I just had a couple of questions about connecting my router. Is there a way to connect the router to the jackpot board so the software can control the speeds, or do you have to plug it into the wall like normal and adjust the speeds yourself? If you can connect it and control it, how would you do it(what terminal)? My other question is I printed up a jackpot housing made by Doug and it uses a small fan to keep the jackpot cool, and he talked about connecting it to the power supply so when you turn on the machine the fan comes on or something to the effect. I asked him about it and he couldn’t remember what he did, so my question is could I just take the wires for the fan and plug wire it into the same terminal in the jackpot as the power cable or if I should splice it in to the cable? I’m sure you suggest against any of that, but I was just wondering.
Wood routers need to be speed controlled manually, spindles can have the speed controlled. Honestly, being able to change it yourself quickly is very nice until you know exactly what RPM you need.
You can control the power on and off with an SSR or similar.
When you are just starting, it is really good not to automate everything. Stand right there and be vigilant.
Yes, as long as your fan and power supply are the same voltage.
Yes, and no.
What I mean by that is you can just shove a couple of wires into a screw terminal and tighten it down, but it’s not a good practice.
Screw compression terminal blocks tightening stranded wire or multiple solid wires will inevitably loosen over time as the birdcaging relaxes.
Better practice would be to put the two wires for each polarity into a compression ferrule and then put that into the Jackpot. Or, alternately, make a pigtail that breaks the wires out appropriately.
These things aren’t going into deep space, but you also don’t really want your day (and your CNC project) ruined because a wire worked out and either killed power to the controller or shorted out on something.
What wire gauge would you recommend for pigtailing a 24v power supply and a 24v 40mm fan? And would you recommend using a wire nut or soldering for the wire connection, at the pigtail?
A lot of that depends on your skills.
Something I’ve seen a lot of people using recently on their projects are just using some WAGO 221 connectors. For this application, you need two- one for the + leads and one for the - leads. They’re around $8 for a bag of 10 in the US.
If you fan wire leads are long enough then you can most likely directly terminate them into the WAGOS, and those in my opinion are way cleaner than a wire nut.
There are also plenty of WAGO terminal mounts available on printables.com or your favorite source location of STLs.
Fan wise- mine is 24v and wired to the power in on the board. CNC is on, so is the fan.
You can’t power a router from the board, but you can switch on/off a 110/24 relay by gcode that will turn everything on/off. My router and dust collection, bonus light are all on the same outlet, fed by the relay so I can power on/off everything at the same time.