Controlling electronics for CNC mill

[Nissen]

Hello!

I'm in the workings of building a 3 axis vertical mill that can potentially be upgraded with a 4 or 5 axis trunnion table (aka extra height between the table and spindle). However the messy nature of "diy" cnc electronics have me confused to what is actually needed or not. Because of the "upgrading potential" i would like to have my controls to be capable of 5 axis straight away, and therefor i have the UC300eth in mind for a motion controller. I have heard a lot of good things about it, and i would like to use UCCNC over Mach 4 as i have heard it is better than both Mach versions and cheaper as well.

The big and bad problem is the fact that i don't know what's in-between the UC300eth and the stepper-drivers. For the UC300eth you will need a breakout board of some kind. I have understood it as the 5LPT and the MB2 being the two most used. In a video i saw, the 5LPT was connected to one of those ebay parallel bobs. Is that necessary? And for what good?

Would you recommend one bob (for the UC300) over the other and if so, why?
And apart from that; what are the components between UC300eth and the stepperdrivers?

Similar Threads:

• Newbie- CNC mill electronics help
• Controlling flood relay with CNCrouterparts electronics?
• Bridgeport BOSS cnc MILL no electronics. $300
• BF20 style mill electronics
• CNC Mill Electronics Design

[ger21]

The UB1 is the best board for the UC300ETH. It's basically an MB2 designed specifically for the UC300ETH. (The MB2 was designed for the Ethernet Smoothstepper)
With the UB1, you eliminate the need for the 5LPT motherboard.

Why the UB1? It's well built, and has a lot of features included. It uses 3 of the 5 ports on the UC300ETH, and has an optional daughterboard (UD-1) for the other 2 ports.
If you use other breakout boards, you'd need multiple boards to get what the UB1 gives you.

Your stepper drives will connect directly to the breakout board. They'll also require a DC power supply to power the stepper motors.

[ger21]

One thing to be aware of is that while UCCNC can control 6 motors, it doesn't specifically have rotary or 5th axis support. That doesn't mean you can't use them, but rotary or 5 axis code may not work as you'd expect it to.

[Nissen]

Thanks for the reply!

So UCCNC is 3+2 axis software, and not true 5 axis?

Would Mach 4 hobby-version make a better match for 5 axis?

[ger21]

UCCNC can do 5 axis interpolated motion, but it doesn't have kinematics. Mach4 would be the same.
I think LinuxCNC is the only hobby control with kinematics.

[Nissen]

I don't think i quite understand what UCCNC andbMach4 can't do. Can it be used in a cnc mill that would have the same configuration as a Haas vf-2, with it's 4th and 5th axis trunnion, but not a machine with a swivel head like a Mori DMG DMU 60?

[rodw]

You could look at Linuxcnc and a Mesa 7i76e ethernet card. Its a bit harder to configure Linux to support the PREEMPT-RT kernel required to support this ethernet environment but there is also the option of using a 5125 or 6i25 PCI/PCIe card and a 7i76 daughter board. Either the 7i76 or 7i76e will give you 5 axes stepgens capable of up to 10 Mhz and 32 inputs, 16 outputs with all of the spindle, encoder and MPG inputs you need but you can add to that basically infinitely.