New PM30 for CNC, or what have I done!

[Rogbo]

Woop! Woop!
So, after 14 months of mortgage brokers, contractors, and permits, we broke ground on my retirement house!


And after a metric **** ton of cash going out, the first pieces to my PM-30MV CNC conversion have come in! Yesterday Amazon delivered the Asus VT229H 21.5" touch screen monitor and AcePC i5 mini computer. I spent the day cleaning up my old computer desk that I thought was retired for good. This morning I started laying everything out, and hopefully by noon Windows 10 Pro will be happily updating away!


My assistant is very concerned with the quality of the generic mini PC, as am I. However, I wanted to mount the pc piece either in control cabinet or on the monitor, wherever works best. I didn't think the refurbished HP business class PCs would be a good fit, and I was able to get twice the machine for half the cost of an Intel NUC. It wasn't terribly expensive and time will tell.


I got an email my Acorn will arrive tomorrow!

To be continued,
Roger

 

[AlanB]

Check to see what motor mounts the kit will come ready for (you probably already did that). They often have Nema23's for XY and either Nema23 or Nema34 for Z. I'm going with closed loop steppers myself, have been collecting parts for awhile. I already selected and procured a Mini ITX board that has very low latency (the most important thing for realtime) and some Mesa cards (FPGA, I/O and Pendant/Expansion) to use with LinuxCNC. Am looking at cabinets for electronics, looks like some good suggestions in this thread. I have the PM-728V mill and am waiting for the CNC kit from PM which is due in a couple weeks or so. Just ordered a 24/12/5V logic supply (Mean Well RT-65D) and am looking at a 56V 20A unregulated supply for the motors. Collecting parts for a hopefully December build.

For CAD/CAM I've been looking for a long time and EstlCAM is going to be my first CAM. For CAD I do a lot of OpenSCAD for 3d printing which may not be a good choice for CNC Milling, probably will try some FreeCAD. Lots of choices. Also preparing to write Gcode directly, and generate Gcode with my own Python programs and build up my own library of useful stuff. LinuxCNC has lots of pre-canned stuff as well.

Also looking at a probe and a tool height probe to align with work fixtures and material.

Good luck on your project!

 

[Rogbo]

And my Centroid Acorn is here!


My Windows PC is updated, using the touch screen keyboard. What a pain! Waiting on a physical keyboard from Amazon to finish the Windows 10 setup.

My Craftsman wall cabinet CNC control box comes tomorrow and I can start the back panel layout I guess. Maybe order my stepper kits and power supplies.

Day 3 foundation excavation!
Our area of Central Oregon is notoriously volcanic, the last 8 inches of our foundation is coming out in pieces with the hydraulic hammer.


To be continued...

 

[tkalxx]

Figured I'd post my electronics cabinet here since it seems like a point of discussion. I used a mechanics tool cart that I had laying around the shop and mounted all the electronics in the flip up top section. The first picture was taken midway through the cabinet build and thus you can see the wiring isn't fully complete. I store most of my tooling for the cnc in the drawers below.

 

[macardoso]

Figured I'd post my electronics cabinet here since it seems like a point of discussion. I used a mechanics tool cart that I had laying around the shop and mounted all the electronics in the flip up top section. The first picture was taken midway through the cabinet build and thus you can see the wiring isn't fully complete. I store most of my tooling for the cnc in the drawers below.

Well that is really slick! Nice work. Wiring looks super clean. What do you use for the heat shrink wire labels?

 

[tkalxx]

Well that is really slick! Nice work. Wiring looks super clean. What do you use for the heat shrink wire labels?

Thank you, I appreciate the compliment. I must say, I gained a lot of motivation in terms of building my electronics "properly" after seeing your g0704 build.

I have a Dymo 4200 that I use in the shop for labeling. I find that the heat shrink cartridges are a little on the expensive side, but I really like the 3:1 shrink ratio it offers. I can label all the way down to 24 awg wire and everything is still legible.

 

[macardoso]

Thank you, I appreciate the compliment. I must say, I gained a lot of motivation in terms of building my electronics "properly" after seeing your g0704 build.

I have a Dymo 4200 that I use in the shop for labeling. I find that the heat shrink cartridges are a little on the expensive side, but I really like the 3:1 shrink ratio it offers. I can label all the way down to 24 awg wire and everything is still legible.

Well you're doing an awesome job. I might have to pick up one of those. We use the Panduit heat shrink label machines at work but they are stupid expensive.

 

[Boswell]

has anyone tried to use the brother labeling system with clear heat-shrink?

 

[macardoso]

has anyone tried to use the brother labeling system with clear heat-shrink?

What would be the benefit of the clear stuff?

 

[Rogbo]

Hi all,

Awesome job Tkalxx, I'm going to up my wiring game! BNC and then cat 5 wiring were my gateway into IT, so maybe I can remember some of those skills. Have you finished up. Any newer pics? Advice?

My 28x28x12 Craftsman wall cabinet came in, and I assembled most of it yesterday. I was thinking about whether to put the included shelf on the bottom slot, but I'm going leave it out for now and dedicate the cabinet to CNC control. I found a nice piece of plywood in the shed for a backplate. Once I have a handle on the backplate size, I'll draw it up as far as I can.