Mark you did an awsome job with this video as always. Thank you for showing to your viewers my little project! Very exciting to see all the feedback and interest in it! Thank you Mark and thank you guys all for watching and commenting! ❤
100% interested but would like to know how soon the ELS UI would be available?;) And yeah, a table with common thread pitches sounds like a killer idea and then maybe a slider for feeds?
This kind of project is high on my list, and I've about got a friend to build one with me. It looks like the .cpl file (component placement) is missing from the PCB design repo though.
Holy shit, this is fantastic! It’s like a real machinist actually designed a DRO to easily interface w/ ALL the values and options any regular guy would kill to have 😇. You often see engineers who do manual machining and electronic builders who code but to see the fusion of all 4 is like hitting the jackpot. If CNC machining is the bastard child of these 2 types this guy is the legitimate child who got the best of everything. It may be a little premature, but I would dare to venture that this could be even better than the Electronic Lead Screw that James @ Clough42 produces. Don’t get me wrong for the price and functionality what James created is impressive so something requiring $100’s of dollars more should provide equivalently better features but when everything gets ironed out it will have achieved all that and a bag of chips. AWESOME PROJECT, thanks for allowing all your hard work to be showcased and RotarySMP for bringing it to light on the channel.
I for one have James’ ELS installed on my little 1950’s Craftsman 6” lathe and love it. I decided to do a little repurposing of his ELS to drive the X-axis off the spindle on my Enco mill-drill to allow cutter tooth loading to be easy to adjust. But watching this video got me thinking about other options such as Y-to-X axis or Z-to-X axis synchronous motion too. There are so many possibilities! If I had not already made the investment in a 3-axis DRO for this mill you can better believe I’d be building one of Stefano’s devices because it is genius!
Really cool to see such a clean, complete project that encompasses so many sub-disciplines! Sometimes you can start a project like this and figure out the one part that you are good at, then get stuck on the parts outside your specialty, so this is a good example (and motivation)!
I once bodged up the Boley with a single axis LinuxCNC setup to cut the 3.5mm pitch threads for it's own chuck adapters. This is way more compact and sensible.
Have you used JCLPCB before? Basically you just upload the zip file of the gerber files and receive the PCB's in the mail a couple of weeks later. Incredibly good price/quality.
I remember cutting a clock gear with my Dad, I was 10 or 12 at the time, there were a lot of teeth to cut and we were close to finishing. A good rhythm had been established; I'd control the table and Dad indexed the dividing head, I would send the table right the left and Dad would rotate the dividing head two turns plus the quadrant division but he was supposed to wait until I'd sent the table back. When I realised, it was too late, so I just turned to walk out the door, I didn't get far before hearing the loudest and most eloquently constructed chain of expletives that my young ears had ever encountered. Had we had your DRO and a stepping rotary table the gear would have been perfect.
Just an idea from non-machinist - since you know maximum speed of stepper, you might count up maximum speed of axis being followed and show that information somewhere. Could be just value, some linear indicator or just colorful indicator light - for example orange shows up when you run at 75% of speed, red at 95% speed and so on.
You’re anticipating my thoughts exactly! If you look at the display main page there are some debug values on the top ribbon, one of them is for current follower a is speed. This will become a warning sound and lamp/visual indicator eventually. It’s very useful to know how close you are to the servo axis speed limit
@@RotarySMP I am not a machinist yet but would love to get there one day. Looking at the handy velocity calculator I thought it would be nice to have a bar-graph display that one could follow from the corner of the eye while hand feeding and keeping the bar-graph in the middle, the actual number of less important and very hard to parse small text quickly when looking away. The bar could have a +-log scale with a narrow waist in the middle so it is easy to see which side of the sweet spot the velocity is. You just need to set the mid scale value and simply know that left or right is too fast or too slow. Beautiful design execution.
