Thats exciting.
For me, when I began wiring was the tipping point toward seeing the light at the end of the tunnel.

Wire! Finally!
 

Finally got wire from Helukabel on Friday! :-)

Am having some issues with the Y-car. It seems it got torqued at some point (pretty sure I welded it square way back when...) so one of my wheels is not sitting down on the rail. Rather frustrated with it. Need to figure out where the issue is.

Out of curiosity, has anyone ever thought about putting a cam on those wheels so they can be rotated till they're at the right level, then, say, tack-weld the cam in place, grind the weld flush and off you go, with it perfectly (or close enough) level.

Your y-car might be twisted or you have not spend enough time to adjust the v-wheel height.
Mechanical alighment/setting take time & if you started with a twisted Y-car, it can be frustrating...

Gerald already designed a cam in the wheel assembly...

I was thinking the same thing Zouave... The radial adjustment of the wheels may not be enough. It's not even .125" if I remember right.
Have noticed that others have had similar issues. I guess a frame bend is in order.

Or you can start making long slot holes for adjustment to make the twisted gantry or Y-car V-wheel yo sit on the rails & cheat yourself in believing the gantry & y_car are perfectly square & straight.

I think Ken is on the money here. Make sure the Gantry and Y car are straight first. Make adjustments there to get things right. I would check the gantry first for propeller twist. There is a procedure for getting this fixed on the forum.

Y-car issues are being resolved, I think its simply a matter of the bolts I am using being too thick. Am going to mill them down 2mm and use shim washers to bring it up to where it needs to be.

In other news... I got my first motor turning this morning. Out of shame for how atrocious my kitchen table project looks right now, I'm not putting up a picture just yet. Once I have things a bit more clean, I'll snap some shots. Don't want to set a bad example for future people. :-D

We love messy kitchen table project pix!!! What fun when everything is tidy up...

Beginnings of my control panel
 

Well, my kitchen table test is under way. So far, all my wiring has been, as nearly as I can tell, going correctly. This is before I wired up the first motor, gecko and the temporary assembly of my power supply (waiting for a friend of mine to bend the bracket the power supply will mount to. At the moment, I have an uncomfortably large capacitor mounted in an uncomfortably small prototyping board to get a good electrical connection. (Alligator clips just seemed too sketchy to attach to a capacitor, plus having exposed wiring, not making me happy... So bread-board it is. Motors are turning, working on wiring up the rest of the circuits to get the e-stops all tied into Mach3, getting the Prox sensors working, etc. So lots to do!

But here you go, Ken, messy board! (It looks worse now, will get a picture this afternoon)

AND you call that messy???
Nice blue glow under the drive, I LIKE!

It even has a socket for a work light! :)

You could get burns from a bulb inside a small box, place a small neon light instead, I'we seen it in lots of control boxes.

or is that light on the outside, like an indicator :)

The light is my simulated router. The blue backlight is a led lit fan blowing on the back side of the heat sink.

do you have some fins behind the plate? fan blowing in a plate won't help much but will work if he has enough space behind to pull air

Back plate will be 1" off the case, with a hole cut in it to match the diameter of the fan. If temps get high, will add a finned sink below each drive. Not expecting that to be a major issue.

I did it differently, I just mount the drivers on panel's mounting plate because tht is about the biggest plate that can go into the panel as heat sink. Use fan to create air circulation to assist heat transfer from the mounting plate to the panel itself. I reckon if the panel is large enough, it will have enough surface area to dissipate heat to the atmosphere to keep the electronics alive. If it doesn't, create a hurricane inside the panel with more fans :D
As you can see in my built, I mount the fans on the control panel door.

I mounted the Geckos directly onto a finned base and put the fan under that. So my arrangement is similar to what you have, but the base itself is finned.

cooling fan with LED . I like that!

Well, after a bit of a break, in which I went to England for 3 weeks, and have been swamped with work, finally back at it! Ended up mounting my control panel to the side of the Mechmate, near where the wires leave the cable chain. This should make things a little easier to manage. My main consideration, at this point, as I get ready to wire up everything, is how to attach the motors to the shielded cables. I would very much like to have a connector that I wire into, that can be plugged and unplugged, if I need to move this at some point. Any suggestions with that? I'm just going to run the cable through grommets in the side of the control box for now, I can pull the wire back and add a plug later if I feel like it, I think.

Pictures forthcoming....? :-)

see here: http://www.mechmate.com/forums/showt...&postcount=129
and here: http://www.mechmate.com/forums/showt...&postcount=203

These are GEWIS connectors.

Wow, those look great. Thanks for the link, going to check those out and see if I can get them locally.

I have seen these used on a few builds as well for a cheaper solution

6 Pin
8 Pin
4 Pin

Be careful with those, if using a wire larger than 0.75 sq mm things get tight inside.
In my case the thread on the male ripped the heat shrink just a little bit, enough to get a contact to the ground. Drive tripped and acted like dead, silly me I plugged it in another one... Luckily it only killed 2 mosfets on each and a resistor so I fixed it quickly.

