DigiSpeed-XL and CandCNC Mini-I/O and KBMM-125 Motor Speed Controller and Treadmill Motor Hooked Up · Apr 23, 16:42
The Homann Designs’ DigiSpeed-XL and CandCNC Mini-I/O boards have finally been hooked up together and tested under Mach3 using PWM. Pretty cool so far!
As you can see from the picture above, we have the following hooked up:
Digispeed-XL “voltage generator”
Mini-I/O “breakout board”
KBMM-125 DC “speed controller”
Argord Corporation Permanent DC motor (model PA140B)
Gecko G202 “step motor drivers”
The most important part of this puzzle at present is to wire up the motor such that it can ultimately be driven by Mach. We still need to set up an indexing unit on the rear end of the motor shaft so that we can count speed and control it as well?..
We opted to go with some custom options on the Digispeed-XL like the terminal strip on J3 instead of the mini-din connector. If you do this as well, be sure to reference page 25 of the revision 0.2 manual. We had been referencing the pinouts on page 18 for the mini-din and this was incorrect. Also be sure to hook up the white LED to the D3 connector so that you can see the “lazy flashes” that are mentioned in the manual. Otherwise, all you’ll see is the onboard SMT LEDs solid red and switching back and forth as you turn the spindle on/off.
Here’s a reference picture (click on the picture for a larger version):
Here’s our version of the quick-start quide when trying to get both to communicate with each other. Reference both vendors’ instructions manuals for pinout details.
DigiSpeed-XL <=> Mini-I/O
Pin 1 <=> Out 1 (J11)
Pin 2 <=> PCGND (J16)
Pin 3 <=> Not used (or you can use Out 4 (J12) but you’ll lose charge pump capablities)
Pin 4 <=> Out 2 (J11)
Pin 5 <=> PC+5V (J2)
Pin 6 <=> Out 3 (J12)
After you’ve hooked it up as we’ve shown above, you’ll get solid red LEDs when powered on and one of the SMT LEDs will switch to another when the spindle is turned on/off or using the M03 and M05 G commands.
In our next article, we’ll hook up the motor controller to the digispeed and let things rip! And here we go…
After wiring up only three more leads – the ones originally used for the manual potentiometer P1 (V-), P2 (Vc), P3 (V+) – the motor was alive and running via Mach3Turn.
We had to remove the digispeed board to look at the imprint on the underside to identify the screw terminal leads:
Then it was a matter of hooking up those three wires (click on the picture for a full-sized image):
To test the controls under Mach, we ran some G-code that would turn the motor at different speeds:
And off we went. Click on the image to view the video (rather, listen to the motor as it changes speeds):
There are few more items that need to be cleaned up:
1. When the spindle is turned off (M5), the motor still spins very slowly instead of not at all. Does this mean that we have to adjust the manual pot on the digispeed board to make sure no voltage is being generated?
2. The S commands seem to be backwards. For example, S1000 spins the motor slower than S10. Shouldn’t this be the other way around?
For now, this is very exciting news as we can control both the lathe and the homebrewed CNC vertical mill.
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