X50 experience and tips

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

Hey Pony,

@Pony

*Took the 2 wires off of the switch and hooked them together, then CAREFULLY plugged the power cord in. The controller started up. Removed power.
*This told me that the on/off rocker switch had failed and needed replaced.

this is a known issue.

@Aiph5u

…now you know why @satoer uses IP67 (dust-tight, water-proof) switches in their CNC Remote Control Panel

That is probably one of the reasons why with Version 5 of the Onefinity Controller, the power switch is now a push-button (with additional circuitry onboard) which replaced the rocker switch of the Version 4. The additional circuitry that does this looks like this. You can still add a rocker switch to J18 in case you want to power the controller on with a power strip (would not work otherwise with the new power pushbutton).

@Aiph5u

@HardtailSr

I see people talking about dust getting inside the controller box and even in the power switch. what if you put the controller inside a box built with furnace filter type filters? appropriately sized of course? then you would simply change the filter out when you needed to. could save a lot of trouble.

this is a good idea which is only limited to how you affect the ventilation for heat dissipation of the controller. A temperature sensor inside the box would make sense then. 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).

I have experimented for a while with filters for fans on PCs, but it turned out that they immediately limit the air flow and also clog too quickly (I have seen someone using such a clip-on fan filter on the (in my opinion too small) fan of the Onefinity Controller but I don’t think this is the right solution, especially not with such a small fan). My solutions since then have been to run the computers in large enclosures with a filter at the entrance of an air circulation system. This allows for a larger filter area and therefore better airflow and less clogging.

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)