I just purchased a SLB to frankenstein my little Nextwave SD110. The motors are the same as the Longmill so will just have to change some values in my firmware to shrink the max travel distances. I decided to do this as Nextwave does not allow any changes to their control parameters and running my laser on it at 20-40IPM is less than ideal. Is there anything i may run into in making this switch? This will now just do laser work, it will not be used for any routing anymore as I now have an Altmill to do the heavy lifting. If I have a project larger than this machine can handle, I will have my Altmill laser it. Thanks!
1 Like
Hi George,
Just searched the Nextwave SD110 and it looks like a sturdy little fella. I don’t see anything that would make me say… ooofff, I don’t knowww… But, all kinds of problems may be yours to conquer, or it might go smoots as a powdered bum.
The slbs pages are your biggest friend if it does not go without bumps.
As is the calibration tools for gsender.
These will prolly be helpfull.
Hope you get that lill fella running in no time.
Thank you! I am planning on doing this so that if i sell or donate the SD110 it is fully reversable back to Nextwave’s controller and misc hardware. Am I correct in thinking this will run like a mini Longmill once I have it under the SLB’s control?
1 Like
I don’t think you’re very far off base in your thinking George, most CNCs electronics are quite similar at the Hobby Level so it should swap in. Like Eddie mentioned, it should just be a matter or running the calibration tools in gSender to get all the settings aligned to your machine. Worst case the SLB is the brain so it’d be super easy to swap back over to the original controller if/when needed and you wouldn’t have to do any other steps
Chris if I may ask, my existing motors have a ground pin on them as this machine is all made of uhmw plastic. Should I ground them at the SLB or would you recommend tying them to ground a different way?
Huh that’s interesting. My default reaction would be to star-ground the motor cables to each other at the end of a shielded cable then connect it to the CNC chassis or a ground spike or some other ground connection in your shop or house, but I’m seeing other reports of tying them to DC ground on the associated electronics which in the case of the SLB would mean using one of the spare ground pins that are available for many of the accessories such as the AUX limit switches, TLS, probe, etc.
My gut takeaway is that either option should be adequate, but the second option feels more correct.
Maybe “Ground” was a poor word to use. It appears to create an equipotential reference plane for the motors to the heatsink for the motor drivers and controller. I think I may still utilize the pin on the motor and tie the 3 leads to the SLB DC Ground as you stated above. Thoughts?
1 Like
Tying the machine to electronics is all well and will seem to work, but I wouldn’t call it grounding. It misses the core function of ground, namely diverting potential dangerous powerspikes away from man and machine via a direct connection to our planet.
An electronic ground does not fullfil that function.
2 Likes
Correct. All I want to make sure is I have a path to make sure I don’t end up with any static charge build up since the machine legs and gantry are all made of plastic and that’s what the motors are mount to.
1 Like