So I am jumping into the THC on my Gen 1 Crossfire. I am contemplating what things I could do with the old box and Mach 3. Does anyone have knowledge of adding a Z driver and motor that is not relative to THC. I did search a little but everything really came back to THC setups.I am thinking it would be a useful box to go down the rabbit hole if I wanted to CNC my Mill. I think though technically I could use it as is on my lathe but the mill would be a bit more use in the grand scheme of things. Thanks for any feedback.
All this stuff is just computers, nuts, and bolts.
What you need to know is what computer is in the box, how much processing speed it has, how much memory it has, and so on. Then whatever mill design you are going to use you will need see what the hardware requirements are. I know just enough about this stuff to know I will break something or electrocute myself.
For example. I have a Crossfire Pro. I sold my house and bought one to play with. I bought mine with the THC chip. But since it’s an optional part It came in it’s magic packaging I ready the instructions carefully about how to install it because do not misalign or you could break the pins on this $400 upgrade for the Crossfire Pro. … Dam I was terrified. Well I finally got the courage to open the $400 box of love only to discover that it’s a $15 computer chip I have previously purchased to build a Meshtastic LoRa Radio device.
Now that chip does have Langmuir software on it that controls the Torch Height and has saved me hundreds of dollars of metal, many many hours of clean up
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The Original control box contains a Mach 3 USB Controller. Search the web and you will find a ton of information on how to configure that for virtually any CNC system. The controller is 4 axis so you can imagine how it can be used. Add two more stepper drivers and you’re ready for action!
Since I have a Mach 3 license, I’ve used that controller board in at least 3 other CNC systems, predominantly CNC Routers.
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400 I wish. You must have gotten in early. My cost was 800 after shipping but I am already enjoying it better than the mach 3 OS. I got it all working yesterday in basic trim so just need to finish wiring and setup the plasma cutter now. Thanks for th einput
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Yeah I was looking through and seems like nema 23 stepper motors will be all I need and the extra axis controller. It would be interesting to see what a 4th axis could be used for on a CNC mill. Mine’s one of the Rong-Fu type round column mills and it seems like spindle speed might be one use. I am planning on doing a 3 phase conversion on it with a VFD so that could be one approach. One other idea could be to have 2 Z axis motors. One on the quill and another on the column lift so that it can use 100% of it’s height. I’ll have to do some research in how much of a motor it will take to drive that though.
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The Mach 3 controller has a 0-10V DC output for speed control functions. This is typically used for Spindle speed. It uses a PWM function to set the voltage. Note that this will require adding a power source that will produce something like 12-16v. I’ve used a buck regulator to step down the stepper 36V supply to get that…
The four axis are typically used as X, Y, Z, A (rotator of some sort - could be a stepper).
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