Hi there, yes I just finished building my cnc with a Arduino mega 2500 and a RAMPS shield 1.4, which controls DQ542MA'S which are each controlling nema 23 motors.
So it all runs from USB printer cable.
That,s pretty much what I will end up doing. I think it will become tedious to jog the mill using the turn button press button interface ala 3d printer. How do you jog the machine? from the PC? and which control software do you use?
So many questions, sorry.
I am getting the lcd display as well, and want to do standalone machining withou pc as far as possible. This will probably mean having to hack a pendant of some type into the system.
That machine looks sweet man!
I use Repeiter for the control software, https://www.repetier.com/, in repetier i use manual g codes to move the mill or the manual interface. Have not gone the lcd route, but can be done.
I just bought some new toys:
3D Printer Kit Ramps 1 4 MEGA2560 A4988 12864 LCD Controller for Arduino RepRap | eBay
The idea is to use this as a stepping stone to learn about "headless" control, and I will wire this into the current hoenderstellasie to get a feeling. Eventually the "pc" will probably be a Raspberry Pi with a lcd display, talking to arduino and cnc shield.
Hi All, Been looking at this forum for quite a while, not participating, my previou spost for some reason did not get displayed.... We are electronic and communications consultants, with variety of technologies - and been involved in machine control for decades. For ourselves we built a 3.5x1.8m machine with water table plasma and water-cooled spindle from Germany and it works great - then some idiot (probably builders) helped himself to the PC setup. Parallel port cards are a pain to come by - now on the 9th one for tests - so I am now officially distributing the SmoothSteppers - trust the pains are over. Using Ethernet is going to be a breath of fresh air. Anybody interested let me know. Obviously using and love Mach3. Waldi
Hi Waldi,
How much are you selling Smoothsteppers for?
Hi There, assume it is Dries? Don't know whether we may quote prices here but let's try - We have only ESS stock on the way,USS not popular anymore and USS not ready for Mach4 anyway - ESS atR3700excl and probably USS at R3500excl.
Last edited by waldivz; 05-27-2016 at 07:35 AM. Reason: mistake
Hi All, Report back from rebuild to change to Ethernet SmoothStepper (ESS) - Instead of external PC I implemented an AAEON QM77 Compact board with i5 processor, 120GB SSD and Win10-64bit. SMoothStepper actions turn out to be MUCH smoother than any of the 9 parallel port solutions ( with only a few actually fully functional with the second port for THC ) I have tried. The breakout boards after the ESS are still the initial boards from CNCDirect - SMoothStepper integrated seamlessly.
The USB printer cable plugs into the Arduino Mega2560 which came with the mega 2560, as far as i can see it is a standard USB printer cable.
Here is my build, http://www.cnczone.com/forums/south-...cnc-forum.html
OK, Herewith the first photo of the SmoothStepper implementation ... will provide more about the rest of the table later...
I tried to capture the essentials in one pic - the door of the enclosure is open, note the hinges in the middle of the pic then you can imagine what it is like. this enclosure was originally only hosting the BOBs and spindle control but we added the AAEON QM77 i5 when we moved to the SmoothStepper. For size, Smoothstepper is very roughly 80x90mm. The drivers are mounted on heatsink on the left side of the enclosure which you cannot see here.