I am currently trying to get my MPCNC working again but am stuck.
I was planning to control my MPCNC with a Rambo 1.4a board via Estlecam. It seemed like one axis was working correctly, however, severe jerking was occurring and I was hearing spool whining. I am using Nema 17 motors a 12V 5A power supply for logic and motors, is this possibly too much ampere on it? (after installing the firmware a red led beside the fan2 input goes on)
After my failed attempt I read here in the forum that a developer from Estlecam mentioned that this board does not work with it. Estlcam +Rambo 1.4? (Dont work)
Now I am unsure how to proceed and am considering whether I may need another board.
My goal is to work in Estlecam and then use the Estlecam controller on the computer to make adjustments such as “autosquaring” and automatic Z-axis detection. I would also like to control the spindle speed through it. Is this feasible or do I need to rethink my approach?
I don’t have a direct answer to your question. There are a couple of people on this forum that run Estlcam as the firmware on their boards, so hopefully one of them will comment. Almost everyone on this forum runs Marlin on the Rambo board.
Even if you plan to run Estlcam as the firmware in the long run, I suggest running Marlin now to debug your system. There is tested versions of Marlin for the Rambo board on this page, and, assuming you are running dual endstops, you want the V1CNC_RAMBO_DUAL version. You can put the pre-compiled binary on the board using XLoader. Using this version of the firmware and some sort of g-code sender, you can work out any issues with the electronics and mechanics of your system. There are a lot of people on this forum with experience of this setup to help you out if you run into any problems.
“autosquaring” and automatic Z-axis detection
You are going to need to describe exactly what you want with these features. Using the Marlin firmware, homing squares the machine. It is easy to make homing automatic, but I find my process more flexible by invoking the homing manually. As for Z-Axis detection, I assume you are talking about Z height. For CNC work, typically that involves a touch plate. You can have touch plate code automatically inserted in scripts, but it is more flexible to manually invoke the touch plate routine.
I would also like to control the spindle speed through it. Is this feasible or do I need to rethink my approach?
I don’t know what provisions are made in the Estelcam firmware, but in Marlin, you can directly control almost all pins on the Rambo board. How you map the pin PWM to your spindle VFD varies. Most VFDs take an analog 0V to 10V signal, so it requires a small bit of hardware to map the 5V PWM Rambo board to the 10V analog required by the VFD. Some spindle VFDs will take the 5V signal directly. You will need to study your manual. For Marlin, there are a couple of firmware changes needed so that the S values output by the CAM map to the correct RPM values on the spindle.
Estlcam user here: You need a special board to use Estlcam as the controller as well.
I just checked whether you can use Ramps, but the support is basically nonexistent in the settings. So I’d rather switch the board or choose another CAM program.
Also, Estlcam does not support autosquaring natively. As soon as it hits one endstop it stops the whole axis, so no squaring possible. To be able to achieve that you need the OpenCNCShield 2 (a control board), it has another ESP32 that does the squaring before you start Estlcam.
Hope that helps, any other questions I am glad to answer.
Thank you very much for the answers. After the first feedback I already felt I had misunderstood something. I was under the impression that only Estlcam controls the CNC via the PC. RepetierHost was unknown to me until then. In addition, I assumed that I had to create a remote control to move only the axes. But Repetier will do it for now.
In the meantime, I upload Marlin onto the board and tested it with RepetierHost. It seems to be working fine. And, thank you for the clarification regarding Estlcam.
I tried to explain that I want AutoSquaring, Homing with Touchplate, but with the ability to control everything manually on the PC. With Repetier right?
I am thinking about of posting some pictures of my MPCNC in a new post to get some advice. In addition, I have made a long list of things I still want to implement to be satisfied with the result.
You may want to review the software workflow, and look at the different pieces that work together (supposedly). Estlcam has a firmware piece that can control some CNCs, depending on what controller they have, but most of the mentions here are for the CAM portion. Which is analogous to a 3D printer’s slicer. Repetierhost would then be used to send the gcode generated by the CAM software to the CNC machine (this could also be done with an sd-card or a different gcode sender software).
