I am tearing down my XXL SO3 to move it to a beefier enclosure, along with many upgrades (aluminum plate, hdz, water cooled spindle etc). I left myself with no room on the left Y rail for the controller. Was thinking about moving it to the X rail along the back which I have seen people do. Seems like that would have the advantage of being able to shorten the stepper cables.
Any cons to this approach? The only one I can thing of is the controller being mounted to a moving/vibrating rail. But maybe this has not been an issue for anyone. Would love to hear any feedback.
One downside is that if you are planning on running all of your wiring in the drag chain, you are running your USB cable next to your stepper motor wires (possible EMI) and your router power or VFD power cable (possible EMI) over a pretty good distance.
Good point. Although with this new setup, I am likely going to run the 220V VFD spindle cable overhead via a boom/hanger. But yeah, at least in the X-axis section of the drag chain, the USB would share space with X/Z stepper cables.
The SO3 standard has the controller mounted on the x-axis. However, I personally didn’t like it there, and wanted to move it outside the enclosure. Prune to ingress dust from cutting (even with dust shoe), and worse if you plan to cut conductive materials.
Ditto, I have the basic SO3 and am planning on moving my controller from the back of the X to elsewhere.
My main gripe is I cannot get to anything without moving the entire unit (it’s backed up to the wall under an overhead cabinet), so adding a probe or checking connections is a PITA. It’d be worse, if possible, inside an enclosure.
Thanks for the feedback. This has been enough to convince me to not go this route. I will just move the controller into the “electronics” area of my new enclosure. Just need to work on a heatsink/fan solution since it wont be attached to a rail.
I built an enclosure for dust control. The controller is now mounted on the exterior of the enclosure. this is good for accessibility too. (btw, it is an SO3 XXL.)