I’m Scott and new to the forum… I’m currently 13 pieces in to printing out the Primo components and thought I might introduce myself… I stumbled upon the project by chance. Was watching a tube video of a guy building a cnc plasma cutter. At one point he decided to use his MPcnc to cut a piece out of wood to test fit before cutting out of metal. I thought, “wow”, that’s pretty awesome. I have a highly modified Xcarve that is controlled by a Raspberry Pi / Arduino Uno setup. I’ve been wanting to try out LinuxCNC but have resisted the urge to make changes to it… I try to not fall into the category of “If it ain’t broke, break it, so you have an excuse to fix it”… Not really wanting to get another CNC kit just to try out a different controller, the MPcnc Primo will work perfectly. I got an Ender 3 a while back so, I have a disassembled Zonestar P802QR2 that will be my sacrificial lamb for steppers and power supply.
The reason for posting in the “advice” category is this…
I am use to the RPi / Uno work flow for cnc’ing. I design the piece to be carved and then turn it into gcode (usually in Vcarve). The RPi runs the Universal Gcode Sender program… I “home” the machine and then move the spindle to the stock to be cut (often using the top center of the stock as the origin to be zero’d). I then set my Z using my probe. And then, tell UGS to send the gcode to the Uno (which has been flashed with GRBL 1.1f). Sit back and watch the magic…
The board in the Zonstar is stamped with “MCU Mega 2560” and “zRib v5.8”. I’m getting the feeling, of the stuff I’ve been reading on the forum, that this board (and LCD display) can be used. Are people using these boards for CNC? or, 3D Printing…
Thanks in Advance…