What controller is a good replacement for the buildbotics

[Aiph5u (Aiph5u (not affiliated with Onefinity))]

Hey Tim,

@timmy19

if someone has good idea on keeping controller dust free please let me know, it was full of saw dust

Usually you should have a dust collection that really catches all of the dust. Wood dust is very harmful to health so if your controller has dust inside, it is likely it gets into your lung too.

But regarding the controller, you could put it inside an enclosure with a pleated polyester filter and a big, slow-running fan, like in this example:

@Aiph5u

A good solution if you don’t have the machine in an enclosure (and the controller outside of it) or no powerful enough dust collection is to enclose the controller in a case with a fan and a pleated polyester filter. I would use a fan of at least 120 mm size as larger fans which don’t run that fast so aren’t that noisy (and I would use a PWM control for the fan). The fan in the Onefinity controller is the first thing I disconnected as its noise is absolutely unbearable (but I run the Onefinity controller open in the lab for testing purposes, not on a machine). For the Onefinity controller I would make a 120 mm hole into its top plate and put a 120 mm fan that exhausts to the top. That would 1. reduce noise 2. prevent that the Raspberry Pi is in a location inside the controller box that is not much ventilated and 3. possibly leave a big enough hole in the faraday cage to make the WiFi connection work better! (since unfortunately, unlike the Orange Pi, the Raspberry Pi has no connector for an external WiFi antenna)

@Aiph5u

Another way would be to enclose the source of the dust, e.g. by an enclosure like this or this (view of dust hose outlet here and here).

@timmy19

it also had a wire that came out of spade connector, they said if you put controller close to machine this happens but with the wires they send you can only go so far

Did you manage to put the wires with the spade connectors into position again?