Machsupport Forum
Mach Discussion => General Mach Discussion => Topic started by: garyhlucas on June 21, 2013, 08:50:49 PM
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I just got a ESS Smooth Stepper board and a CNC4PC breakout board to go with it. The stepper board is nicely made, with large mounting holes that the average home CNC builder should have no problem mounting it. However the CNC4PC breakout board is a serious disappointment! NO mounting holes at all! Connectors for wires all the way around and not a mounting hole anywhere! Do machines vibrate? Wiring diagrams? In their PDF manual page 3-2 was missing completely. No big deal, that's just the only page that deals with ALL the outputs!
I bought a little stepper pulser card to control a stepper driver for motor testing. No instructions. A couple of jumpers that aren't marked. Terminals marked +12, Grd, Puls, and Dir. Should be simple to hook up right? Motor runs smoothly in one direction, chatters like hell in the other. After screwing around for 1/2 an hour I discover that this card actually implements forward pulses and reverse pulses, NOT pulse and direction as marked!
I bought a heater control board of 3D printing. No instructions. Two boards stacked in an offset. One tiny set of mounting holes through both boards, and they don't line up! NO marking of the pins except for power plus and minus. Came with a booster card with input and output terminals, not even marked for + and -.
It is unbelievable what people are apparently willing to accept. I have a friend who just bought a million bucks worth of surface mount assembly machines, and he is the best microprocessor guy I know. He used to build a single board computer for me that went in machines that saw 120 degrees continuously and the failure rate on the hundreds of boards I bought was really low. In fact hundreds of them are still running 18 years later I'm going to have to ask him what it would cost build some quality stuff here in the US.
Gary H. Lucas
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Gary,
Look at the bright side of it....at least you can deal with it. Think of the people who don't even know what + or
- may mean.
I don't think it is going to get any better and the situation also applies to other parts of a control unit.
RICH
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The bottom end of the market will always be that way and likely only to get worse with the plethora of Chinese products coming on stream.
Buy a bit more upmarket however and I think things are very different, as an example, the CS-Lab products, in my opinion, are testament to that. Well thought out, manuals good (even though they are not native English speakers) and products seem to be of first class quality.
Hood
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No problem with anything, just include a little one line comment to the product that it works with Mach and here is the link to the site. >:D
RICH
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People want low priced equipment so the the chinese have stepped to fill the need with cheap labor and sweat shops. The trade off is poor quality and little or no documentation.
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As everyone has said, you get what you pay for.
Look at companies like PMDX, who make top quality products.
From what I see, it would appear that close to 90% of new users buy chinese to save money, and a great money have problems.
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I decided that I've spent a ton of money building my machine so I've canned the Cnc4pc product and bought a PMDX-126 board instead. So we'll see how that works.
Sad that the issues I've had can be fixed for nearly nothing, but there is no process or feedback to actually make that happen.
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Gary,
Did you even try contacting Arturo at CNC4PC? I have a SS with his breakout board, and I am well pleased with it. In 1-1/2 years of regular use, there is no sign of it vibrating loose. If your machine vibrates enough to cause the CNC4PC breakout board to come loose from the SS, then you have other major problems that need addressed more than the design of Arturo's boards. I'm sure if you had asked for the missing pages, Arturo would have responded., as he is a respected member of this forum.
Positive feedback is usually appreciated by all, and most use it to improve their products and services.
Just my opinion, I am only a satisfied CNC4PC customer.
John Champlain
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John,
I have to tell you I'm getting a bit tired of reporting problems and often getting blown off. So sometimes I don't bother. You know why I'm doing this? Because another breakout board that actually worked quite well and was quite well documented, has a dangerous firmware flaw that causes it to run away during jogging. The recourse I was offered by the vendor was to replace it with the smooth stepper and the CNC4PC board. So I am faced with tearing apart all my wiring to fix a problem that could probably be fixed by a firmware update. This is getting old, I just want to make some parts.
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I'm sure everyone on this site has gotten burned with a defective product at one time or another. I've had my share. It's my experience customer service is dismally lacking in all sectors not just in the cnc world these days. I work as a drives and controls engineer and have to hound suppliers to get quotes, return authorization numbers, etc. so its no better in the business world either. Everything goes to someone's voicemail...
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Interesting side note: In today's news an American CEO is being held captive in a Chinese factory over better wages and severance pay. Guess the workers finally realized they are be exploited...lol.
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It is also discouraging to try and make/market a good quality product and loose sales because the 'other guys' are $5 cheaper. Most new consumers will only look at price, if the experience of buying a POS product does not turn them off to the hobby then they will generally try to learn enough to ensure they buy a good quality product the next time.
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I believe that DIY CNC is in the BEST shape it has ever been. There are MORE products to choose from than there has ever been.
Most of the problem today is the instant grits syndrome. They want to be experts on CNC machining right out of the box. With DIY there is a HUGE learning curve to overcome to learn the total package.
(;-) TP
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It amazes me the number of cnc products sold on Ebay and other outlets that are basically garbage. People are selling "cnc systems" that consist of Chinese $29 4 axis controllers, $25 power supplies, $50 ball screws, $19 motors along with bogus Mach 3 software. The DIY person looking for a Walmart deal then cries on this forum looking for help because the supplier didn't send documentation, the controller won't work, no support phone number in China, the Mach 3 is a demo version with no license and the supplier disappeared with the money. The only thing in the "Best Shape" as BR549 puts it is the people selling the crap.
