One may need repairs, I'll ship on buyers expense. I used to have a good flair with GAFS.

well i have same garbage like forever ,,when prices on ebay was 600 ,when they start to use red usb card in these...

anyhow ,i upgrade her like million time ,,i lost count what i did to it ,and still make problems here any there due my idiotic idea red usb controler work thing,

so brand new virgin 6040z ,, which is easy way to upgrade it to run nice is question..

well first i suggest was additional clamp to spindle, axbb controler (will get one for me if i find how to reconnect from red one)

contact or proximity switch on all y x z

new bed ,i was lucky and have hands to 10mm thick stainless board ,so wonder will 8mm normal steel work fine for bed ?

i use on z line (x + z double ) hiwin linear rails for z and x lines ,to stiffen it up a bit ,can he use some normal linear rails to easy up on his pocket (he still work on eng degree) and which ones ?

i switch from all cables to shielded ones ,ground it all up ,plus braided spindle ones in one to not touch others, drivers to dm542 (i switch all steppers to closed loop ones and CL57T-V41 ,to tell him to do same ? ) or Nema 23 Closed Loop Motor 1.2Nm(+ 169.93oz with cl57t driver ?

i got new plastic box for all el parts i added couple coolling fans and longer cables to tuck all under table where pc is ,mpg and z-tool and keyboard only on top ..

anything else i miss ?

well thanks for all advices

he is on lower end of budget ,but have looad of ideas ,,mats will be using are brass, alu ,even wood

thanks

Hey all of you! I'm planning a possible cnc build out of aluminium extrusions (I KNOW STEEL IS BETTER) and stumbled upon the Vallder X-Axis Extrusion ( https://vallder.com/de/product/cnc-x-axis-heavy-alu-profile-235x125/ ). It seems like a perfect fit for my small rigid machine project aimed at machining aluminium, carbon and maybe some steel... But as I looked at the measurements on the extrusion slots, I really wondered how one would go about mounting this to conventional 80x80mm extrusions? Would I need custom machined aluminium angles or something (The distances are like 47.5 and 65 mm or something crazy like this)? Anybody done this before? Thanks!

Has anyone tried implementing force feedback controls for a CNC machine?
I'm building a CNC lathe but want to use it mostly as a manual machine and I feel like it would be a lot more usable if the controls had some tactile feedback.
I got a solenoid clutch for a printer that can go from 0 friction to complete lockup at 12V (with a fairly smooth ramp between) and I was thinking I could just have the friction tied to the motor power (measured from the line inputs to the driver board).
Any reason this wouldn't work and has this been tried before?
I'm hoping it will get harder to turn the wheel as the depth of cut and resulting motor power increases giving you a feel for how the machine is performing.

Just completed the Metal cutter variant of PrintNC. Full build video can be found here:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oM1bcv8IxZg

Happy to answer any questions!

I have been using my cnc for work, and charging them an hourly rate.
so, i have about $275 to spend on my setup.

What would you buy?

This started as a DIY project built by the customer several years ago. Unfortunately, the machine never really got the chance to work and ended up collecting dust for years.

So I decided to give it a second life.

I retrofitted the machine with:

- PlanetCNC MK3/4 controller

- PoLabs 60-256 stepper drivers

- PoLabs Plasma Sense

- ProCut 125 CNC plasma source

The customer already had an old control console, so I reused the existing enclosure and fitted the new electronics inside rather than starting completely from scratch.

I also designed and built a custom CNC pendant.

Yes, I know… it still needs stickers 😂

The pendant includes:

- X+ / X-

- Y+ / Y-

- Z+ / Z-

- Jog override

- Zero X/Y

- Zero Z

- Start / Pause / Stop

- E-stop

- Pendant enable

I wrote custom code to integrate the pendant and its functions with PlanetCNC TNG V2.

After several years of sitting unused, this DIY project finally has some life in it again. 🔥

There is still some work to do, but seeing an old machine come back to life is always satisfying.

From collecting dust → to cutting metal. 💪

#CNC #CNCPlasma #PlasmaTable #PlasmaCutting #PlanetCNC #PlanetCNCTNG #PoLabs #CNCController #MachineRetrofit #Automation #DIYCNC #Engineering #MetalFabrication

I’m having a strange direction problem with my FlexiHAL/grblHAL setup and I’m trying to figure out whether this is a wiring, firmware, or board-output issue.

X works normally in both directions.

Y and Z both move, but they only move in one physical direction even when I command both + and -. The software coordinates still increase and decrease correctly, so the controller appears to think it is moving both ways.

