Centroid Community CNC Support Forum

At the end of July I picked up a Techno-Isel CPM-3020 Router and initially thought I’d convert it to a MACH 3 or 4 based system using a GECKO G540 and then I heard about the Acorn. After a lot of reading and watching Marty’s videos, I decided that the Acorn would be a better way to go.
Here is a photo of the router when I went to pick it up at the school where I bought it.



After I got it home I contacted the manufacturer and found that they wanted around $500 for the simple software program that was needed to use the existing controller shown here:



After deciding to go with the Acorn, I removed the existing controller, bought an Acorn, and made a sub-panel from a piece of sheet aluminum to mount all of the devices. Here is a photo of getting started making the new sub-panel.



Here is a photo of it taken last night once I had it up and running. As you can see there is a “rats nest” of wires that I need to clean up.




I also need to change the wire color for the 5 VDC wiring to orange as yellow is the color that should be used for logic 24 VDC power. I haven’t mounted and wired the spindle motor control relay yet because I didn’t want to have any chance of the spindle starting while I was doing testing.
The next “chore” is to calibrate the XYZ axis and I hope to start that this evening.
Here is a photo of the work area and the white part on the spindle mount is a dust collector sweep mount that I made on a 3D printer. The horseshoe shaped piece will have the brush mounted and it’s held to the base plate by magnets.

Nice job. Let us know once you get it going.

Good Morning and thanks for your nice comment regarding the layout but I should have used DB9 breakouts instead of cutting off one end of the cables and wiring direct to the various terminals. That was a big mistake and it really added a lot of time to getting the panel wired. Live and learn....

I have it up and running except for the spindle and I have left it unconnected while I go through the calibration process. The router has 4mm pitch ball screws so I'm calibrating in metric units. The initial setup was 200 steps/rev (1.8 deg steppers) and 4 microsteps (800 steps/rev) which was what Isel suggested but I have found that with 16 microsteps (3200 steps/rev) the accuracy is improved and the steppers run much quieter and smoother.

Right now it looks like I'm going to have to tweak the axis ratio a little. I set the ratio at 4 but the XYZ axis appears to be off by approximately 0.04mm or 0.00157 inches. I want to try to get the XYZ axis as close to "perfect" as I can because the primary use will be to use the router as a cheap CMM machine to reverse engineer antique firearm parts.

Orin

762x51 wrote: ↑Tue Dec 05, 2017 8:44 amThe initial setup was 200 steps/rev (1.8 deg steppers) and 4 microsteps (800 steps/rev) which was what Isel suggested but I have found that with 16 microsteps (3200 steps/rev) the accuracy is improved and the steppers run much quieter and smoother.

Hiya Orin, nice machine you have there! Are those Leadshine drives or clones thereof you're using? I have the Longs Motor DM542 clones running 8 microsteps and they don't sound particulary smooth. Didn't try 16 microsteps yet but need to try it & see! Thanks for posting that.

Hi Milton,

I'm using these stepper drivers https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B00DF ... UTF8&psc=1 Low cost and they appear to be working just fine.

Like I said, there was some improvement in the accuracy by changing the steps/rev but the change in stepper sound and smoothness was really great. They were really noisy at 800 steps/rev and now they kinda sound like a buzz or buzzy hum. I'll be increasing the steps/rev to see if 3200 is the "sweet spot" or if some other setting would be better.

Orin

Coming along nicely Orin. Nice work!
Hopefully you will be fully operational soon. Just going to use a relay to turn on/off the router?
Marty

Hi Marty,

Thanks for the reply and yes, I plan on using RL1/RO1 to energize a isolation relay to control the spindle motor. I bought a couple of the SANWO 24 VDC relays that you mentioned in one of your videos and I'll use that to isolate the Acorn from 120 VAC.

Orin