A little tip from my wireman mentor: When terminating wires you should allow sufficient extra length to permit 3 further termination operations. That's effectively an additional three-quarter inches which you can swan-neck within the trunking.
Yes, absolutely. I've been doing electric work (for myself) for years now, and in the beginning I always cut my wires right up to the right length. It works alright on the first install, but then years later I had to change some of that original wiring. You guessed it: wires were too short, had to rip the entire length out and put in a new one. Same story when adding some new things in a electrical system set up by somebody else. They didn't leave any slack, meaning I had to install an additional junction box right next to the other one, only because the original wires were just a bit too short. Since those experiences, I've been leaving at least one loop of slack on every wire. Always take care of the guy who's gonna do the next repair/change, because there's a very high chance that guy's gonna be you.
@@feeseize9569 If you really want some style points, turn the excess into a nice "swan neck". Not only do you get a service tail, but the trunking won't get too congested.
James has literally everything figured out.. its quite impressive.. His mind is akin to a 1 terabyte sd card , and everyone else is trying to boot a floppy disk in DOS with lines running up and down the monitor
Come on.... some of us are running Win 98 or even Win XP. Not to say I am..... Some days it feels like I am running a punch card mainframe and some days a nice stable Linux system.
Hey, I resemble that remark! LOL James ends up with good outcome because of good forethought, design and planning. The CNC plasma cutter is the coolest, I never imagined one of those back in the 80's.
James - You are a super professional and also a great RU-vidr. I really enjoy seeing your creativity and learning as I go. I've been around lots of industrial electrical boxes, and they don't get any better than yours.
1. There's quite a bit of electrical engineering know-how going on in these "shop" videos. 2. Your use of multiple cameras is smooth and well planned/executed. After the initial somewhat overuse, you have discovered less is definitely more. Nice balance. 3. Video editing and quality continues to improve weekly! 4. The 3D mouse really makes your Fusion segments shine. That's it, I'm ordering mine now.
Agreed, James is a true professional at the this RU-vid thing. I really appreciate his content. And you def won't regret the 3d mouse. I've had one for about a year and it's worth every penny.
Thanks for the feedback. Scaling back the multicam has made shooting and editing less work, and also dramatically reduced the amount of data I have to manage, which I immediately undid by moving to 4K. :)
I like W H A T ! , shrink tubing label printer..... amazing..... I have been a follower of this channel for a while and I'm for sure picking up tips and tricks here and there. In this video I really had a wow moment when you showed the circuit board for the connectors. I have done multiple test boxes for work and home projects with similar connectors and I always bitch over all wire soldering I have to do at the end. The worse part is that I make my own circuit boards but never thought of this simple solution. This will save plenty of time on coming projects. Thanks James for educating us..
James I have written before with truly not much in value to say...Today is different.... A true diagram of componets and its fuctions with it's value and why is truly a book I would buy.... I in no way want miminize the vedo....But opening up a blue print of your project would be most valuable.... Thanks rog
As a field service tech for the last 20 years I can really appreciate the attention to detail. Properly marked wires make such a gigantic difference in troubleshooting and tracking faults. Never going to go wrong keeping everything labeled. Puts my soul at ease seeing it done even on the smaller scale that'll only you are likely to have to deal with.
As a industrial network installer your wiring and labeling soothes my OCD.... I love it! I am looking forward to seeing you new machine. Looking back in your videos you have been working on the design for quite a while and giving us a little peek along the way. Keep it up.
Just a suggestion on your panels: I noticed you used steel so painting would be great to inhibit rust. I then use my el cheapo blue laser to burn the labels on to the panel. It works great and very professional results. You employ such great choices it would sure add the finish touch. As always great content!
Jesus man, your attention to detail is something to be desired for most of us. You truly have some very well laid plans, watching everything line up beautifully on video really hits the spot.
This is why I love this channel, the quality of work and attention to detail is amazing. Custom pcb for the connectors and heat shirk labels are the top tips of the day,
A top of the line manufacturer would be hard pressed to produce a product as well finished as this. You never cease to amaze me with your technical prowess.
I know you’re a busy man but I would absolutely love it if you made some more troubleshooting electronics videos. You made one last year fixing an amplifier PCB or something like that. I have an electronics repair business, specializing in component level board repair for test equipment and other metrology related tasks. But I really enjoy how you explain things and like how you approach tasks. Would love to see more electronics content from you if you ever have the time!
