Machsupport Forum
Mach Discussion => General Mach Discussion => Topic started by: jallitt on November 07, 2011, 12:32:52 AM
-
seems like a lot of routers out of China come with NC-studio which uses a PCI card to control the machines via a 15 pin cable.
I just picked up a used 1200x1200 machine with the aforementioned NC-studio and got it running and did a test cut with the last tool path I ran on a smaller mach3 controlled 500x300 machine and it was quite disappointing - lots of dwell marks and odd lines in the surface - admittedly this was a 1/72 scale model plane part which isn't what the machine was designed for but I figured it should be able to do a bit better.
So I wired a Mach compatible breakout board to some ribbon cable hooked up to a 15 pin D connector (so I didn't need to modify anything in the machine), set up and tuned the motors (7000mm/min rapids which is pretty good and maybe a bit fast) and re-ran the part. It's basically identical to the part made on my smaller machine.
Here's a comparison pic -
(http://www.b26354.co.nz/ss_mach_nc_compare.JPG)
Mach/smoothstepper 500x300 machine on the left, Mach on the 1200x1200 machine in the middle, NC-studio on the 1200x1200 machine on the right.
The results speak for themselves and I'll be permanently wiring in the mach breakout board...
-
So how exactly have you wired the breakout board to the 15 pin connector ??
Tweakie.
-
The router has a simple breakout board with a 15 pin connector on it. The NC-studio PCI card just has 3 sets of step/dir signals, 3 outputs to control the VFD speed, and 3 limit switch inputs so I just traced the wiring and have the mach breakout board between the parallel port and a 15-pin connector like this:
(http://www.b26354.co.nz/mach_nc_bob.jpg)
I didn't want to start disconnecting wires in the machine until I was sure this would work. Wasn't 100% sure I'd be able to start the spindle the way the VFD is configured.
Now that I know where all the wires go I can replace the 15-pin BOB in the machine with the parallel port BOB.
-
Thanks, I think I understand what you have done now.
Tweakie.
-
Jallit, I'm trying to do exactly what you have done. Changing an NCstudio machine to Mach3.
I'm trying to figure out how you configured mach3 to control the spindle with the 3 outputs to VFD.
Could somebody point me in the right direction please?
-
Hi, I hope you are still around jallitt. I am hoping you could give me some more details on this process too.
My NCStudio based machine sounds a lot like yours, and the PCI card that came with it has broken. I'd like to use Mach 3 instead but am having a hard time figuring out what adapter/break out board I need to get!
Any info would be greatly appreciated!
-
i changed from nc stuido to mach 3 i used a MB-02 Breakoutboard easy to hock up had no problems with it for over a year now
-
Great! Thanks for the reply. Do you have any more information? Any wiring diagrams and stuff? I don't really know what I'm doing with it to be honest, I just know you can control the stepper motors via a breakout board from the parallel port.
I'm assuming you need to wire things up in a specific way?
-
http://www.homanndesigns.com/store/, look here this is where i got bob from, the site has instructions for all stuff he sells relay good to deal with.
-
That's great. Thanks for the link!
-
I went from NCStudio to Mach3 using a CENTIPEDE breakout board. Between the board, controller for my computer and the cable it was about $600 but the one on one tech support Sergy at KSI Labs gave me getting everything up and working it was absolutely worth it since the Chinese seller was no help after I received it. www.ksilabs.com he even looked up my VFD and helped me reprogram it to give me CW & CCW as well as speeds from around 600 rpm up to 24000. Best money I spent.