Hi

Hope somone can help

What cable do i need to connect bobcad to my sherline controler

Do i need a null modem cable or a a normal 25pin 25pin parrallel cable with a 25 to 9 pin converter.

Thanks

Chris

Hi Chris,

Your Sherline controller should have a manual with instructions as to how to make a communications cable. Bobcad itself has no special cable requirements, since windows is actually controlling the serial port.

Hi

The reason i ask is when using EMC the cable is a standard parallel cable but reading the vector cad amnual it says a null modem cable must be used.

so i was wondering if bob cad need a null modem cable or a standard parallel cable.

Thanks

chris

What is the pin out of the Sherline controller? Do you have the protocol setting of the Sherline? as that will be the deciding factor. The computer serial port pin-out will be standard, if the sherline is also standard connection, then a null modem cable should work, a fully populated null modem cable covers hardware handshaking if this is enabled by the communication program.
If software handshaking is used then you may get away with a three wire cable with 2&3 crossed at each end and jumper 4 to 5 jumper 6,8 and 20, if 25 pin is used both ends.
Al

I think the connector on the sherline driver box is standard but the technical data i got with the box was not that helpful.

i am currently using the standard parralel cable and a 25pin to 9 pin converter so i can use the com 1 port.

I am in bob cad NC trying to recive from the controller to no
sucsess.


Acording to sherline the port pinout on the driverbox is as follows

DB25 pin out:

1 - Input from EMC (may be ignored in other systems)
2 - X Direction
3 - X Step
4 - Y Direction
5 - Y Step
6 - Z Direction
7 - Z Step
8 - A Direction
9 - A Step
10 - NC
11 - Output to EMC (may be ignored in other systems)
12 - Output to EMC, XYZ home (may be ignored in other systems)
13 - NC
14 - Input from EMC, C1 (may be ignored in other systems)
15 - NC
16 - Input from EMC, C2 (may be ignored in other systems)
17 - NC
18-25 - Ground



thanks

chris

I am now a little confused as to what you are doing, I believe the Sherline communicates to the controller through the parallel port? But I assumed you were concerned with RS232 serial communication, Which is something different and separate to the machine control.
Are you running Bobcad on a different computer? and just want to transfer a program to the controlling PC? If so you need a RS232 communication program set up in the controller PC that will work with your operating system, which I gather on the Sherline is Linux?.
Al

the sherline controller box uses the basic step and direction controls that many of us use. bobcad uses the serial port to send the g-code to control on machines that have a built in control-ie bridgeports, vmc's. you need to output the nc code to a text file and feed it to a program such as
mach2, turbocnc, linux emc, etc. these programs take the nc data and convert it into step and direction contols for the sherline box. these programs output the data using your computers parralel port.
i can see how the way that these ports use the same connector as the old 25pin serial ports. could be confusing. but on any modern computer the only port that has that many pins in the parralel port

Paul is dead right,

BobCAD is "not" a machine controller it is purely a cad/cam system where you generate you g-code from the geometry. You should be able to open the generated code file made in bobcad in EMC and run it. There is a setting in bobcad's nc cam area under FILE_SETUP which will allow you to change the file extention if need be.

Hope this helps.

Thanks for the help i have it sort of working now in Mach2 and i have just bought a copy of vector cad

Cheers

Chris