Need Help!- Hooking up spindle control board for x2 and coolant relay from IMservice

[matridium]

Hello everyone

I have not posted much I’m more of a lurker and enjoy reading but I have a few questions and have had little luck finding answers to.

I have a Sys3A from IMservice installed on a grizzly x2 with a KDN tool retrofit kit. Although I have read some negative things here on CNCzone about IMservice I have to say I have not had a problem with them or there products. And so far everything has been easy to hookup and setup but just one thing:
I want to control the spindle speed with the IMservice PWM board. Fred at IMservice tells me that the output from their board should work with the x2 board and control it with the deskcnc software. However I have no idea as to how to hook up the IMservice board to the x2 pwm board has anyone done this, or has a clue how to do this?

I also wanted to hook up a coolant system to DeskCNC and the pwm board IMservice offers has an output for coolant control but it is not optically isolated form the rest of the system. How hard is it to build an optical isolation circuit to use with the coolant pump? Anyone done this?

Thank you

Michael Moore

[matridium]

This place is a joke, I have posted a question and I have yet to get anyone answering me. Why is this? I mean is my question soo dumb that no one wants to answer? Or is it too hard? Help me out here?

[TOTALLYRC]

Originally Posted by matridium This place is a joke, I have posted a question and I have yet to get anyone answering me. Why is this? I mean is my question soo dumb that no one wants to answer? Or is it too hard? Help me out here?

1. Temper temper. It has only been 2 whole days and just because you are in a rush ,doesn't mean my life revolves around your needs. Not even my wife is allowed to treat me like that.
2. There is apparently not all that many people here that use the Deskcnc stuff.
3. I just hooked my stuff up to the deskcnc board.
4. Normally optio isolation is used to protect the computer from stray power and the like, I don't see the need for what you want to do.
4. I would need more information about the x2 board. If the x2 board accepts pwm for speed control and I know that the deskcnc board outputs pwn, it should be easy.
5. I didn't use any extra parts to hook up the coolant. I just used a solid state relay for the vacuum and for the spindle since I just use on and off.

[TOTALLYRC]

Hey matridium, I hope I didn't scare you away.
Mike

[matridium]

No you did not scare me away. Sometimes I get impatient with forums. I want answers when I want them... you know

But i posted the question on IMservice private forum for users, and no one not even Fred Smith has answered this question. I have looked over all the schematics from IMservice and see what pins to use on their main CNC board, but nothing about that spindle connection from the controller to the spindle board to the X2... I guess I can just blow the system up setting it up with no help...

Mike

[TOTALLYRC]

Originally Posted by matridium No you did not scare me away. Sometimes I get impatient with forums. I want answers when I want them... you know But i posted the question on IMservice private forum for users, and no one not even Fred Smith has answered this question. I have looked over all the schematics from IMservice and see what pins to use on their main CNC board, but nothing about that spindle connection from the controller to the spindle board to the X2... I guess I can just blow the system up setting it up with no help... Mike

I am more than willing to help, but I would need more information on the X2 control board. If it is controlled by a potentiometer, and the control voltage is 0-10v it shouldn't be that hard. Worse case scenario, buy a seperate dc motor controller with 0-10v capability and you can run it from the deskcnc board.
You could try posting a different question such as has anyone been able to control the stock x2 board from their computer and then adapt the answer to your particular problem.
I know that the deskcnc ouputs a 5v pwm signal which can be converted to 0-5v or even 0-10v with a little extra work. Fred also offers a addon board that does the spindle and 0-10v stuff.
Mike.
One of the lonely but happy deskcnc people.

P.S. I only went to mach3 because of the large machine that I bought couldn't be controlled by the dekcnc board. I still use the software to do my cam work and then import the g-code files into mach3. It works very well and is a very reasonable priced alternative to other cam options.

[acondit]

I haven't used a speed control yet (have one just not installed) and I don't use DeskCNC, but the X2 controller uses a potentiometer for speed control and that usually means a 0-10v or 0-5v dc analog circuit is required to control the speed from the computer. I understand that the X2 in particular (an many controllers in general) requires that the 0-10v circuit be isolated from PC ground. So, I think that TotallyRC is correct that you need an additional board, one that converts from PWM to 0-10v analog.

It is possible to control some DC spindles with PWM but that requires the use of a controller that accepts PWM input directly and I believe it will be cheaper to buy a converter board than to replace the controller. YMMV.

Alan