I currently have a small CNC I bult from scratch. It has a Lenze SMVector VFD and a 2.2KW air cooled 80mm spindle. It currently does not have RS485 capability. I currently use a PMDX 416 controller with MACH 4. I have ordered an ALTMILL 4x4. The section on simple wiring is rather lacking in that it does not explain what all of the 5 wires do exactly. I realize that every type of VFD can’t be supported but I already have two different ones and don’t want to have to buy a new one. The other one I have is an Invertek Optidrive E3. The Optidrive has RS485 . Not familiar with it at all. Most things I have read say that RS-485 is the electrical characteristics and not the communications protocol. What protocol does the SLB use?
Hi Rich,
To be clear, when you talk about the lacking section about wiring spindles, do you refer to this page?
Yes, the section under “5V PWM Hookup” is very basic. I would like to see each of the wires described in more detail as to what kind of signal they carry and how it is activated.
Isn’t that simply a slap against your favorite search engine?
I understand the concept of PWM. I currently have a small CNC machine that I bult that is working. I want to know exactly how the SLB executes commands to each of the different signals. I am not using the Huanyang VFD or any of the others on the list. The controller I am using at the moment has different names for the inputs and outputs to and from the vfd. Please don’t assume I don’t know anything about this.
Is there a way to see all the parameters available to gSender to the SLBEXT without having an SLB to connect to?
@rexx42 You can see them all in the SLB tech manual if that is what you are asking.
I thought that there might be more info than what is there. Setting up a spindle with Simple Wiring is not quite clear to me. My current VFD is a Lenze SMVector and it just uses a digital input to start and stop and a 0v to10v analog signal for speed. As per the suggestion I got the converter but other than that I don’t know how to use the other wires for starting and stopping. Which wire would I use for starting and stopping on the SLB?
@rexx42 That is way above my competence level. You may want to open a support ticket.
I almost posted in your VFD and Spindle thread but I’m not an electrical expert by any means so I decided not to.
If you are talking about the 5V PWM Hookup section it mentions 5 wires there and the last one, SaS isn’t used according to the docs.
Note: currently the SLB doesn’t support SaS (‘Spindle-at-Speed’, a signal that some VFDs can send back to the board so that the board can wait for the spindle to speed up before starting the cutting process).
That leaves ground, PWM, direction, and engage. It also says that they are all 5V. So unless I’m mistaken the PWM is a square wave that you got a converter to analog for. That leaves direction and engage witch I think would be either on/off or high/low.
Not sure if this is helpful but I thought I’d try.
Thanks but that’s not the info I need. Thanks.
Okay, like @gwilki, I guess it’s over my head far enough that I can’t even figure out what info you need, never mind provide it.
Good luck and welcome to the group Rich.
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“starting and stopping” is the same as “enable”.
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SLB is just hardware.
GrblHAL is the firmware. You would have better luck on the GrblHAL github repo, discussion section, as you will probably need to implement your own code to talk to your VFD. Or, use the 0-10V analog output of the SLB.
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I was under the impression that the SLB does not have a 0-10 V output.
“Some VFDs don’t accept 5V PWM, in which case you can either try setting up RS485 or you can pick up a ‘PWM to 0-10V Analog signal converter’ and use that to translate the 5V PWM the SLB has to the ‘0-10V’ your VFD needs.”
Per the SLB tech manual.
Ah yeah, ok you’ll need a converter board then. Unless you are decent at coding to contribute to grblHal, it’s probably your only option to use your VFD. (Short of buying a new VFD).
The communication protocol is ModBus happening over RS485 if that helps. What sort of more specific information were you looking to get about the 5 simple wiring wires?