This is what I used:
http://www.radioshack.com/product/in...tent=CT2032231

http://www.radioshack.com/product/in...tent=CT2032231

Most have just started direct wiring the motors. It reduces costs and removes fail points.

I even suggest only using compression type fittins at the control box to pass your wire through. Either straight to the Geckos or to a terminal block.

If you go from the motors to the Geckos you can eliminate up to 6 points of failure per wire. 24 per motor or 96 for all motors.

Where I get 96 fail points? Each side of the plug at the motor. Each side of the plug if you have terminations at the control box. Each side of the terminal block. So that is 6 points on one wire x 4 wires x 4 motors.

Oh yeah - the plugs and terminal blocks could fail also. Not so much the terminal blocks. So add another 48 fail points bringing the total to 144 possible points to fail.

I think I am doing my math correct on this. Someone check me though. It is early and I am waiting on my coffee to brew :)

Wow I had never actually sat down and counted that before !!!

LOL!!! Getting rid of the connectors is the best decision I'd made when I built my 1st MM. confirmed by my current Plasma table built which I decided to make use of the pile of connectors left-over from the router built :D
As for the plasma table, I'm now regretting using connectors... there are just too many possible error points...

Mike, you forgot to include the E-stop, remote buttons & proximity switches... :D

I used these and they worked great!
http://www.molex.com/mx_upload/famil...disk_drive.gif
And it takes just a few mins to make them. Takes more time to find the crimp tool... :rolleyes:

John,
Those look like your standard Trailer 4 wire connectors. Great idea!

Those look like hard drive dvd etc connectors for power, 12v gnd gnd and 5V
its molex 8981 connector

So, in getting ready to wire up my control panel, it occurs to me that the flat 25 conductor printer cable Ribbon Cable I was planning on using to run from my BOB to an attachment point on the case (so I can plug my computer into the outside of the case and not have a stray cord coming out of the case that is stuck there permanently) is unshielded. Is this going to be an issue for the relatively short length I may potentially be dealing with? 10 inches? Maybe? It is relatively well separated from my wires and other cables in the control box. Just curious what kind of interference I might potentially be dealing with if I did that...

Lets get the terminology right. "the flat 25 conductor printer cable" has a common name "Ribbon Cable".
There are no simple answer to your question, no one know when & where the Evil Interference Noise will strike... until you get into trouble with it...
All you can do is try your best to stay away...
Some of the good practice in laying any wires I know & practice are
1) give some air between signal cable from Power cable
2) give ~25~50mm (1~2in) from any inductive components, eg transformers, motor, solenoid, electromagnet...
3) try not to run wire alongside, if you must, try to space them out, if you can't, cross you fingers & pray nothing bad happens.
4) if you must cross wires, make sure they cross perpendicular to each other.
5)lay the ribbon flat on grounded chassis wall/plate & minimize as much length flying across air. The logic is :- when the cable is in the air, it will receive all sort of noise/interference from every direction; When the cable is laid flat on the grounded chassis wall it will reduce 50% chance of noise/interference.
So far, I have little problem with this kind of layout arrangement so far but if you have any problem, you can shield it by sandwiching the cable between the Chassis & a Aluminum foil/tape which need to be grounded. but this is very tedious, I won't go there unless my life depends on it.

#PS,
its impossible to cater for every possible events, there will come a point when you MUST draw a line & do as much you can.

:-) Thanks. If I make a shield of sheet metal (I have some 22ga lying around somewhere) and screw that to the panel, that should create a pretty good shield, yes? Basically just to enclose the ribbon in a box of metal that is grounded.

That is another way to shield. I won't go there if there are more than 1 bend along the cable path. Also, having pointy screw sticking out everywhere is irritating.
Try running it without the shield & see if you need to do the extra chore. My personal preference is to have everything visible. If I can see it, I can inspect it.

Call me crazy, but i have no pointy screws. I drill and tap everything and use bolts...
Will play around with my configuration and see what i wasn't to do.

I would say no... But it might be a point to keep in mind if you find your having some issues. It wouldn't take too much to make a shield for this area. Tin foil... :rolleyes:

Well, here is my control panel, finally coming together. The cables going to the cable tray will exit the box to the right, the computer's location, and my mains power, will be to the left. Didn't really want to divide up the box quite like this, but seems to have been what was required. Now I have to cut a bunch of holes in my box for the buttons. Anyone have any suggestions for 30mm holes? Just use a 1.25" hole saw?

An 1.25" hole saw is really 31.75mm. Check your clearance and rake of the tooth on the hole saw. You might find a 1.125 (1-1/8") might work better.

If you are drilling sheet metal then this step drill works the best

http://www.northerntool.com/images/p.../335327_lg.jpg

Actually, 30mm is a big hole, big enough to enlarge with a round file.

What I'll do if I don't want to buy a new hole saw, drill a anysize that is just under 30mm hole say 1" or 1-1/8" & file it down to 30mm. or to fit what ever you wish to poke through...

<---owns a lot of the step bits. Perfect for panel work.

I don't like the ones with the steps. I prefer the smooth taper. You can see some here