Ironically enough, I was thinking about a very similar idea recently. I have a horizontal milling machine I would like to use to cut helical gears, but the lead attachment for these machines is impossible to find. I thought about using a rotary encoder on the lead screw, but backlash in the screw on this 80 year old machine would make it challenging to get good results. I thought if I could decode the pulses from a linear scale, it would be much more reliable to calculate the table travel. Using a stepper motor to drive the dividing head. But also using a rotary encoder on dividing head to further eliminate any effects that backlash in the dividing head would have. Then 2 weeks later, I see this video. This is EVEN BETTER than what I was even thinking! I am definitely interested in doing something like this for my horizontal mill!
My little homemade lathe is performing pretty damn well now that I have sorted out most of the issues it had and even though I have power feeds for everything, the one thing it won't do is cut single-point threads and there are times I wish it could. But sadly, electronics does my head in and even though I used to program CNC lathes and I have since been building websites, the electronics side of it truly baffles me. 😒 That is a truly nice little bit of kit he has designed. 👍
Fired up demo Proteus to have a look, very nice work. Looking forward to the KiCad release mentioned, I'd very much like to build this but with that extra axis with a simple ramping function on it for cutting tapers.
On a manual lathe you only need one driver axis to cut a taper. If you set it up with the X axis doing in infeed proportional to the Z axis travel, as you move Z with the saddle, X will cut the taper. But the more typical use would be to drive Z for thread cutting. The more you add features to an ELS system, the less gap to a full CNC machine.
This is a great project. The hardware and UI choices have made it a very flexible platform that someone like me with no current limited coding skills could modify it for all kinds of interesting custom projects with reasonably small code overhead.
Stefano reached out to me a while back about this, I said I was interested but not in a big hurry (because projects). But see my this I might need to move it up my project list.
Hey Stefano, I am a Deckel user but have no intention in messing with thst heavy and expensive spiral milling attachment. Stemming from that, I have speced EXACTLY what you have built, only difference is that I went no further than the specs. Very very well done!!!
Hi, just an idea but one that I think would be quite valuable. On higher end and toolroom machines for threading there is often an automatic mechanism for disengaging the leadscrew/feed when turning to a shoulder or threading to a shoulder. It takes a lot of the stress out of threading short or fine sections, or ID threading. I can think of a number of ways this could be implemented ranging from limit switches/hall sensors to just setting a Z dimension.
@@RotarySMP Oh yes, definitely need an estop (and a couple of hand wheels). I was loosely thinking using Stephano's box for double duty LinuxCNC on the lathe. The physical concept is 2 axis replacement for the compound slide as a 150x100 CNC 'head'.
I could see on a lathe 3 motors with a selector switch, lead screw, compound, and tail stock. For electronic lead screw functions. The compound because I often find it clumsy to get a smooth feed with my hands or to keep my hands away from the chuck at some angles. Tail stock for drilling and synchronized tapping.
Actually if you want to control one motor at the time, we can already implement this feature with the current hardware, i have provisioned a few extra optional outputs that can be used for motor selection. It would still require some sw work of course but nothing impossible. I like the idea, thanks for the feedback 🙏
wow, very nice! im thinking the name of the game here is "profiles". by that i mean the ability to save profiles for using the device in different machines. "lathe2axis" "lathe2axis+ELS", "mill", "mil-rotary", etc. so you can create your "ecosystem" of scales on your machines and can just use the module on all of them just by loading a profile. huge money save on the hobby shop.
daaamn. wireless connections are rather slow for this but you could even just have the module connect wirelessly to each machine. the one DRO to rule them all lol
Hi Tobias, i definitely want to implement profiles, right now the connection is direct and i think it should stay that way, at least with the raspberry, the current setup refreshes the screen around 60 times per second and there is virtually no delay between your movements and the value displayed. I think making it remote could add latency or unpredictable refresh rates. Yet it could be done. Perhaps one day we’ll give it a try, some sort of equipment mesh network maybe…
@@stefanobertelli2650yeah i know. a real shame that wireless connection from the machine to the DRO module would add latency. can't think of a system that would do the trick without adding so much cost it wouldn't go with the whole "hobby shop save money". so i get that its a no go for now. the profiles tho, thats a no brainer aint it? hahahaha.
