Messages

1

General Mach Discussion / Re: Anyone point to an installation manual for usb to parallel breakout board?

« on: February 10, 2014, 03:24:35 PM »

Good with electronics. bad with ESP.

2

General Mach Discussion / Re: Anyone point to an installation manual for usb to parallel breakout board?

« on: February 09, 2014, 07:37:02 PM »

If it doesn't specifically say it will work with Mach3, and include plug-in software, it will not work.

John Champlain

They do say mach3, software is probably the same place the manual is :-)

3

General Mach Discussion / Anyone point to an installation manual for usb to parallel breakout board?

« on: February 09, 2014, 06:20:10 PM »

I found a zillion boards, so I dont really care which one.
Basically, they seem to have in common a USB, a parallel port, and a lot of individual signal wire connectors.

I assume I have to plug the usb and parallel cable in.

Beyond that, and maybe power for the board, is that it?
I am guessing the boards are flexible to work in lots of situations, but that if you are
just dealing with the fact that your PC does not have a parallel port, I would tend to assume
those other connectors are for when you dont have a parallel port.

Most of the boards i can afford come from china and basically dont have instructions.
The "manual" i finally tracked down for one of the better documented options
... is a picture of the board with the connectors labeled. (not joking)
So the usual have a look at the web site isnt working out.

I'd just like a sanity check to know what I want to do is reasonable.
Buy a breakout board plug to my pc with usb, my (also from china) cnc, driven by parallel port, plugged port to breaker board port.

It is a very simple desktop cnc, 4 axis, and no end stops feedback, just a zero probe.
So is keep it simple likely to work?

Has anyone tried these cheapy boards with success?

4

Mach SDK plugin questions and answers. / Re: Open Source Mach3 Usb Plugin RFC

« on: February 07, 2014, 05:53:30 PM »

No discussion here for a while.

The arduino based rambo card has usb communications, and is programmable to accept whatever and control motors directly.
But if you just want to talk to a parallel interface, I'd suggest a look at the arguino type generic boards that have a USB for input and lots of programmable input/outputs.
It would have the smarts you programmed in, and could handle things like end stops.

Having a mountain of ignorance about mach3, still it appears it can do higher level output than parallel via usb, so the low level stuff can be handled
on a programmable card. Probably cheaper and faster than maiking hardware do it, and easier to adapt to new CNC milling hardware.

just a thot.