External Control Box

Now I’m not sure whether you were asking me or Liam, anyway here goes the dead simple wiring of my control box:

But basically it’s this:

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So you don’t even have to make one, but of course milling a custom control box panel provides more satisfaction.

Having a big fat E-stop button/paddle that you can slam and that will remove ALL power to everything is pretty useful (and safer) when things go out of control, and for all other things there is the feedhold.

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How come there’s no earth in your diagram? Do you not have it or did you just omit it because it isn’t relevant to the switches?

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Doh, of course I have earth too, I failed to include it in the diagram, it absolutely must be there on all sockets (so ahem yeah, let’s say I omitted it on purpose since it’s not relevant to the switching logic :slight_smile: )

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Julian,

Does your wireing interrupt the vfd power to your spindle?

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That’s a really good question actually, I don’t think the E-stop should necessarily cut off power to the VFD or spindle directly. My VFD isn’t anything fancy (Omron MX2, which I think is a rebranded Hitachi?) but it has has a properly certified safe-stop function that requires you to break the connection between two particular terminals but leave the VFD powered. When you shut it down that way, it shuts down in at most 200ms. I assume it can make use of the braking resistor this way too?

My manual seems to recommend against interrupting power to the VFD or from the VFD:

If I understand correctly, it also advises against @Julien’s setup specifically (“input phase loss” sounds like what his circuit does)?

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EDIT: Just to be clear to folks, this is for my VFD. My point was mostly that VFDs are different, not that Julien did anything wrong :slight_smile:

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I just don’t trust my chinese VFD enough to rely on an internal mechanism like that. So for better or worse, my “to router/VFD” switch does cut power input to the VFD. I used my E-stop twice in three years, I don’t think my VFD suffered, and if it dies on my I’ll buy a new cheap one, no biggie.

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The first time I read this, my mind went, “Wow! Julien is named in their documentation!” @Julien Dude, you’ve hit the big time! :slight_smile:

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I think there’s a bit of a difference in terms of how people run their VFDs as well.

I believe Julien has his Shapeoko controller connected to auto start the spindle and set the speed, thus having a manual lock out to prevent the machine starting the spindle is valuable.

The HY VFD appears to have support for an e-stop but it is documentation is an outstanding achievement in obscurity and confusion. Apparently you can wire up one of the multi-input as an external “emergent stop” it appears that a switch betwen the DCM terminal and the selected multi-input but it’s not clear whether this is normally open or normally closed once configured. Once wired up you can then tell the VFD to use setting 09 on the multi-input pin you’ve chosen.

The other aspect, of course, is electrical fault modes in which you’d very much want the VFD to lose input power.

Edit - Just to add, my spindle stops in about 1/20th the time when I use the stop on the VFD than left to spin down on the e-stop so if possible I hit stop on the VFD control.

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Yeah, I would like to have a control box mounted on my enclosure, and I am willing to give it a shot- I don’t mind doing simple stuff around the house- add a plug, switch, or even running a new circuit. But to put it plainly, I am illiterate when it comes to electrical drawings. I pretty much know nothing, so creating an external control from scratch… is daunting. It is all a foreign language for me.

That said, I am thinking that for some of us the better solution may be mounting a touch screen small form pc to the darn thing and calling it a day. Anybody else just used this option?

Following with interest as I’d like to move the 3d controller outside of the enclosure and also install a control box for the power incorporating an Estop.
I am of the opinion that “if it can’t be fixed with a hammer its an electrical problem” :roll_eyes:
One problem I have is ensuring I get the right plugs to extend the controller and stepper wiring. I have followed the wiki link but still struggle to identify the correct items. It would be nice to have a printed BOM with part numbers and suppliers…or even better a pre assembled kit.
Unfortunately I live in a very small town and everything usually is bought online and often overseas so its an expensive exercise if I order the wrong thing

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