Dragging an old Sherline CNC into 21st century...

[yippiekae]

Hi !

I bought a couple of second-hand Sherline machines a few weeks ago.
A 18 years old 4-axis milling machine and a lathe (although they look almost like they're brand new) with Astrosyn steppers and a driver box from Millhill supplies (UK).
It came with an old win 98/MS Dos computer with 2 parallel ports (for the 4th axis), running MaxNC.

Then I bought an Ethernet Smoothstepper to use it with Mach3 and my conputer... But, according to smoothstepper forum, it can't work with that kind of MaxNc drivers.

So, I'm thinking about getting new drivers to run those steppers but... I don't want to make more $$$ mistakes. What driver board should I chose ? The Gecko 540 seems to be very common, is it worth the prixe for such a small machine ?

Best regards,
Flo

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[awerby]

Yes, the G-540 would be a good choice for that mill. You'd be able to get away from MS DOS and all that old wave-drive hardware. It seems expensive at first, but once you've spent money on cheap Chinese drivers that don't really work and torn out a lot of hair, you'll realize what a good deal it was. And with your Smoothstepper, you could use a modern computer.

[yippiekae]

Thank you very much Andrew !

[lsces]

Andrew, the fist question has to be what part number are the stepper motors. So you can work out what current you need. Some of these older systems were 'unipolar' and the wiring of the motor is not suitable for the newer bipolar drivers.
I've used Chinese drivers for years without any problem, and even a new set of motors with a suitable driver is likely to be cheaper than the Gecho, but even before that you can try things out as Mach3 will run in NCMax mode. It is only the smoothstepper that does not mirror that through. It is only 3 channel though as it only supports one parallel port on the computer. It's worth giving it a run up to check things out.
Even though the steppers have probably had little use, the magnets can get weaker over time. On the Taig mills of that age we would be looking to replace them anyway, but with the small size of the Sherline there should be a few more years in them yet.

[cncuser1]

The Gecko products are top quality, outmatching the sherline products. I'd suggest the gecko was worthwhile only if you intended to use it later on for a better project.

I'd suggest import drivers, try steppersonline or automationdirect.

[yippiekae]

Thank you very much. I'm gonna get "chinesium" driver combo + new Nema 23 steppers, so I'll start from a clean setup.

[cncuser1]

Take care in choosing the steppers, bigger is not necessarily better with steppers, doubly so with a light machine like a sherline.

[skrubol]

Also take care on which driver setup you get. Some of the TB6xxx boards aren't good for anything more than target practice.