Amazing i will be building at least 2 of these for my shop. Best of all i have the scales, pis and screens on the shelf from other projects i wanted to do whete the components suddenly became unavailable! Thank you!
@@RotarySMP Will do at the moment I'm waiting for work space but I'd like to video that being built too as it's another massive project with it's own issues. Once done I will have 2 mills to play with a Schaublin 13 and a Christen, one of them I'm going to convert to CNC (the Christen). The S13 had a 2 axis acu-rite on it at the moment but I want to move that to my Chipmaster and put a 3 axis on it. If I had the space at the moment I'd be having a great time but as it is I have a full double garage and no room to even work with the machines. I may also add one to the eagle surface grinder I have depending how all this goes! Again this is a great project I have so much kit I can already use with it will hopefully work out quite cost effective.
@@RotarySMP honestly mister "this old" has a lot to answer for for the S13. My grandfather was an engineer and when he died I realised I should have learnt more from him and remembered his "need a tool make a tool" attitude. When an S13 came up a few years ago and my wife who knew I was looking for one said she would buy it for me as a gift, I jumped at it! Other than when I picked it up I haven't used it and that was all the way back in 2020. I need an inverter and the space to use it now. Being picking I've picked up quite a bit of old English and Swiss metal, some will need work to get it up and back to it's glory days. The Chipmaster is at component level waiting for resurrection after a few bits being replaced, a clean and paint. The Chrisen I had no intention of buying, it was 1/10 the cost of the S13, the photos on eBay looked pretty bad, I was thinking of pulling the bed and using it as a second fixed unit for the S13 (they are the same basic design and both use 30int tooling). When I got to see it though it was basically new. It, like all my tools came from an engineer who had it at home and was at the age where they didn't want to use it any more. So I arranged for the chap who had it to deliver it for me (at about the same cost as the mill) and she is now also sat in the incredibly crowded garage! We have about 1/2 acre of land so the plan is to build a purpose built workshop for me with a craft area for my 2 girls, wife and when she visits mum. The cost is crazy because it's in the UK and I want to make sure it's a real brick building that has the same style as the house rather than an eye saw. 6 years of saving so far with any luck after a small (please stick market improve - other wise it will be a large) re-mortgage we should be able to break ground in 2 years. The whole build is actually really stressful and I'm tempted to do videos on it for RU-vid when it starts in case it's helpful in putting others off doing the same thing. :-)
I was going to ask what GUI toolkit was being used, but then you mentioned it's opensource, and it took me 5 seconds to see it's Kivy - I looked at Kivy a few years ago for a project, and went with PyQT instead - the Kivy interface looks really slick!
@@RotarySMP My project needed a lot of data table views (like a custom spreadsheet), and combined tree / table views. I didn't see a lot of support for that sort of data-driven UI in Kivy, and PyQT has quite good support for that sort of thing. But that Kivy interface for something simpler looks really sharp!
Absolutely brilliant would love to build one for my Colchester Master but I need to research how i get the boards made i was ok when i used to etch them myself but this method of getting boards made is new to me oh well another learning curve keep up the good work
It is really easy. In the PCB repository, there is the zip file with the gerber files. You just upload that whole zip file to the JCLPCB.com web interface. I am not electronics guy, but did this on another project a couple of years ago, and was shocked how easy, cheap and perfect those online PCB venders are.
This is awesome Stefano! I have been thinking of doing an electronic lead screw conversion on a Chinese minilathe i inherited. And I also wanted a DRO. So I thought why not combine the two. I thought that was a logical idea, but I haven't seen anyone doing that before, and thought that I would have to figure it out myself. I'm definitely going to give this solution a try. This basically creates a servo motor controll. Could I use a universal motor with a gear reduction stage instead of a stepper? That would be much cheaper, and would have a lot of torque.
