I have used wax string to tie the connectors together, but it is also a good idea to tie the wires together somehow, or else they may just fail at the back of the connectors.
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Oh, I totally agree which is why I still plan on looping and taping the wire. I just saying that I will also be hot gluing the connectors to make sure that they don’t come apart.
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That sounds like something that would be very useful in the future and I think you should share it because something like that will help lots of other people too. Probably will be too late for me for this build though
Before I switched to cat6 cable(this is why I switched) I used little zip ties to hold the connectors together.
I’m tempted to switch just because terminating CAT6 has got to be easier than getting a good crimp on a Dupont connector…
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Wait, cat 6 can handle the voltages for driving the steppers? I thought it was too thin
They’re plenty big enough. I have my pairs bonded for extra oomph. Large pzt cameras are running 52v over cat6.
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That would be my plan. Pair those buggers up.
How do you handle the 4-connector to 8-pin junction at the motor and/or controller? Tiny jumpers? Continuous vampire punch-down? 2-1 splices (solder + shrink tubing/elec tape)?
At 52V, it would need less current though, so this is maybe a counter example?
Maybe I should just google it…
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Continuous vampire tap… Makes sense, and probably easier than anything else.
Yeah there was a lot of cussing my first few attempts with the dupount crimps but I think I’ve started to get the hang of them. It’s a learning curve… That said while the connections work fine now they haven’t had very extensive testing yet, fingers crossed.
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Ok, got the wiring all done and now I’m trying to figure out what to do next. I bought the rambo wiht dual endstop and display from Ryan and I’m not getting anything on the display. I do get the yellow flashing light for a minute and a steady green light. I haven’t connected it to my laptop yet (it’s 1 am now and I was just hoping to see something on the display). If someone can point me to a page showing exactly how the display is supposed to be connected. I have the red stripes going to the 1 on the ribbon cable and they only fit one way on the display and I’ve tried both positions but still nothing (and I played with what I think is the contrast as well).
Is there a page I should be at at this point? I assume I can skip the firmware stuff because this was all purchased from Ryan, but if I need to go through the compiling of the firmware, just let me know and I’ll work on it.
Thanks!
The display cables are one of the funky parts. Sometimes the kids building these things put the plugs on the boards backwards. Not sure if it’s a too early in the morning and they haven’t had enough Jolt cola yet, or late in the evening and the Jolt is wearing off thing. Basically swap the cables on the board, if that doesn’t work, you can either pull the black plastic receptacle off the board and flip them 180 or just shave the key off the cables and try each one flipped 180. You can’t hurt anything by swapping them, it just won’t work until the right combination is found.
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Thank you so much for that tip!! Flipped one and I had display but it kept giving a reset error. Peered everything of and flipped the other one and suddenly I got access to the axises.
Quick question, z axis direction, is - up and + down? Or do I need to flip those?
Thank you!!
I think generally that +Z is up - sounds like you need to flip the Z-motor connector…
Ok, now that I have motion and everything is built (well, I still need to clean up the control box wiring and install the stop switch, but that’s not urgent at the moment), I need to go through the steps to draw my crown (spoiler I don’t have a pen mount at the moment, but I’ll figure it out) and then figure out how to convert SVG’s to something that will cut. I’m sure I can figure all that out online. Right now I just want to point out some things that I did that I thought could be used as a general rule to build and some that were not obvious to me right away and I needed some help with.
1 - plug in your extensions wires for your endstops and motors the same way. I put the red wire in the middle (between the endstop and motor connector) on every one. This allowed me to, on Ryans Rambo, plug the motors all in same orientation and the paired motors work in the right direction right away, no torquing the gantry with motors going in opposite directions.
2 - If you’re doing the dual endstop, make sure you test which terminals on the switches are NO and NC. I assumed it would be either the top 2 or the bottom 2 (depending on orientation) with a common center terminal. This was not the case on the switches I got, the common terminal is at one end and NO is the center and the common terminal at the end. NC is the 2 outer terminals. Once I figured this out I was finally able to trace my wires back to which set of wires went to which stepper, which brings us to…
3 - label your wires as you go. This will make it easier for you to wire up everything but also if you have to swap a wire around to change a stepper direction, you’ll know exactly which one is X2.
