The Boards….Some more information

There are a few circuit boards in the black box that comes with the CNC

• JP-3163B – Stepper motor control board, 3 channel
• • JP-1635A – Single Channel Stepper motor controller board
  • TB6560AHQ – stepper motor controller chips – TB6560AHQ_AFG-20080407 – PDF Manual
  • JP-1482 – Spindle controller board – more information at CNC Arena

Some more information about these, including DIP Switch Settings

TinyG and G2 – an idea for the future!?

Have been reading up on control methods for the CNC (yep, too much reading, not enough actual do-ing),

Stumbled across something called GRBL, which to summise,is, “an arduino CNC controller”

There’s a shedload of websites regarding GRBL…..so……

I actually own various quantities of each of the following microcontroller boads that i’ve acquired over the years, a few more modern ones include

• Arduino Duemanelivove
• Teensy V3.0 
• Intel Galileo
• ST Stellaris Launchpad
• Raspberry Pi (too many of these, one of the first 1000, one B 256 Mb, two B 512Mb, two A+ and one 2!

And, given my recent discovery of GRBL,and a penchant for hoarding un-used demo boards,

I’ve purchased one of these………

an arduino CNC Shield

It’s a blatant clone of a couple of other shields out there, at under eight AUD though, it was worth a punt

it uses the standard Polulu style driver modules – that use the A4988 Stepper Driver from Allegro MicroSystems

I picked up five of them also….for just under $14 AUD, three for now, a fourth if I ever figure out 4 axis machining and a fifth as i’ll probably blow something up

so, for a grand sum of $13.81 Plus $7.63 = $21.44 delivered, I have a nice CNC Shield for my Arduino

Limit Switches & other stuff – Purchased, list of websites

Some pics of the two types of limit switch I picked up, 5 of each type for under $6AU delivered

I’m also grateful to all of those websites out there that allow us to mispend minutes hours days weeks perusing endless pages of cheap tat.

Some of my favourites to date that i’ve spent waaaaay too much $$ on

http://www.dx.com – The original source of my additiction

http://www.banggood.com – The new favourite

http://www.tmart.com – a nice all-rounder site with some occasional good deals

http://www.lighttake.com – used a few times, not so much nowadays

http://www.focalprice.com – seems to have lost its way with pricing of late

http://www.buyincoins.com – has some ridiculous offers from time to time

http://www.icstation.com – so much i WANT from that site, yet don’t have the free $$ to buy 😛

and of course, now the ubiqutous http://www.ebay.com.au

oh, and whilst you’re there, check out http://www.ozbargain.com.au too

Components, Circuit boards

So far, a list of things I’ve discovered

• A rather large ‘old school’ torroidal transformer
  • HDB-200 – 200VA
  • JP-3163B – Stepper motor control board, 3 channel
    • Mine looks almost the same as the below one, it’s just missing the DB15 serial connector next to the parallel
    • 
• • JP-1635A – Single Channel Stepper motor controller board
    • 
  • • TB6560AHQ – stepper motor controller chips
  • JP-1482 – Variable speed spindle driver
  • 57HD0401-15SB BiPolar Stepper motors
    • 57mm, so, NEMA 23 size
    • HD = 1.8°  Step Angle
    • 0 = Fuselage Length Code (57HD – M) – 0 in this case – 41mm shaft
    • 4 =
    • 01 =
    • N =
    • Can anyone read the text on this website? – it has more data

Seems there’s really no accurate information out there for this little thing. A good summary would be though ‘a bit crap’…..if you compare it to all the others available, every website suggests this is the lowest possible spec in its size. Maybe time for an upgrade 😛