You need a motor driver with step/dir input. Universal motors are not precise positioning devices. A Nema 23 stepper + driver is only about $50 together.
Does it have support for tool offsets/libraries? One of the features I use most on my DRO is the 1/2 or center function. Does it have that functionality? It would be great if it had some basic I/O support. For instance, assign an input to zero an axis when it goes high (edge finder/touch probe input) or set one pin high when an axis is approaching zero then another pin high when it gets to zero. Another use would be setting pins high if an axis exceeded a certain position (soft over-travel limits for example). Fantastic work! I'll definitely put a system together at some point. I'm in the middle of repairing my Monarch 10ee that was destroyed when my brother's garage burnt to the ground. I've adapted a Mitsubishi AC servo motor to drive the spindle. I plan on getting another servo drive/motor to drive the leadscrew to allow me to perform metric threading. This system looks like it would be ideal for driving the system.
I also voted for the 1/2 function, which is a basic one for DRO's. Stefano added this to his list for the next software load. I have forwarded your comment to him.
I ordered all the components and boards. I will be building one(well, two, and hopefully one of them works;)). I am definitely stretching my skillset to do so, but i am super excited. I noticed that you said motor selection is possible, but i was curious if it would be feasable to integrate a second motor driver that works simultaneously with the current one so that you could us a pulse generator for emulating something like a compound slide while still retaining your crossslide movement independently from your Z movement. This would make turning something like a taper more traditional. You could sell it as a crossslide emulator as well as an electric leadscrew. It would suit the current solid toolpost trend, even if the boards components were doubled( esenttually two of your rotary controllers just hooked up to the same UI). So do think the PI could be made to support multiple controler boards for this kind of scaling? Obviously, some modifications would need to be made to the controlboards so that they have coms between them, but that should be pretty simple, worst case just having the slaved board emulate an incoder to the master. Anyway, kind of getting close to a CNC here, but i feel like including hardware functionality to allow the slaving of a second controler should be pretty easy and allow for some awesome extra functionality by simply making more boards. Anyway, thank you for sharing this, and if i manage to get one of these boards SMDs soldered without destroying five boards, I would definitely love to get involved in adding features/expanding functionality. I have lots of ideas, and am super excited to have a dro/everything. Quick last thing, will it be easy to add typical DRO fuctionality like a 1/2 button? How about stored tool offsets? ( just saw the 1/2 button was answered in another comment! Thanks!) Thanks Again!
@RotarySMP I am looking into it. I'm mot good with programming. But have a friend, that is so if I can get him to get on board I will could use it on my surface grinder and milling machine
Very cool! Thanks for sharing! I'd use it just for the rotary table encoder UI! Shocking that they can't even engrave the scale properly that some unsuspecting machinist (like me) would put trust in.
I was wondering whether the scale is engraverd wrong, or the worm and pinion are poorly machined? I have a similar rotary table, and have trusted the scale. 😰
Well done. Love it. The only thing that I would suggest to be able to do, is ability to put formulas like multiplication and division in all fields, and it computes the result. Should be easy. The next step would be semi closed loop, for driven axis. Like in this rotary table case, it looks like it is doing open loop, which should be ok, if you go slow or verify setup, but might be want to also read actual position back, in case of backlash or some mistake.
All very true and very much planned for execution. When it comes to the closed loop control i would use the stepperonline servos which have step skip protection. My example was very poor that motor is like 4x undersized. I was actually impressed it even worked but i would never use that setup for real machining. Too small of a motor
@@RotarySMP It will compensate for the loss of motion, which will not be suitable for synchronous motion but it will keep the relationship correct if the motor stalls. I think it can also be configured to raise an alarm flag. Next kit i put together i'm planning to use a closed loop stepperonline drive so i can properly test it
@@stefanobertelli2650 Good idea. I always wondered why closed loop steppers are so popular. For not much more money, the three phase servos are pretty nice, and need not transformers or DC.
