Today I added a whole bunch of capacitors to all the step/dir lines and set up all my electronics in a Faraday cage aka PC case.
I briefly wondered about running the steppers off the 12v PC supply, but they didn’t develop enough torque so I switched back to the separate 24v supply. Though this makes them very hot.
The new case seems to have solved my issues with interference from the spindle crashing the arduino. I’m still planning to add opto-isolators but since they haven’t arrived yet, in happy that the case is doing the job of shielding.
I’m very happy with how this all fit, I even got lucky with the arduino lining up with one of the PCI slot holes.
I ran a job for and hour or so, the model is for a raspberry pi case which I think it was a little ambitious. The wall thickness was very thin and I think the gcode I generated wasn’t ideal. So it seemed to just wipe out the end walls. Also there was a small amount of give in one of the x axis lead screws which I think was giving me a little under a mill of backlash.
So planning to tweak the model for thicker walls, improve the gcode settings, and tighten up that x axis. If I can get the motors cooled enough without me using the vacuum then I might even be able to run the job without having to stand over it…
All in all a very encouraging day.