Nice work and planning. I never knew there was such a thing as a heat-shrink tubing label maker. I am going to have to get one. Beautiful work ethe pcb. I love that implementation. I will copy that for my next enclosure.
There's something really therapeutic about running wires in cases like this, once you have a schematic and have the ends sorted out it is so nice to do
Perfect timing. I'm in the middle of converting my G0704 to CNC using DMM Servos and Mesa 6i25/7i76+LinuxCNC for control. The M12 panel with a PCB for routing is a great idea. Def wish I had a plasma table to do the connector panel, but I think i'll just do the ol' acetone-transfer trick to transfer a pattern and manually drill/mill out the holes. Impressive work as usual.
I had to come back and comment again. I think I figured out your new project. If it's what I'm thinking, that's going to be awesome. I think you mentioned that you wanted one in a past video. The only thing I can imagine it being with having the air is a basic Pick & Place machine. You already have the Mill & Plasma table. I don't think it would be a CNC router because you don't do much wood work. I'm looking forward to hearing if I'm correct or not. Time will tell.
There is a lot more potential for high voltage noise on the primary input wiring than you might imagine. You may have noticed that many electronic products have the power switch adjacent to the power input. Sometimes with the power button on the back and sometimes with the button on the front of the product with a strangely shaped plastic extension to the front panel button. This approach limits the volume of the product exposed to whatever might come in on the line. UL (just in case you want to list your box :-) ) has stringent requirements for isolation of line voltage components. There are also stringent requirements for "convenience outlets". While I'm sure you're not going to get a UL listing for you box, I have two recommendations: -Be sure and isolate any line voltage wiring from internal wiring. Especially logic level wiring. -Print up a plastic cover for the line voltage outlet section. Not hard to do. Good safety practice.
Impressive workmanship on the wire routing. A clean installation like that will pay you back if you ever have to troubleshoot an issue sometime in the future.
I haven't finished this series yet, and I know these labels are on the bottom, but I really hope you went back and labeled these like the original metal label on the ELS project. It was so clean and beautiful.
Very impressive.....I do this for a living and love how you take such a disciplined and professional approach to a home project. Fantastic to see this.
Great stuff James, this is progressing into something of a wonder of its own. Here my 5 cents… Just me being me and an overthinking/belt a braces bloke from the UK, I would earth/bond the panels to the mounting plate then to the enclosure and the door. Just to give any fault current a clear path rather than through screws, nuts and bolts and all be at the same potential. Think of it as another excuse to use the beautiful things that are - boot lace ferrules and insulated crimp connectors. Plus green and yellow chunky cables (2.5mm2) neatly spring coiled and routed adds a splash of even more colour and skill👌 Keep this quality production coming James 👍🏻 its top shelf stuff for my eyes 😂
Hello James, I'm a new subscriber. I wanted to let you know that your videos are amazing and very detailed. I am very glad I found your channel. I think the reason you haven't blown up is because you're missing animations. It's great to see all the details but some times adding animations is much better as us viewers can get lost in so much details. Just a suggestion. I mean no offense or in no way devalue your work!!!
I need to get heat shrink labels for my Bluetooth label printer! Snapping those sockets and then no play... Well done James! To release stress on your PCB, you could reflow the solders while the connectors are fixed to the panel...
Your timing is exceptional. I’m starting to get things laid out for a cnc control box and, like magic, you drop a video with what has to be a benchmark in control layout and wiring. Sadly, I don’t have a plasma table. But I have a few 3D printers that should have no issue making panels to accept all the connectors and such. Thank you, yet again, for delivering exactly what I need.
First time seeing the Dymo shrink tube label printer... My first proper job was a harness shop and the machines we used for that job were pretty old and expensive, they also required a computer. I always missed having that capability for my own projects and I never assumed that there would be a consumer solution at an affordable price.
not sure if you are planning on this already or not, but i highly recommend having all of the sensors coming back to the controller go through opto-isolators to keep their voltages completely isolated from the controller GPIO. In my last CNC machine I fought and fought with phantom sensor trips hours into a cut from static and noise and other things on the shared ground lines. If they can be isolated, life is easier. I'm betting you already know all this. Great video as usual!