This one is going on my list. Proteus is expensive but a nice piece of software. About two years ago Labcenter had some issues with the STM32s, I hope they fixed all the problems, they fixed some I reported but not everything, mostly debug support related stuff. This looks like a great piece of kit, and cheap for what it can do. It would be great to have more axes incorporated in the future, so one can turn its manual machines into a semi-automated-multiple axis machine. But just having the chance to get an electronic leadscrew makes for a very enticing project to make.
@@RotarySMPthe first one might have to go around a bit as I would like to run it on the mill a bit first then move it on to the lathe then the rest on my tools
@@LCalleja I am tempted. For the Boley I already made up a Nema 34 motor mount and pulleys to drive the leads screw, and put in an encoder. I used a one axis LinuxCNC to thread spindle nose adapters. But then again, I really want to sell the Boley and free up some space.
HOLY MACKEREL. @stefanobertelli2650, you are amazing for several reasons, but these two are among the chief ones: 1 - you've open-sourced this. You did not have to, but you did. It's genuinely an enormous contribution. Lesser people might have chosen to keep this project under more restrictive licensing terms. 2 - This is an elegant solution - clearly from this video, and also from looking over your repositories. I am in awe of both your skill and your immense generosity.
This is a really nice piece of kit! I'm wondering if this, or some parts of it, could be used for the modifications I want to make to a mandrel tube bender I have, the runs a very old school style of automation..
@@RotarySMP yeah, kind of. It has hydraulics for the bending actuation, 2 separate hydraulic actuators for clamping the tube, one against the bending die and one for pressure die. And it also has hydraulic retraction of the mandrel. Currently it doesn't have a system for controlling the rotation around the tube axis, but that's something I'd like to add. It uses a motor controlled, 10 position, end stop to control the bending angle, and the control panel doesn't fully work for that system. I haven't been able to fully figure out how the control system works, the bending cycle is pretty much automatic but I'm not sure if it's electric or mechanical control for that part.
@@KallePihlajasaari Well, kind of, it's branded with a name of a Swedish company (don't remember it right now, I'll have to check later), but they seem to be more an industrial supplier rather than a machine manufacturer. There's also a sticker on the control panel that says Cantu Italia or something like that. But there isn't a single model name/number or anything like that, as far as we've seen. It's a pretty big machine, ~4,5m long and ~1100kg.
What would be great is a kit to replace an existing DRO.My lathe has a 2-axis CRO, but really new scales. If I could replace that head & add a stepper to the compound, I could do a lot of things.
Most encoders are TTL output, and are easily readable. Some older ones (like the Heidenhein scales in my MAHO mill) output a 11µA sinus wave. There are also some older Phillips scales out there with some weird signal. You would need to work out what your encoder outputs.
Very cool! Is there a reason why the Z measurements always end in .005 or 0.000 with the glass scale demo? They don't seem to deviate once initialised.
This is because Stefano used a scale with 5µm resolution in this demo. If he used a scale with 1µm resolution, then you would see it in that last digit.
I am more on the full CNC end of this spectrum. However if I do replace the Boley and Minilathe with some other manual lathe, I would certainly install one.
Looks good, but I am still going to attempt a fully mechanical end mill/tool grinder/maker. More reliable than an electronic system in the end. Will be tricky to make, but I think it will be worth it!
The Bambu lab is super sexy and fast if you aren't a Heather. Otherwise, it's an overpriced Air Fryer for all the Heather's and I would totally recommend you buy it for the kitchen. However, I recommend you store it in your husband's workshop to encourage his culinary skills 🤣
Hi, I just ordered the PCB and I am very excited to start the build, the only thing I could not find is the BOM for the power board (power hat). Sorry to bother you guys with this, but for the life of me I could not find it.
I had to download the trial of proteon to get it. There were a few weird things once I reviewed everything thought, such as the coil and the buck's footprint. I had to do some substitutions, but I'm no expert, so once I know I picked the right parts I can upload a US parts list.