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It amazes me as to the huge supply of quality products that HAVE documentation that people whine and cry about costing too much or instructions written in detail that they don't understand BUT the DIYer will NOT spend the money OR the time require to learn HOW to put it together in working fashion. They then BUT the cheap stuff , can't make it work, THEN get on a forum and look for FREE help then complain because no one wants to help them, Mainly because they have junk to work with and most FREE HELPERS on here KNOWS THAT.
Please don't complain when you want to PAY for chopped liver ALL the while wanting Prime Rib. You either have to BUY the PR already cooked OR learn to cut and cook it yourself.
(;-) TP
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I got my PMDX-126 board today. WOW! Mounting holes! REAL Documentation! A nice thick epoxy circuit board! Industrial grade terminals! Mounting holes for the Smooth Stepper too! A power supply built in! 30 amp relay for the spindle! 10 amp relay for other stuff! 24vdc capable I/O! Was it expensive? Lets see, I have to tear my machine control panel all apart because the other stuff hasn't worked out, and toss most of that stuff. I had to add extra relays and a power supply. NAH! Cheap was expensive, Quality is cheap! I'm going to drill all the mounting holes with my 35 year old Milwaukee pistol drill, the same one I've drilled and tapped thousands of holes with.
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Hi Gary,
You have learned a hard lesson and I am glad that you are making progress. It happens to many people in CNC. When we say for example, get a G540 to control your machine, they say, that expensive. They then get a TB????? board for a lot less. repair it a few times, then go out and buy what they should have gotten in the first. Replace a cheap part is a lot more expensive than getting something that works in the first place.
Your milwaukee is a cse in point. in its day it was cheap but it is still running 35 years later. I have had a few cheap cordless tools that haven't made it past year 2.
Mike
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Mike,
Just so you know I wasn't doing cheap. I've built this machine from lots of surplus and some new parts. 4 THK GL20n linear bearing slides with 5mm balls screws and 18" travels, one is a spare. Table is a hand scraped 24" x 24" Cast iron surface plate with 5" ribs. 4-800 in/oz stepper motors with a common 1500 watt 68 volt power supply, and 4 Leadshine 7 amp drivers, one 8.5 amp driver. 80/20 style aluminum base frame with complete 3' x 5' enclosure, LED lights and sliding plexiglas doors. Two nema 4 steel electrical enclosures. All shielded Igus energy chain cables. It has everything properly fused and grounded. All wiring in place for an extruder stepper motor, heater and thermister, plus a 12" square heated bed to allow 3D printing. It has a DL06 20 input 16 output PLC with a 4 channel analog input card for I/O. There is an air filter regulator and 4 gang manifold with 4 way air valves installed, and a cooling fan for the electronics. I also have a mini lathe bed with headstock and tailstock and that I am driving the spindle with a large stepper to provide turning and 4th axis positioning. The mill spindle was a Sherline but is being converted an R8 spindle with treadmill motor and TTS tooling. The spindle can be rotated to make it a horizontal machine for long parts or deep pockets. I have tapped 144 holes in the table for holding down and I have two 4" CNC vices and two good size angle plates.
Don't ask me how much I've spent, my wife might find out! Oh yeah, I'm doing this with my 9 year old grandson. We did our first paying job last week, 200 plastic wheels with holes and pockets in them. He ran the machine one night. The next day when I got home from work he already had the PC fired up and the correct G-code program loaded to finish the job!
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The good news is there IS a DIY market. Look back 20 years in Wood and Wood Products and you will see 4 x 8 and larger machines costing $30,000 and up, and weighing thousands of pounds.
That said, a box I bought to hold a gecko board has wiring instructions that neglected to mention the Estop switch. At least there was a photo.
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Which CNC4PC SS interface board did you get? I am not defending Arturo, but my C23 has atleast 5 mounting holes. It had a cold solder joint on the E-Stop connector, and the area around the mounting holes is so tight you can't use a metal standoff without a plastic spacer to keep traces from touching, but it does have mounting holes. The C23 is not cheap as breakout boards go either, although I have heard of a number of people who have decided to go with teh PMDX-126 instead or changed out to the PMDX-126 and said their machines worked better. I may if I have problems, but for now its working.
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Bob,
So other than those issues, and ignoring that your card with the same model number is completely different, you are a happy purchaser? If you blow up the board and the replacement you buy no longer fits, you are okay with that?
My argument is simply that bad design, practices, and service are still bad in the Internet age! In fact there is even less excuse today because it so much easier to produce and market a product today.
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I am NOT ignoring or defending anything! I only asked which card you had, because the card that I bought has mounting holes, matches the picture on the website, and matches the documentation. If the card blew up I would not replace it with the same card! How I feel about it is irrelevant as has been made abundantly clear by thousands of vendors around the world.. Perhaps you didn't even get the card that you ordered. Perhaps the order was Miss filled. I have that happen with my regular day job vendors who ship millions of items per day and have dedicated shipping and receiving staff at every location. While I am NOT thrilled with some of the products that Arturo Duncan sells, I do know that he returns emails and has helped me figure out a couple problems.
Anyway, the c23 that I received matches the picture of a c23 on the website which matches the picture in the documentation of a c23.I probably would not use a c23 breakout board again, but that has no relevance as to whether or not it has mounting holes. It has five of them.if you said previously that you had a c23 breakout board I missed that. I apologize for not catching that detail if that is the case. obviously if you did mention that detail I did message because I asked which card you had.
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typos and grammar except. I'm using a voice to text on my cell phone to respond right now.