Just introducing myself. Current project is controlling a parallel port cnc controller with an Arduino and GRBL.
Originally shared by David Kirtley
Interesting. Looking forward to see where you’re going with this
Eventually to a more interesting sender program that can do more complicated things more like canned procedures and better interactive use (conversational mode). Also staying away from a dedicated shop computer and just bring out a laptop and connect to USB when using. I did this post as a response to someone else in a different place but decided to go ahead and start meeting people in DIY CNC.
@David_Kirtley I’m curious as to exactly why you would not want a computer in your shop in this day, and age? I have two I use, and a few more hanging around. I am typing this comment on one right now in fact.
My shop is in my non-air conditioned garage that can be 100F+ for several months in the summer. I do woodworking that can make for a lot of airborne dust. I do metal work that puts many fine metal shavings in the area. My garage has few plugs and few places for a computer to sit. I have several CNC projects in the planning stages and it would require too many computers to dedicate one to each. I support too many computers at work (I just happen to know that I have 27 computers in my office today and around 350-400 on my inventory). I don’t want to increase the herd of them to support at home (5 of them most times). I already have a computer less than 30 feet from my shop where I go and sit when resting from the shop. If I take anything out to the garage right now, it is usually a tablet.
@David_Kirtley
It sounds to me like you’ve had some bad experiences concerning personal computers. I run Linux though, even on my CNC machine. I don’t have to support Linux either, if I really don’t want to. It always just does what it does. If it did it yesterday it’ll do it today, and tomorrow too. I have run Windows enough to know that is not always the case there. Perhaps that has something to do with this support issue that you are carrying on about?
I’ve had computers in my workshops for more years now than I can remember too. Initially I worried about dust getting into them, and it does too. It doesn’t seem to adversely affect their operation though. Sure, now and again I’ll blow them out with compressed air. Probably less than I should. Sometimes as little as once a year. Whenever I wire wheel some rusty steel with an angle grinder in my shop I feel a little bad about it, because that dust gets everywhere. Oh well, whatever, I guess.
Posted from one of my computers in my workshop. Imagine that! heh I’m looking at the top of the case now and some of the dust looks glittery to me. That is probably from when I was grinding some welds a couple of days ago I bet. I was using a cut off wheel in an angle grinder, and sometimes the stuff was flying over this way. Enough that it caught some paper on fire on my desk. Whoops! I thought I smelled something burning.
@Paul_Frederick Way to turn a cool project posting into a Linux/Windows flame war. Keep up the good work!
@Paul_Frederick Actually I am easy. My favorite OS is the one they pay me to work on. I support a university computer science department. 
Most systems we have boot multiple OS.
@Evan_S_Tallas
No problem. Anything for you babe. Now GFYS
Not mention, now there is no parallel port in pc. A interface for grbl-usb-microcontroler-pins-parallelport is need for many old god CNC controlers
@Alvaro_Barcellos
I use an add in board. I would not want to run the risk of cooking a motherboard anyways. Add in boards are cheap, and better than built in ports. All of my CNC machines have had built in parallel ports too. I still pop a board in them though.
Most Of CNC controles have óptica isolation but if can use a cheap addon card is easy.
@Alvaro_Barcellos
I optically isolated my motor drives. I had to due to the interference they would cause when they were not isolated. One drive on its own would run fine, two would not though. I would see something like this on my oscilloscope viewing the step line http://i.imgur.com/JVyX6n5.jpg Once I optically isolated all of the control lines that cleared up for me. Well, I added large filter capacitors to each of my drives too. That helped also. But the real fix was the optical isolation on the step, and direction lines. It took me a while to figure that out on my own. Here is a schematic of the circuit that I came up with http://i.imgur.com/wmbrCVI.png This is the first drive I used optical isolation on. You can see the little daughter board I made with the optical isolation circuit on it over the drive board http://i.imgur.com/ZQDq9f7.jpg After that I just put that circuit into the drive in subsequent drives I made.