This is interesting. Once the "feature creep" sets in; a full CNC will also do the trick 🙂. The typical user who could put this to good use is probably not able to follow through with it as a diy project. I think it is a difficult balance between easy and complicated,
Great point! That is always the issue, and the reason I tend to go straight to LinuxCNC. But there is a strong demand for DRO's, and adding the ELS directly into the DRO is a pretty cool case.
If this isn’t already implemented, some sort of indication if your sync axis is getting near to the acceleration and velocity limit of your follow axis would be helpful so you know when you may be loosing sync momentarily due to digital limits. Similar, if you don’t already have an encoder on the follow axis, adding and counting that and indicating the desire vs actual position error would let you know if you’re overloading the axis physically.
If you look at that string of digits across that top of the display, those are indications of exactly those parameters. I am sure Stefano will comment on this.
@@RotarySMP excellent! I’ll rewatch and zoom in on the screen, I didn’t catch that the first time. Thanks! Very impressive design Stefano has put together.
@@RotarySMP Hear me out though; if you're new and understand the concept of feeds and speeds but not the implementation, it could be pretty handy. Think if it as a visual analogue of a metronome.
You could use the WS2812 style individually addressable RGB LEDs that you can get in a 60 LED ring that's normally used for making clocks with the ESP32. have seven blue LEDs go around the ring as fast as you should be going, three "black" (off) LEDs mark your actual speed, and the rest of the ring is illuminated green when you're spot on, fading to a more intense red the slower you are/white the faster you are relative to how fast you should be. I could maybe make a demo if you want.
I've seen the TouchDRO project and it's a very interesting approach. My solution includes the axis control which you won't get from TouchDRO, I've never used one and i'd like to see how it works in real life!
@@RotarySMP Of course, adn it's big "bonus". I realy like concept of "almost DIY" DRO, an beleve that both are in this category. On the other hand, there is lot fo people that do not need ELS, just DRO, and there is always "ease of use" factor, that depend primary on the software. So.. if there is comparison people can decide according to what they need, price, features, etc.
This is a very exciting project but looks like it would take months to complete. I was about to order parts and put the Clough42 electronic lead screw controller on my lathe but I was thinking it could be so much more. This is a much better system and can be expanded to do lots of cool things. Apart from this video and Hackaday there isn't much information on the internet.I don't mind ordering PC boards and assembling myself if most of the bugs are worked out, but I can't tell if this is ready for prime time or not. Are there any other instructional videos? Has anyone else built this and got it working on a lathe. I really like the idea of one processor dedicated to the "hard real time" task of managing encoder pulses.
Axis is singular. Axes are plural. Axeee is neither, really awkward and really really pushes my pedant buttons! Have a comment and a like for your otherwise excellent videos. All hail the algorithm 🎉
That is what happens when you spend nearly 30 years speaking another language. A few things get screwed up when you speak your native language. Axee is one of them for me. Sorry about that.
You need to match motors to their load, so no general recommendation can be made. I did a video on that: ru-vid.com/video/%D0%B2%D0%B8%D0%B4%D0%B5%D0%BE-Ro05-y_WenE.html
very neat, now i wish i knew how to order the board from JLPCB or whoever.... that would make a good video series for someone as in building one of these... off i go to search for how...
Mike, it is way easier than you could believe. Step one - download "Rotary Controller V1.2 - CADCAM.ZIP" from github.com/bartei/rotary-controller-pcb Step two - Open JLCPCB.COM Step three - one first page, click on "add gerber files" box. Step four - upload the zip file you just downloaded. Wait a bit, and then order 5 finished boards for $2. They will arrive in your mail box. Repeat for the hat PCB. Order the parts from the Bills of materials. Solder, connect, power up, flash the µC, and print the case. Done.
