Hello Steve,
The website is
www.edingcnc.comThe company is owned by Bert Eding, who I think is a "one man band" but obviously very clued up and very helpfull with installation.
The conversion is not totally straight forward and, whilst I can find my way around a circuit diagramme, my knowledge of electronics is rather limited so I may not have done it the best way. but with Berts help I managed it and it worked.
The 2 large main boards, plus the "3rd axis board", were removed and replaced with 100mmX100mm usbcnc board, and the relavent wires re-routed.
I used the existing 24v supply for the stepper drivers, but added a new seperate 5v supply, (from Maplins), for the CPU. This was on Berts advice, to avoid any possible interference between the two.
I changed the stepper drivers, in part because of the difficulty in seperating the old ones from the pcb, but they also increase the speed of the machine by 4X and they are not expensive.
The spindle drive control was connected direct to the new cpu, otherwise unchanged. This means that the manual spindle control is limited to the software control and the buttons on the front of the machine are redundant. In fact all the manual controls on the front, with the exception of the Estop are not used, but I think this is normal practice.
My machine was an early version and did not have limit switches on the table travel, so I had to fit them for the "homing" function. I have a newer model now which has proximity sensors so is easier to convert.
Finally, I understand that the USB communication is particularly vulnerable to interference, so I fitted a mains filter to the incoming supply for added safety.
That's all I can think of at present.
Good luck
Mike
Guest
Show Posts