25M002/55/Applied-Motion-Products-44A501711-001-unipolar-stepper-motor I am running them at 1.6A since I got them wired as bipolar.
@Adam_Harris Hi Adam ~ I think I am the other lonely soul who has chosen to marry the X-Carve with Smoothieboard (talk about a well kept gem of a secret) ~ I would be so grateful for a bit of guidance and benefit of your experience
~ I am presently researching to prepare to do the final wiring ~ seems I can’t quite find some clear directions concerning connecting the 24V spindle to the SB and the 24V Power Supply ~ If I may have a bit of your time please. ;{)
@Chapeux_Pyrate I got a dewalt DW611 a couple weeks ago for mine as an upgrade from an off-brand dremel. I power it separatey.
But I can take a look at how to wire that up. Could you link me to the particular spindle and you have? Also, how are you powering the smoothie board and steppers?
@Adam_Harris I was thinking you might have gotten the X-Carve kit (complete) ~ but it seems you are upgrading your Shapeoko ~ still so very similar.
My goal is to be able to control the spindle through the smoothieboard ~ and my impression is that one needs to connect power (24V) into the SB ~ and connect to the spindle by one of the Big Mosfets ~ Arthur Wolf has given me some direction on that ~ but I am sure I can use all the guidance I can get ~ gotta figure out what a diode is and how to put one on a Mosfet ~ HA! Yep Kind of new to all this level of electronics work ~
As for the type of spindle and power supply ~ you can see some description on the configure page for ordering the X-Carve ~ I got the 300w 24V DC Spindle in the config selections ~ and the 24V Power Supply they offer with the X-Carve (standard in the kit).
Here is the link to the specific part referring to wiring the spindle in the X-Carve instructions ~ http://x-carve-instructions.inventables.com/step14/#power-spindle
on this section they refer to the gShield (as it is the standard board for the kit) ~ It seems to me the instructions here (on spindle and on connecting to the gShield) is pretty sparse ~ I was hoping to be able to extrapolate how to do this on the Smoothieboard ~ but I am not quite getting my head around it ~ yet.
Yes, any help would be ever so appreciated ~
of course my next step will be connecting the stepper motors ~ but it seems Smoothieware has some pretty good instruction on this… and since the X-Carve ~ like the Shapeoko has two motors on the Y axis ~ I am planning to use the 4 stepper drivers on the SmoothieBoard ~ two of them config’d for the Y axis ~ one slaved to the other (jumpers, blah de blah). Is that the configuration you are using?
@Adam_Harris Hi Adam ~ I put up a chart on the Smoothieware Community ~ showing the wiring of the spindle to the power supply (Inventables wiring diagram to a gShield ~ I am asking there for anyone to offer some direction on how to translate that to the SmoothieBoard. If you could have a look at it there or I can send it to you here ~ I would appreciate your thoughts. ;{)
@Adam_Harris ~ success with wiring to the smoothieboard (X-Carve) ~ turns out the suggestions given to me were incorrect ~ concerning the spindle control connections ~ had a few melting wires there! Ikes ~ Smoothieboard is a hardy thing ~ no worse for the abuse!
I have revised my wiring diagram for the spindle control and will add a diagram for stepper motors and limit switches and post that sometime soon.
I am now checking out the possible software choices and then on to some actual testing ~ I would be glad to know what software you are using for communicating with the SB ~ I am mostly leaning to Pronterface ~ but I am trying to check out GRBLWeb ~ so far my direction is to run either on my Rspi2 ~ ethernet from my Mac (headless Remote Desktop control) ~ and ethernet to the Smoothieboard. I intend to stream gcode and ethernet seems the most dependable.