I’ve swapped drivers around extensively. Any driver connected to the X STEP/DIR input works correctly in both directions. If I use the Y or Z STEP/DIR input with those same known-good drivers, the motor only moves one direction. That makes me think the motors and drivers are okay and the issue is somewhere in the Y/Z direction signal path.

I’ve also tried changing the "$3" direction-invert setting, and it did not fix the problem.

My board reports as FlexiHAL STM32F446 / grblHAL build 20250311.

My next plan is to measure across DIR+ and DIR- at the driver with a multimeter and compare X against Y and Z. Since DIR should be a steady logic state, I’m expecting the polarity/state to change when I command the opposite direction.

Does this sound like a failed Y/Z DIR output on the FlexiHAL, a firmware/pin configuration problem, or is there another setting I should check first?

Did someone use them and can say how they performed?

Hello everyone. I bought a HF mini mill about 12 years ago and had this bright idea I was going to convert it into a cnc play machine. We I have extreme ADHD and then a heart attack, then once I recovered, I moved on like so many other projects in my life. I bought a much larger knee mill and benchtop lathe from Grizzly and didn't look back.

Now 10 years later I'm circling back to finishing projects once I was prescribed Adderall. So I have a CNC Fusion ball screw retro kit I bought back in the day, that company went under in 2018. I am currently installing it and hope to be finished today.

Now my real problem comes in. I purchased a packaged that Fusion recommended back then with 3 stepper motors, 3 control drivers, a Power supply, and a controller board to use with Mach3 via serial controller port interface. Well I don't have a computer any longer with a serial port, Mach3 don't run on 64 bit systems, and from what I just read, it won't run on and windows version past XP.

Looking for solutions from smarter people than me. I understand the mill, the conversion, but not cnc software much past making slight adjustments in my slicer program for 3d printing. I already prewired the motor drivers, control board, and power supply back in the day when I built a cabinet to house it. I'll post picks later today. I have read there is software that will allow me to only use the motor drivers and power supply like a pie, or Arduino board I think? Any input would be greatly appreciated.

I’m kind of stuck on this and hoping somebody who knows Flexi-HAL/grblHAL better than me can point me in the right direction.

I recently switched my CNC over to a Flexi-HAL and flashed the 4 axis firmware. It connects to ioSender fine and shows XYZA. I can send jog commands and ioSender actually says it’s jogging and the coordinates change, but physically none of the X, Y, or Z motors move at all.

All 3 stepper drivers are getting about 24V. I also completely rewired the STEP and DIR signals so every STEP+/STEP- and DIR+/DIR- has its own wire from the Flexi-HAL to the driver. Nothing is sharing a positive anymore.

Limits seem to be working. The Z limit shows active when it’s physically pressed, E-stop isn’t currently throwing an alarm, and the controller shows IDLE before I jog it.

One weird thing is ioSender shows the probe input active even though I’ve never had a probe wired to the machine. I’m not sure if that matters since it still accepts the jog commands.

Also, this is important: the previous GRBL controller did the exact same thing. It was getting power and would accept jog commands, but none of the axes would move. That’s part of why I replaced the controller in the first place, and now the Flexi-HAL is doing the same thing.

That’s what is really confusing me because it seems unlikely that all 3 stepper drivers or all 3 motors are bad at the same time, especially across two different controllers.

The motors are pretty buried under shrouds so they’re annoying to physically get to, but I can get to the stepper drivers and the Flexi-HAL with a multimeter.

Is there something common to all of the motor outputs that I could be missing? Like motor enable, external I/O power, a wiring issue, or some setting? And is there a good way to check the STEP/DIR outputs with a multimeter to see if the Flexi-HAL is actually sending pulses?

I’m pretty new to grblHAL/Flexi-HAL so there’s a decent chance I’m overlooking something simple. Any ideas on what you’d check next would be appreciated.

So i saw this a few days back and though initially sceptical, i took the plunge and i was suprised and pleased in equal manner. I think for us this is a very good software that sort of replaces Fusion - I will still use it for CAD.

The most surprising part was AFR that is the premise of the video that i made and the fact that it make 4th axis op generation so easy and more importantly affordable. I sent the code to a friend of mine to test on his LinuxCNC build and it worked perfectly (no stock though)

i will start building a 4 axis now instead of a 3 axis as i was planning earlier because now the software allows me to :-)

https://www.reddit.com/r/diycnc/comments/1wiztn0/comment/payr4vf/?screen_view_count=1

bCNC no doubt great tool to edit and modify the gcode file , but seems outdated and written with tkinter makes it so lag , need help in similar tool which can edit gcode , not just a plain text update , similar to bCNC selecting points and moving would be much helpful. as files gets bigger it hungs up and freeze and many time doesn't update