Almost surprised you didn't use a PCB as your connector panel face too (at least for the non-high voltage) like on the els, I figured this was too intricate for the plasma. But I guess the turn around time on the plasma is much better 😁 Man I wish my hobby projects looked that professional... I proudly announced using reverse proxies and CNAME entries to give each of my diy smart home services a domain name and my colleagues laughed and said I was 10 years behind the curve. But hey, that playhouse we built is square plumb and true despite being on a slope, and it's way more sturdy than needed.
James, you can't fool us -- we _know_ that you'll paint the subpanels simply because everything else you've done is so professionally done and you won't want rusty subpanels! ;) This is a fantastic-looking panel. I wish I knew half of what you've forgotten so that my own "electrical black boxes" looked half-decent.
Nothing rusts where I live. I saw a small orange spot on a mild steel vise jaw that I left sitting in a pool of coolant once, but it wiped off with a rag.
Great work as always James. A word of warning to those considering a hand held printer that works with heat shrink tubing. One, the heat shrink tubing is way over priced and you really don't get that much. Two, the affordable printers like these (Dymo in particular) have been known to have the displays totally fail in a very short time. Mine did, so that's how I found out. Lastly, the heat shrink is categorized by *width* of the tubing as it is flattened out (that effectively being 1/2 circumference) and not diameter. This can be confusing since the more useful dimension would be diameter, but fortunately 1/2 circumference is larger than diameter.
The off brand heat shrink tubing is much less expensive and works well. I've been using this label printer for a couple of years, and it's working well. Good tip on the diameters, though. To get the diameter, double the width and divide by pi. 1/4" tubing is .159" in diameter.
@@Clough42 Mine failed in just a few years in spite of being in a environmentally controlled building, but who knows. Maybe they have changed the design or manufacturing process to correct it. As for the tubing width vs diameter was that it does come out to be an oddball number even for those of us well-versed in imperial, but I suppose it had to be done that way since the printers are primarily designed for labels of a specific width. Just because tubing has a diameter and does not convert easily from width doesn't mean they should have marketed/sold it that way. It really would have been better to just package it correctly stating diameter vs "width". No where but the Amazon page does it ever say diameter, not even on the package, just "size". Equally useful would have been extra small, small, medium, large, and extra large. You know, well-defined and universal standards ;-)
@@stevewalston7089 i agree the heat shrink sizing is inconvenient, but I can also see how it came about. For the user, the most important dimension is the width that has to be configured in the printer. Giving users two different dimensions is going to lead to confusion and a bad experience. Any corporate dev team would do exactly what they did. I would probably give the diameter also, and I'd probably pay for it in support costs.
I know everyone uses those proximity sensors (and they’re fine), but the auto home feature of the clearpaths works great, requires no cabling or adjustments, and I’ve never found the need for anything else. Now leave me alone, I have to completely re-wire my my machine ‘cuz no way it looks that clean. I am so doing that circuit board thing for my connector panel 😁
You're meticulous and precious in all the right ways! Always enjoy watching your videos. Looking forward to seeing whatever new machine you have coming!
At my job in the die shop we use M5 connectors and 10-12mm push to connect hoses all the time. I think the idea of a heat shrink label maker is a great idea, I'll be asking about getting one on Monday so thanks for the idea. We also use very similar prox sensors for detecting part blanks and cam movements in our dies. All of this is very interesting and I like seeing the thought process and implementation. Good job so far, everything is nice and tidy.
I would recommend not using a simple round hole for the M12 connectors on the metal plate. Use the version with the two flats. If the nut comes loose torque applied during connection would be transferred to the solder pins rather than into the metal mounting plate. Otherwise a nice assembly, although I would probably have used an off-the-shelf M12 breakout module which could be mounted closer to the action and used a single connection on the box.
I thought the same thing, but how often will these be removed? Not often enough that you wouldn’t notice a loose nut right away. It just adds tolerance stack issues for not much return.
Hello, I like your channel really teachfully, I noticed that you mention pneumatic connectors going inside your box in the past I build a few cnc machine and I installed my pneumatic valve same way like you and happened twice on 2 different occasions that compressor went bad and send compressor oil thru the system and oil went inside the electronic box some off the relay and controller went bad costing some money, since this happened with 2 different customers we no longer install pneumatic valve inside controll boxes, pneumatic runs outside electronic boxes. Thanks great channel continue posting.
