3 Axis Foam Cutting Mill

3 - Axis Foam Cutting Mill - Part 3

Controller, Motor & Wiring

Through the week one evening I had a chance to cable in the Parallel Port and Power cables.

The parallel Cable is an old 25 wire Male/Male cable that I cut in half. This will require that the controller be near the PC (like 3 ft Max)... This shouldn't be a problem as I'm mulling over a custom Cabinet layout to accommodate the Mill, PC and various tools and fixtures that will be needed.

The Power interface is a standard PC Power Supply to HD connector, using the 5V Line & Ground. 12V will be available for the next generation.

This system was cobbled together from parts that I have been setting aside for close to a year. The base unit is a 486 w/420Meg HD, quad CD and a whooping 16M Ram. I used this system for a few years @ work, it went to my Dad for a couple of years, sat on a shelf for a year and now is running again.

The Monitor is an IBM industrial display (VGA Colour) that came with an ancient 286 Rack mount a buddy brought out close to 2 years ago... The Power-supply has a UPS built into it, and will be used to power the controller and mill.

These Steppers are all from a Lab instrument that was scrapped. The motors were used to pump fluids in precise increments. I left them in their original framing because a) they looked cool, and b) it was easy to store as a unit.

These are identical to motors I've retrieved from dead wide carriage Dot Matrix printers, which are in themselves a treasure trove of parts from the carriage rods to the power supply and everything in between.

These are the connectors cut from the steppers. I'll never know why I thumbed my nose at the controller boards that are in a land-fill site now.

My best guess was I didn't feel like desoldering the controller chips, but sure could have used the female connectors that these mated too.

This was a 2 coffee/2 hour decision to cut these and settle on hard wiring the motors to the controller. The lesson here is NEVER throw anything away.

This obviously is the data label on the back of a stepper. The Macro Cam is now starting to get integrated into my imaging requirements more, now that it has a permanent stand and cabling to the PC.

I have no illusions that this will drive anything but a mill for foam, as the steppers are really on the light side.

They are though a perfect match for the rating of the controller. Once this is working and I feel more comfortable with it's operation, I'll concentrate on High Torque/Current controlled features.

This is another source of marital dis-chord, I pulled these from a network installation in 1998. I had every intention of taking them to the dump the day the new system went into place, but it was late, I was tired and it seemed so much easier to throw them in a pile by a shed. This mess has saved me a fair chunk of cash over the years and did so again today... This is all Heavy jacketed 9 conductor Low Capacitance wire used to push serial data 100's of feet.

There are even several coils of Shielded Twisted Pair cable for noisy environments. I have to admit for something that I do use, perhaps it could be put on the spring clean-up list... It's April 5th and it's been snowing all day...

I opted for the Low-Cap Shielded cable cut to approx 9ft lengths. The shield lead will be tied back the Power Supply Frame ground that is the Common AC Line ground.

The idea is to try and implement some signal protection to the motors and from the Home and Limit switches. This is Standard Operating Procedure for data networking and telco applications in harsh environments, so I'm hoping that it will make for a more robust machine in a not so harsh environment. Plus I saved yet another trip into town...

Here are the 6 steppers, 3 per controller.

Bear in mind that this is all being done on faith that some thing will come of this. I've started honing down the GCode to Stepper output software. This is typically considered the CAM (Computer Assisted Manufacture) layer.

Turbo CNC is popular and exactly where my budget lies $20 USD and far more features than I need, and very well received by all accounts on the InterNet. Unfortunately the Port to controller pin assignments were radically different from the manual/Docs than for the controller I'd made.

The docs from CW Technologies clearly state that it is designed for DanCAD/CAM software. DanCAM is installed on the Mill PC, and will be tried after I measure out the Stepper coils and determine the proper wiring to the controller.

As I think I stated elsewhere, the most exciting part of this will be building the mechanical portion of the mill, but why bother if I can't get the basic PC interface working, but it's getting there...

For some very innovative Mill ideas checkout Dave Kush's site http://www.buildyouridea.com he's also on the links page, but right now he's building a sweet metal mill, and this isn't his first...

And a CW Technologies Update: I've tried to Email cwtech@infinet.com and received a Error 552 (Mailbox full) reply from their server, I'm hoping it's because their so busy... regardless, I can NOT publish or distribute the artwork for the PCB until they give me the go ahead, it's at 2 other sites I found by seaching Google with CW Technology, one in Greece, the other in Alberta Canada.

Though if you want to just buy the board continue trying CW Tech directly as they deserve the coin... (I don't know them, own stock or any of that ...), if you do make contact with them, please forward the contact info to me... frnkgmbk@renfrew.net

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