@@RotarySMP thanks… I’m still stuck in the wire wrap days, 3000 wire wraps to make prototype computer in mid 80’s… guess I need to catch up and get rid of the gallon jug of etch in crawl space and the resit pens…. And just farm out making boards… I still have the 3000 wire wrap computer prototype… series 32000 form national semi…
Start by opening JCLPCB, follow the prompts and upload the zip file from Stefano's PCB repository above. It is really cheap, easy and you get awsome quality boards. Order the parts in the BOM from Mouser/RS etc, and solder it all together.
I have the ability to assemble a board like that and I am willing to contribute in minor ways. Is there an email list or something I can join for this project?
I passed your comment on to Stefano. That would be really helpful if you could assemble some boards. That seems like the bottleneck right now. Probably best to contact him directly via instagram.
@@RotarySMP Glad to hear it. I just think there may be an opportunity for collaboration. Especially on getting something that can be sold. Not everyone who does machining knows how to order and solder a PCB.
Guys, watch out, the Power Hat gerber is not good! I got some boards made without reviewing the Gerber(like an idiot) and the bridge rectifier is not connected to anything, and the silkscreen doesn't match the Proteus file. Needs some work. Once i get mine figured out, I can send it to you Stefano, if you dont have a good copy to upload already.
Easy to get lost in the ELS rabbit hole, I'm a good example 😂. Raspberry Pi is an overkill I reckon, even the cortex m4s have enough grunt to handle 3 axis synchronised movements.
from the looks of it their MCU controls the synchronised motion, the Raspberry Pi handles the UI and sends commands to the MCU. This also makes sense as Raspberry Pi is not super great for real time, especially if you have a heavy UI like that on it. And while you could put the UI on an MCU, it's process intensive, so could make the control of synchronised motion tricky, and also UI takes a lot longer to develop and design on an MCU rather then a Pi, where you can be a lot more liberal with computing power and memory.
@@DUIofPhysics if you need an ui and synchronized buffer of just open loop stepper step signals then theres lots of off the shelf stuff for that from 3d printers. Its rather common there too though to use a raspberry for user interface, but for cost reasons running a simple ui from the same mcu is possible(the firmwares have had a lot of work to put into them). Some use ui boards that have their own hidden mcu's though and just take paint commands and tell the inputs, but not all. Edit: nowadays its not that complicated to run some pi boards realtime bare metal though as well, people use them as rgb to hdmi converters and such
I guess there are a lot of different solutions to these problems, but I really like how Stefano has combined really solid real time performance, with an easy to customise UI.
he said you dont need 4 axis on a lathe well i can easily see in my needs that i could use 5 axis on a lathe no problem (spindle. X axis. Z axis . tool post mount distance movement and tool post angle. since i do a lot of work where i need to move that back and forth and to diffrent angels and back to zero so that would be super handy )
RS485 is a 3 wire interface, without common earth can generate problems. With yours common source of power all should be ok but in general rs485 needs its own ground.
it's not a 3-wire interface. you only get problems if the grounds are hardstuck at a certain potential difference and if that exceeds the common mode voltage limit of the transceivers
@@gorak9000 Wikipedia citation: "In addition to the A and B connections, an optional, third connection may be present (the TIA standard requires the presence of a common return path between all circuit grounds along the balanced line for proper operation)[29] called SC, G or reference, the common signal reference ground used by the receiver to measure the A and B voltages. This connection may be used to limit the common-mode signal that can be impressed on the receiver inputs. The allowable common-mode voltage is in the range −7 V to +12 V, i.e. ±7 V on top of the 0-5 V signal range. Failure to stay within this range will result in, at best, signal corruption, and, at worst, damage to connected devices."
You are correct, any industrial application that uses RS485 carries the ground as shielding for the communication cable. The ground potential is the same as the supply is the same in this example. If the DRO board is to be installed on a remoted location, away from the Raspberry hat, then a common shielding ground between the two locations would be required as is standard practice for any industrial control bus. Thanks for your feedback!