Motion Control Board Selection, any USA made boards with support?

[smcdonn]

I'm new to Mach3. I have a Haas mill and need a 4th and 5th axis to index some simple parts that get drilled and tapped. So I plan on building a 4/5th axis table, and using a spare M-code from the machine to signal my mach controller to index. I'll basically have a program with all my indexes on it with an M00 in between every move, and use the spare M-code relay to trigger a cycle start input on my motion control board.

Now my question is this, it's overwhelming the amount of motion control boards on the market. I barely know where to start. My only core requirements is that it is usb (I know the downfalls, I'm not doing any fast, simultaneous motion), has at least 2 axis output, and has an input that I can configure as my cycle start.

https://www.poscope.com/product/pokeys57u/

I found the PoKeys57U board, and it seems to fit the bill. I want a board that has some support, I don't care to pay a little more. I don't want a chinese board that I have to hunt forums to find information. With that being said, can anyone agree/disagree with this board and why? Or offer suggestions on a USA based company making a usb motion control board?

Thanks in advance for the help.

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[Jim Dawson]

Galil Motion Control, maybe a 40x0 or 41x3 series, I would go with the 40x0 personally. Motion Controllers | Galil.

They are compatible with Mach3, or could even operate standalone and be triggered by a signal from your Haas. No point in going with a hobby class controller for an industrial machine.

[smcdonn]

Galil Motion Control, maybe a 40x0 or 41x3 series, I would go with the 40x0 personally. Motion Controllers | Galil.

They are compatible with Mach3, or could even operate standalone and be triggered by a signal from your Haas. No point in going with a hobby class controller for an industrial machine.

Apprecite the input. Honestly $1600 just for the controller is a little out of reach for this project. I want to to stay a relatively “budget” build. I’m literally just drilling pvc caps.

[ger21]

The only USA made Mach3 motion controllers are the Smoothsteppers from Warp9. The original is USB, but has been known to suffer from noise issues. The Ethernet Smoothstepper (ESS) is much better, and is probably the most popular Mach3 controller out there.

If you must have USB, then I'd get a UC100 from CNC Drive in Hungary. And if you do that, forget Mach3 and use their UCCNC software. The price of the UC100 and UCCNC software is about the same as a Mach3 license. UCCNC is a lot better than Mach3, imo, as I consider Mach3 to be obsolete, since development of it stopped about 5 years ago.

I've never used a Pokeys board, and only know what I've read on the forums. Some people really like them, and others have had a lot of issues with them.

Support for any boards are going to be via email and forums.

I'll basically have a program with all my indexes on it with an M00 in between every move, and use the spare M-code relay to trigger a cycle start input on my motion control board.

So, are you going to be running a separate g-code program on the Mach3 machine? Will it just be the same program running over and over?

[109jb]

For what you are describing any PC based solution sounds like overkill. Not sure how involved you want to get with what you are doing, but 2 thoughts come to mind. Something like Grbl, or one of the standalone CNC controllers may work for what you want to do.

For Grbl, you would just need to have a standalone setup, which is not too hard with a second Arduino and LCD/SD card. Might need a few code changes to loop the g-code for the extra axis. Then just send a signal to the cycle start pin and add M0 between each move. I have a good bit of experience with Grbl and this could probably be done for less than $50 for the control hardware.

The main Grbl repository is here
https://github.com/gnea/grbl/issues?...3Aupdated-desc

An example of the standalone controller is here, but not sure exactly how you would need to feed the "start" signal to it, but it may not be too tough.
https://www.amazon.com/Controller-Ax...41722005&psc=1

[smcdonn]

The only USA made Mach3 motion controllers are the Smoothsteppers from Warp9. The original is USB, but has been known to suffer from noise issues. The Ethernet Smoothstepper (ESS) is much better, and is probably the most popular Mach3 controller out there.

If you must have USB, then I'd get a UC100 from CNC Drive in Hungary. And if you do that, forget Mach3 and use their UCCNC software. The price of the UC100 and UCCNC software is about the same as a Mach3 license. UCCNC is a lot better than Mach3, imo, as I consider Mach3 to be obsolete, since development of it stopped about 5 years ago.

I've never used a Pokeys board, and only know what I've read on the forums. Some people really like them, and others have had a lot of issues with them.

Support for any boards are going to be via email and forums.



So, are you going to be running a separate g-code program on the Mach3 machine? Will it just be the same program running over and over?

Yes I'm going to run a separate program on the PC. Thanks for the feedback

Sent from my Pixel 2 using Tapatalk

[smcdonn]

For what you are describing any PC based solution sounds like overkill. Not sure how involved you want to get with what you are doing, but 2 thoughts come to mind. Something like Grbl, or one of the standalone CNC controllers may work for what you want to do.

For Grbl, you would just need to have a standalone setup, which is not too hard with a second Arduino and LCD/SD card. Might need a few code changes to loop the g-code for the extra axis. Then just send a signal to the cycle start pin and add M0 between each move. I have a good bit of experience with Grbl and this could probably be done for less than $50 for the control hardware.

The main Grbl repository is here
https://github.com/gnea/grbl/issues?...3Aupdated-desc

An example of the standalone controller is here, but not sure exactly how you would need to feed the "start" signal to it, but it may not be too tough.
https://www.amazon.com/Controller-Ax...41722005&psc=1

I appreciate the input. Agreed, pc based is Overkill but it's also better documented for a newbie like myself diving into this. I don't want to spend $1600 on just a motion board, but I don't mind spending more than what you've proposed keeping it pc based.

Sent from my Pixel 2 using Tapatalk

[skrubol]

Some servo controllers allow command based positioning. Might be worth looking into, clearpath's have some capabilities in this regard and they're pretty inexpensive. Another option might be a PLC.

[Al_The_Man]

Another option might be a PLC.

The problem with a PLC, the motion card is usually an add on and none AFAIK do interpolated motion.
The PLC itself has a relatively long update time, for CNC controller.
Al.