Hi James, always a plesure to watch your videos! I‘m sure, you are aware, that Clearpath Servos have an intregrated Homing feature. The Servo moves until it is mechanically blocked on startup. I think are more precise than electrical endstops. This would save you some cables. Only caviat, you have to repower the servos to trigger homing after an error so they home again.
Good job! When you turned on power to the to test the x-limit sw. the biggest surprise should have been no smoke, flames or big bangs. Great job! looking forward to seeing everything up and running.
Hello James, I really like watching your videos , how you do stuff and explain stuff. As an electronic technician from Germany im even impressed you used WAGO connectors in one off your videos. I just have a recommendation to your Video. You said you will use normaly open Switches for the home and Limit Switches. I don't know safety standards in the US but I now german electrical Standards (VDE). NO Switches are not wire failsafe and therefore are not allowed for Limiting- , Home-, and emergency stop connection. Imagine you want to drive your machine to it's home position and the wire to one of the home Switches are broken. The machine will not notice it already reached it home / Limit position and keeps running. It can cause major damage to the machine when it trys driving out of it Limits, cause it doesn't recognise the position is already reached. That's why NC Switches are mandatory for everything that stops a machine or it's movement. It's just a failsafe feature that can save a lot of money and even a life.
Agreed. The N.O. switches came with the Avid router. I will be swapping them out with N.C. switches as soon as I can find the time to design a new PCB. The Acorn, unfortunately, requires all of the limit switches to be on the same input for the dual-drive gantry squaring, and N.C. powered proximity switches are a little harder to connect in this way.
@@Clough42 well that's bad, but maybe I have an idea, at least if the switches are powered with 12V or less. Replace the NO with NC and put an inverter (CD4069) right in front of the terminal of the arcon. Maybe make a small circuit board that you directly screw into the terminal block and connect the cables to the circuit board. Since an inverter just switch high to low ans low to high for the arcon it's still an NO connected. Not 100% failsafe but maybe a good solution without changing to much of the arcon if it only accept NO switches
@@MADxHAWK The issue isn't the polarity. The issue is that you can't connect NC switches in parallel, because one opening then doesn't do anything, and you can't connect them in series because they're powered from the same 24VDC supply. It's technically possible to connect in series if you let the output of one provide the ground reference for the next, but you're going to get glitches when reclosing, and you lose several volts of margin.
@@Clough42 oh, I see, seems I misunderstood you, sorry English is not my native language. Maybe you have a link to the schematics I can look at and maybe I can come up with an idea if you are interested.
Awesome work, James! My personal two cents: you have plenty space on your PCB, so you could use wider traces, not default 10/20/(?) mil width. I'm sure that the width you used is sufficient for currents in the switches, but wider is better in this case.
Usted nunca deja de impresionarme. Me asombra su capacidad, su cuidado a los detalles, Felicitaciones. You never fail to impress me. I am amazed at your ability, your attention to detail, Congratulations
You do beautiful work. I build controls for Nissan in Smyrna Tennessee. I like the care you take to make your panel look professional instead of homemade. I know what it takes to build a nice pannel........ LOTS of work and time.
This has been amazing to follow. I have the G0602 lathe and did your VFD and ELS projects and love it on my lathe. This is a whole new level! Excellent work as always!!!
I just know you will be painting and labelling the connector sub-panel, so you'll probably change this when you do. The RJ45 (ethernet) passthrough would look better if you reverse the direction through the panel. The nut will then be aligned giving a more pleasing aesthetic from the outside. The wonky nut triggered me gave me an itch. Looking highly professional there James.
Good idea. You're not the only one so afflicted. I was originally thinking I wanted everything removable from the inside, so it could be removed without disconnecting anything, but this is a bulkhead connector, so it could easily be flipped.
@@Clough42 it's hard to drag a bunch of tools up the mast sometimes. And our heat shrink usually didn't have labels unless it was inside a sealed cabinet.
Nice work, with Noctua low noise fan so far I can see. If the tension on the connectors is too high, you can always retouch the soldering afterwards. Just checked it after some time, if it is a problem you will find some cracks in the soldering. Again very nice work.
Though it seems like you've already thought this through and have executed it beautifully, do check out the Neutrik Ethercon and Neturik Powercon connectors. They're ubiquitous in the entertainment industry but great for industrial applications too--especially since the range of accessories like sealing gaskets, etc. is so broad.
