Started building my first (Joe's) router

[bp092]

David,

Looking good, about where I'm at as well! Just waiting on the parts from joe, got all the rest of the stuff from enco today. Howd you end up milling the flats on the angle? Looks like you may have done it on your mill. I'm planning on running mach 3 on a mini itx computer with a 17" flat panel monitor .. will post results soon like you.

[ger21]

Have you guys tried Mach3 on those mini PC's? I know that people have had problems running Mach on them in the past, but maybe the newer ones are better.

[bp092]

Well the only thing I could think of is over heating, but the one I'm going to build is going to have two fans, one for the CPU/heatsink and one for exhaust.. going to keep it small so I can case it from the dust and put a filter by the fan ports.. other than that it's going to be fast, atleast 1 ghz ram, maybe a 40 gig HD (no need for more than that).. almost all the parts are coming from either newegg or ebay. I will have to see though, never seen how mach 3 works the CPU and if it does work it hard which it really in essence shouldn't then it will be a problem for long run times.

[David Da Costa]

bp092, Yes I did all the work on the mill (CNC) including drilling the holes. Saved a lot of time in having to mark up each one.

ger21, the PC I am building using a mini flex atx motherboard runs a 1.6Ghz Pentium 4 so it should be powerful enough to run Mach 3.

I got the new case for it this afternoon and I think there is plenty of space for the Xylotex card and the CNC4PC multifunction card along with fans.

Next step is to modify case.

David

[David Da Costa]

bp092, yes the were cut on my CNC Sherline Mill including drilling holes whch saved a lot of time in not having to mark up each one.

ger21, the mini flex atx motherboard that I am using runs a 1.6Ghz P4 which should be powerfull enough.

I got the case this afternoon for it and there should be plenty of room for the Xylotex board and the CNC4PC multifunction card along with some extra fans.

Next job - modify case.

David

[ger21]

It's not that they are too slow. Some PC's just aren't able to run Mach. VIA chipset motherboards have been trouble in the past, although lately I haven't heard of many (any?) problems.

[David Da Costa]

Got you. Well I have Mach 3 up and running and it looks fine but I guess the real proof is when I go to run the router.

[ger21]

The driver test is a good indicator of whether or not it will work. Run drivertest.exe in the Mach folder.

[bp092]

If it's a huge problem I will swap out the motherboard and change things around. Got lots of parts around, not that hard to go from one to the other, just a matter of getting different cases.. first and foremost is the cnc though, likely going to run mach3 from my laptop first, then migrate over.. already got mach3 up and running on it and it seems to be functioning great, just can't wait to run my first gcode

[David Da Costa]

I ran driver test and the line is pretty flat with very few tiny spikes

David

[David Da Costa]

As promised here are some pictures of the pc/ controller that I am building.

The motherboard I am using is a Freetech mini flex atx board that I had in an old pc I built a few years ago. It has a Intel P4 1.6Ghz CPU and 384mb RAM + I have installed a 40Gb hard drive. All installed in a mini tower case I ordered from Newegg.com for $40.

The first picture shows an overall view of the interior where you can see the the motherboard, the CNC4PC multifunction card at the bottom and the Xylotex controller installed on a piece of HDPE cut to fit into an internal 3.5" drive bay.

In front of the Xylotex board is a large fan installed in the front of the case that will suck air out of the case and to be installed on the end of the HDPE will be a fan to blow air accross the heatsink (see other picture).

At the top of the case mounted under the CDROM drive is the power supply for the Xylotex board.

The second picture shows a close up of the CNC4PC board installed on risers I added to the case and the Xylotex card mounted in the 3.5" internal drive slot.

The third image shows the Xylotex power supply mounted in the spare 5.25" inch slot under the CDROM drive.

I modified the front panel blanking plate that would normally be removed to install a floppy drive (who remembers them) to install a switch for the cnc contoller power and an enable switch for the charge pump on the CNC4PC multifunction card as well as an estop button ( I will probably mount a second estop somewhere on the router itself.

Everything is still in "mockup" as I decided where everything is going to fit and then I shall wire it all up.

My final piece to add will be to add to probably one of the sides of the PC case somewhere for the stepper motor cables to exit as well as sockets for the limit switch cable pluge.

David

Visit my websites:


http://www.scalereplica.com

http://www.digitaloceans.net

[David Da Costa]

Here is one final picture of the Xylotex board mounted on a piece of HDPE using some plastic stand offs I ordered from Mouser.

Also show in the rough position is the fan that will blow air accross the heat sinks.