<
EDIT: Support answered me within 10 minutes on a Sunday afternoon. I could not be more impressed…
That being said, after trying to get the controller working for a few minutes without luck, I turned it off and walked away to write support and the original message. When I got their response, I walked out to the garage to try it again and for reasons unknown, it fired right up. Weird… Guess whatever happened with the router and tripping the breaker was causing it to pull too much draw and overheat.
TLDR: I fired up the machine today to do a test carve in pine, it started acting weird (monitor blinking) and the Makita fried itself, tripping the breaker. Afterwards, the controller wouldn’t fire up at all…
Resolved, both by excellent support response, and weird “it just started working again” mystical luck…
FYI, my controller just recently fried so it does happen. It cost me $590 with shipping, taxes, and fees. However, they sent a whole new control box. The new box has the push button instead of the rocker switch.
OneFinity support sent me a troubleshooting document for the original BB Controller. On the very first image, I noticed that the power supply (the thing you test first) is a Meanwell 350-36.
This is literally a 36-V version of the power supply I’ve become VERY familiar with swapping out over the years on my 3d printers. (they’re 350-24 24v Power supplies)…
If, in step 1, the lights on the power supply don’t function, that’s a good indication to me of a dead power supply. That being said, Is there ANY reason that if my controller bleeps the bed again that I CAN’T just pull the controller and try swapping out the $36 power supply with a new replacement from Amazon?
Wayne
(Mine, I’m praying, just got overheated in the original post apparently)
You can swap it with a known good one if you know you have input power and the e-stop triggered (isolating the power supply from the remainder of the system) the green light is off.
The one potential issue I see is that the “original BB controller” on that site appears to be run by a 48V supply. I haven’t opened my controller up just yet but the document OneFinity sent me for troubleshooting shows it running a MeanWell 350-36 (36V) power supply…
Might matter, might not.
Wayne
Aiph5u
(Aiph5u (not affiliated with Onefinity))
10
Hey Wayne,
the recent version of original Buildbotics controller runs on 24 V – 48 V DC input. The previous version ran on 12 V – 36 V. Regarding this change, they write:
The 24–48 Volt version of the Buildbotics CNC Controller provides the ability to bypass the internal motor drivers and exposes the control signals through a DB15 connector on the back panel. As good as the internal drivers are, some users have needs that go beyond the capabilities of the internal drivers.
The 12–36 V Version is not manufactured anymore, but most recent Buildbotics firmware version 1.0.2 runs on it.
The 12–36 V or the 24–48 V Voltage is only available on the Load-1 and the Load-2 outputs. For the Raspberry Pi and the AVR mainboard, the voltage is regulated to 5 V on the power input of the mainboard, so it does not much matter if it’s a 12–36 V or a 24–48 V Meanwell power supply inside, except if you want to drive external motor drivers and motors that require more than 36 V.
That’s all Greek to me. Can I plug and play it with my X50 Journeyman, or not?
Aiph5u
(Aiph5u (not affiliated with Onefinity))
12
Hey Wayne,
Yes, you can! The Buildbotics.com is a universal 4-Axis CNC Controller. It can fit a lot of CNC machines. What it does not provide, because it is universal for many CNC machines, is the specific workarea dimensions, settings for the specific stepper motors and ball screw pitches, the XYZ limits etc. that are specific to the Onefinity machine. You can copy and paste them from a running Onefinity Controller or take them from a default Onefinity Configuration file or from a backup of a Onefinity Configuration that you can save to a file on the Admin page.
1 Like
Aiph5u
(Aiph5u (not affiliated with Onefinity))
13
Hey Wayne,
here you can see that the four stepper motors, the monitor, the Ethernet port, the four USB ports and the 25-pin I/O port have identical connectors.
On the Buildbotics, the power supply is external, and for the probe and laser, you’ll have to use the corresponding pins on the breakout board of the 25-pin I/O port.
What the Buildbotics Controller offers that the Onefinity does not, is the 15-pin auxiliary port. It allows to circumvent the internal stepper drivers and use external stepper drivers, for using closed-loop stepper like the Masso stepper motors, or Servos, etc. This auxiliary port makes the STEP, DIR, ENABLE and ALARM control lines for each of the four axes accessible from outside, like on the Masso.
My machine would die just randomly. Sometimes in the middle of a run. I took the front cover off and bypassed the rocker switch. I have the controller hooked in to a plug outlet with a switch. So far it is running okay. It will take several days to see if it fails or not. I hope that was all the problem.
You can get a replacement on Amazon (or write to OneFinity support). There have been a number of folks who found theirs got filled with sawdust. (If you search you can find the threads) and either replaced it or disassembled the switch and cleaned it out.