4 - Z axis cable management. I don’t even know where to begin. Apparently there are a lot of different methods, I think the stepper mounts for the Y (or really the steppers on the lower conduit, which is my Y) should be designed to hold something like this in a way that the angle faces down. This would allow the z axis cable to run along in there, with cable management, and not put any undue stress on the gantry (I think that’s the right word for the mechanism that holds the Z axis):
https://www.homedepot.com/p/Everbilt-2-in-x-96-in-Aluminum-Angle-with-1-16-in-Thick-802607/204273998
5 - If you are installing the dual endstops, make sure you have small (4 inch worked for me) zip ties to mount them to the brackets.
6 - If you are installing the dual endstops, figure out how much wire you need to hook up the endstops, and then add another 3 inches. I wound up, after having everything wired and cable management in place, having to create extensions with what I could find at Walmart at 2300 last night. Here’s what it looks like:
7 - While we are discussing cable management I would be remiss if I didn’t add that the tape measure trick is great, HOWEVER, a few pointers:
7a - I would put the belts on first before trying to get the wiring cleaned up, becuase I kept worrying about whether I was putting the cables in a safe spot and having the belts on let’s you know instantly.
7b - I struggled with my y axis cable management and then tried something different for the x axis.
First, measure out how much of the tape measure you will need and cut it (and clean up the ends).
Second, put the tape measure into some wire sleeve
Third, Line up your wires and tape them so that they are flat and in the orientation that you want. Use lots of tape over anything that has a sharp corner (ie, connector edges), as this will help the sleeve slide easier. This will prevent them from twisting later:
Fourth, place the tape measure UNDER the wires you just taped together and tape this to it as well, trust me, you will thank me later.
Fifth, put wire sleeve over the whole section (only that section) of cable that has the tape measure in it. Don’t worry about extra wires sticking out right now, we’ll get to those in a minute:
Sixth, zip tie the end by the stepper to the wires there. Maybe use 2 zip ties so that you can reinforce where the wire that comes out of the conduit goes, and then mount the sire sleeve to the bracket making sure to avoid the belt you ran earlier.
Seventh, mount the tape measure section to the table where it belongs. Remember that a section of it will have to be free to roll as the axis moves and that you should have a loop before steppers for wire releif, figure out where this is and attach after that point. I used eye hooks drilled into my table. Zip tie clamps will work, probably better (I used what I had):
Eighth, figure out how this will all be laid out and cut a section of wire sleeve for the rest of the cable (maybe add an inch for overlap on the previous section) and apply that sleeve:
Ninth, and finally, mount the cable to teh table where it is going to live neatly and you are now done. In one of the images above you can see the difference between my x axis wiring and my y axis wiring running next to each other. I’m seriously thinking of removing the Y axis wiring and redoing it.
8 - I learned this one this morning, even though the red stripe on ribbon cables indicates wire 1 (at least that’s what I was taught in the days of RLL and MLM hard disks), this seems to be an unimportant distinction with the makers of the wires so if your display isn’t working, keep flipping the wires around and swap connectors until everything is working (remove power before swapping connectors - ALWAYS)
I’m sure there are a couple of other gotchas I hit as I ran through this build, but the fact that I didn’t have a single whole weekend to devote to building this led to a build that took 1 week to complete. I’m now very excited to read on and figure out how to get gcode out to it and have it move (and getting the endstops working as they should).
Thanks everyone for the help so far. I’ll post more info if I feel I have anything useful to share.
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Thanks! I just saw that in the instructions so I’ll fix that when I get home tonight.
Esltcam is the easiest. Check out the milling basics and the estlcam basics doc pages. Estlcam can use svgs.
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Yep that was going to be the direction I take once I mount a pen and draw a crown. I have experience in dealing with SVG files for my silhouette cameo and from everything I’ve read on this forum, that’s where I’ll start.
Thanks so much for all the help from everyone.