Centroid Community CNC Support Forum

So basically I have a new mill that my acorn has been moved over to and I have everything working (including spindle forward/reverse) minus spindle speed control thru acorn. I would like to use the motor control board for the time being if at all possible but I am not 100% sure the controller will b...

VFD's are 'controlled' with the Acorn analog output speed command and Acorn relay outputs for Forward, Reverse direction command. Gotcha, but my question is, with a VFD do I connect directly from the ACORN spindle speed control output directly to the VD input or do I need an additional controller t...

So with a limited schedule of time that I can play with my newly converted toy I have definitely have learned a few things. First my mill is defiantly not up to the challenge of making a good CNC machine without some major upgrades... But I already knew that. Second I now know how to set up and get ...

That's what seamed to make to most since to me anyway. Good news..... I have it working... I had to go back thru all the settings once again, part of the problem I was having was in the configuration. For some reason I thought my stepper drivers were capable of 4000 steps per rev and they aren't. Th...

So been playing with the mill for the last couple weeks. Ended up taking apart the z and y axis and doing a couple of upgrades to them in order to reduce the mechanical backlash as much as posible. Z turned out really nice, mostly do to it being spring preloaded if I am not mistaken. Buy y on the ot...

All-righty then. Made the last of the headway on mechanical setup today. I had an issue with my limit switches being physically connected wrong. I had 3 of them wired NO instead of NC. That is fixed now and the last of the belt tensoners is installed.... Now comes the fun part. Setting up the softwa...

You know that feeling you get when you are getting sooooo close to being done with something and you are all like... giddy-stewie.gif So I have 2 of 3 axis set up and tensoners in place, all my limit switches connected (but not working correctly). I have to go thru and re-setup up some things in set...

I added some info to the original post, the newest additions are in the blue text so if you are coming back to this anything I add to this thread as progress is made then it will be right there at the top. As new information gets added I will change the color of the last add back to black as to try ...

Soft limits work on an open-loop control like the Acorn ONLY IF the axis drives have an error output and it is properly connected to the Acorn. If you loose steps for any reason, soft limits are useless. Gotcha. My stepper drivers do not have any error feed back capability so the more logical choic...

So really then there is no real advantage/disadvantage to either way of thinking. Basically comes down to preference. In that case I will probably go with home switches and keep an eye on how the system preforms. I presume the necessity to home the machine regularly would just be to set the machine ...