Bill Pentz - Welcome Aboard !!!
 

(moved from another thread)

Wayne,

Well and quickly done!

bill pentz

Bill - Glad to have you on the MechMate group!!! Welcome to the team :D !!

Pay attention folks, the "Dust Master" has just entered the building... Glad you joined us !!!

I read your website all the time. Love all the info you have on that site!!!

Welcome Bill! :) Your website is definitely an inspiration to us all!

Thanks guys for the kind words about dust collection. Now I need to slip to student mode and learn about this MM. I'm already a bit irritated at this whole group. I started reading and next thing you know it was 2 AM and I had to get up for a 7 AM meeting. Just way too interesting.

Speaking of such, have any of you played with the Parallax Propeller Head micro controller? Many use these for robotics, but after I went to one of their classes last week and attended their annual conference I had a ball coming away with my head spinning from there as well. Seeing wihat a movie animator did with his I know these easy to use controllers with just about every kind of sensor imaginable are going to really change how and what machinery we use, plus change much of how we do things. Now I have even more ideas to pursue than I have time to do...

bill

The great M Pentz among our group….GREAT :)
I’m very appreciative for your advices and recommendations. Hopping we can help you back :rolleyes:
Welcome aboard sir !
Robert ;)

Hey Bill,

welcome to the group! I also build a cyclone inspired by your design, I made just a small one... but even scaled down with a small <1HP motor with a home build impeller it still works above expectations.

About : Parallax Propeller Head micro controller
I know the basic stamp by reading, and when glancing over there website it looks very interesting.

We here at Mechmate try to keep our electronics as simple as possible. This is why most people use a PC as there motion controller, EMC and Mach3 is used here, and some use a smoothstepper. Together with a simple BreakOut Board (BoB) using a parallel printer port we usually have enough inputs and outputs to drive a 3 axis Mechmate and at the same time read some inputs like E-Stop, and proximity switches, all binary inputs.

Since we use PC's, it's fairly easy to hookup a pendant and I know people use simple game controllers to control the machmate without keyboard/mouse.

The great Dust Guru is in the house!

Welcome! your site had inspired & thought me so much that I felt indebted to you! Can never feel thankful enough.

On the electronics front, MechMate is PC based motion control, is as simple to understand, build & operated as it can possibly could. The design emphasis strongly on actual application of electronics more than anything else. Even electronics idiot like me can make it work with off the shelve components. Some did went the way to build their own drivers.

It would be our pleasure to help you in reture.

Welcome!

Welcome Bill!

I'm glad we've gotten our revenge - you've had many of us up until 2am reading your wonderful material on dust collection.

As mentioned, most (all?) MMs to date have used standard PCs running EMC2 or Mach3 with parallel ports providing step and direction signals to stepper drives.

There is some interesting work in the RepRap project that involves using Arduino type microcontrollers to execute GCode (or near equivalent dumbed down GCode) in a standalone fashion. They still use software on the PC to either convert Gcode to the necessary format, or to generate directly from 3d drawing files. It's probably worth keeping an eye on what they do with standalone controllers if you're interested in this area.

Thanks Bill, appreciate the kind comment. Thank you for all the effort you put into the design, you make life for the DIY'er very easy.

Regards,
Wayne

I'll second staying up until 2:AM reading about dust collection. Hope you will enjoy being part of this wonderful community as all of us do! Welcome Bill!