MAXNC
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[hide]MAXNC Milling Machine
Makers Local 256 (https://256.makerslocal.org/) owns at some point got two MAXNC mills. One was a MAXNC15 with a closed Loop control system and the other had an open Loop control system. They came with a 4th axis and a lathe chuck. The the company MAXNC is now defunct. The main problem with running these machines was that they used an unusual control system compared to typical stepper driven desktop CNC machines. Apparently it used a quadrature system. I have no idea what that means or how it is different. They use normal stepper motors.
Reference Materal
Here are some links to where I found information about MAXNC The following are pages from the original company that are available on the internet archive (http://web.archive.org/)
This another page available on the internet archive (http://web.archive.org/)
Here are some other pages
- https://www.noisebridge.net/wiki/MaxNCMill
- https://engineering.purdue.edu/AAECourses/Raisbeck/cnc_equip.htm#maxnc
- https://engineering.purdue.edu/AAECourses/Raisbeck/images/resources/cnc/MAXNCmanual.pdf
- This is not the original manual, but something written as an introductory overview for student at Purdue.
YouTuber "Josh AQ" has made many videos about his MaxNC mill
Getting the Machine to Work
For minimum cost I want to get it running with the MACNC controler. This means using either the MAXNC software, or using Mach 3 wich is supoised to have a MAXNC compatable mode. I coudn't find the MAXNC software, and I am familiar with Mach3, so its a easy decision.
Bradley wants to ditch the MAXNC controller and use only the steppers instead. He wants to replace the controller with one of these: https://www.geckodrive.com/g540-4-axis-digital-stepper-drive.html https://www.geckodrive.com/support/g540-rev-8.html I'm ok with this option if I can't get the MAXNC controller to work. But I'd prefer using cheaper controll system of ebay if I had to pay for it myself. In eith senario the stepper connectors would need to be rewired. The steppers are 8 wires. The controller Brad wants uses 4 wires. Most cheap diy CNC stuff also uses 4 wires.
Wiring a stepper cable
I rewiring a stepper cable to if it would work with a Geckodrive
The steppers the MAXNC has Powermax 11 Model P22NRXG-LNN-NS-00 https://www.kollmorgen.com/en-us/products/motors/stepper/powermax-m-and-p-series/ https://www.kollmorgen.com/sites/default/files/public_downloads/Nema_P2_Stepper_System_TB.pdf The infro Brad Was Looking at http://www.portalnaukowy.edu.pl/allegro/powermax22.pdf
Motor Pins Pin 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 internal conect 5 6 7 8 1 2 3 4 (The pins that had conectivity) ohm 17.8 17.5 17.7 17.4 Color blue black orange black black red black yellow
Cable motor side (indexing from arrow) pin 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 conected 1 6 2 6 6 3 6 4
Cable drver side (indexing from arrow) 1 2 3 4 5 6 - - - - no conector - blue orange red yellow black
9 pin serial port conection 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 case red yellow blue gray black orange purple brown green White
Here is how to wire it from 8 pin to 4 pin (with serial Connection) Stetter side 2 and 5 get tied together and terminated 4 and 7 get tied together and terminated
Motor Pin | letter | Serial Pin 1 blue | +A | 9 green 6 red | -A | 8 brown 3 orange | +B | 7 purple 8 yellow | -B | 6 orange
Serial pins 1-5 gets a resistor
Using Mach3 with MaxNC
this link has a configuration file: https://www.cnczone.com/forums/benchtop-machines/254426-cnc.html
