I stumbled upon the MPCNC project a few weeks ago and I am well underway ordering my parts for the build, and now patiently waiting for the various bits and pieces to come in. I am in Canada, so unfortunately with the high international shipping costs through the V1 store and a tight budget, I have had to source my parts through aliexpress, amazon, and local hardware stores. I would love to be able to just buy the wiring kits but shipping is 3x the cost of the wires themselves. I cannot seem to find anywhere that has the specifics of the wires if sourcing outside the V1 kits. Would anyone be able to point me in the right direction? I am a novice when it comes to assembling electronics like this so I am unsure exactly what I am looking for. I’d like to get enough wiring to have the series and endstops both as options. I am making a 24inchx24inch using the ramps 1.4 + arduino mega combination and 8825 drivers, and I’ve got all the other electronic components required on order. I just need to know what wiring/connectors and the lengths.
Also as a side note, I have bought the Dewalt 660 but I realized it has no speed control on it. Would getting the Makita be better? I’d like to try my hand at aluminum and plastic eventually and don’t want to pigeonhole myself, and I’d like to avoid having to purchase a second router.
Some questions before I try and answer about wiring:
Is 24inx24in your machine size or your work area size?
How certain are you that you want dual end stops in the future?
Did you purchase five 8825 drivers?
How are your steppers wired? For some steppers, the wiring is hardwired into the motor, but most motors these days have a 6 pin JST connector.
Did your steppers come with wires or do you just have a bare connector on the stepper?
How far away from your machine will you be mounting the control board?
As for your spindle, you can get a speed control for the DW660, but that speed control will have no feedback loop, so RPM will vary some under load. Lots of people active in the forum run the Makita, but it is a bit heavier which may have just a bit of impact on acceleration. I personally went with the Carbide 3D router. It is a Makita clone that comes with the 1/4 and 1/8 precision collets. Some people like the DWP611 (and in particular the built-in led light), but it is heavier than the Makita.
I did get the wiring kit from V1, but had to extend the wires for some motors and switches, because I built oversize.
Some things are going to be difficult to source in Canada from Amazon, notably the 16 tooth 10mm belt pulleys. I could find them on Ali Express, but shipping would be a long wait. Maybe that’s better now. Nuts and bolts were much more expensive on Amazon (And Home Despot) than they were at the local Nut & Bolt specialty supply store. Weird, but that’s what I found.
Going with a worksize of 24x24, whatever the recommended size is, unless that means a total footprint of 24x24.
I am not super certain about the dual endstops but from the looks of it, they help make the machine safer and assists in aligning it? I bought a kit from Aliexpress that includes the five stepper drivers with the boards, and I bought some cheap endstops there as well . I don’t mind having to purchase a different board or endstops because I can use them on something else since I have read the arduino clones are prone to issues.
I have not purchased the steppers yet.
Seems like I cannot post links in my posts.
Not sure how far away the wiring will all be so buying extra length is probably how I will approach it.
The Dewalt seems to be what a lot of builds have so it must be a decent choice. I will probably stick with it for now and if I do want to upgrade in the future I will bite the bullet and bite a Makita or the Carbide you mentioned.
Thanks for the links. It will give me an idea of what to look for. I ordered some belt from Aliexpress and I hope I got the right stuff (looks like it is based on the provided part list). It is going to take between 15-45 days to get here, possibly longer, but I am okay with that since I need time to research the build process further. The nuts and bolts were definitely more expensive than I thought they would be. Sourced them from various online and local retailers and came to be about $100CAD just for the hardware.
Until you get the steppers, you cannot nail down the wiring. You have three pathways:
Wire the motors in serial and use serial firmware.
Wire only the steppers, but use dual end stop firmware and wiring.
Regardless of whether you install the end stop switches, install wire for both the end stops and the steppers.
Choice #2 is interesting because if your motors are not hardwired, then you can buy cables and avoid any soldering. Cables of 1.5m should do the job, and 2.0m cables will definitely do the job. Something like this which I believe will plug into most Nema 17 motors and the 2.54 spacing on the other end should plug into the pins on your control board.
If you are going to lengthen your cables, I’m partial to ribbon wire. It fits nicely into a cable chain if you choose to use one, works well with the “tape measure trick”, and feeds easily into sleeves. Something like this for 4-conductor wire, or this for 6-conuctor wire (if you install the wire for the end stops and steppers at the same time). Whatever you buy, make sure it is stranded wire. Solid wire will fatigue and break.
