Greetings. I bought a spindle kit that came with a controller that for controlling the speed of the spindle one can either use the provided potentiometer for manual control or a pair of pins that have 0-10vdc and are labeled as MACH3 inputs.
It is difficult to tell of I am supposed to provide a 0-10 PWM signal or a 0-10vdc analog voltage. I do not have a MACH3 board, but I understand that its spindle output is PWM. Can anyone confirm this? Thanks.
Spindle kit on Amazon
Larry
Might the pwm signal be connected to the on/off connections…
The first two connectors are 0-10V, the next three are the potentiometer, the rest power the controller or are the 0-110VDC to the spindle. The diagram says that the 0-10V is input from a MACH3 board. I don’t have a MACH3 board and have no way to “see” what it is actually putting out. My guess is that it is wanting pure DC. So, I ordered a PWM to DC converter to get from the 0-5v PWM signal to 0-10VDC for the controller. But I don’t know, and don;t need another brick in the shop.
I’m fairly certain that the controller wants a an analog 0 to 10 volt control signal. If you have a 0-5 PWM, then you will need a converter. It’s possible that the controller could be designed to handle a 10 volt analog or a 10 volt PWM on the same input, but I see nothing to indicate that the controller supports PWM. In any case, a 5 volt PWM signal will almost certainly not give you more than half the rated max RPM.
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Those were my thoughts as well. I already bought a little pcb that is a PWM to DC that will handle the 5V PWM output and give me a 0-10VDC in trade. So, I am ready to do that. I was just trying to find out if anybody had used the MACH3 spindle controller and knew for sure. I was apprehensive with proceeding, but I am going to this evening. Thanks for the input.
I haven’t answered because I don’t have the exact hardware, but the normal way of getting the 0–10V control signal is with PWM; a capacitor filters it and at least some of the spindle controllers have such a filter.
This is what I bought:
PWM to Voltage Module 0%-100 PWM to 0-10V Voltage Signal Converter On Amazon.
Will find out tonite if this is what is needed. Thanks guys.
As Michael said it’s very likely to require an analog signal and even more likely since there’s a POT(variable resistor) already setup on the input. I expect if you measured across the red and black wires of the POT you’d read 10V and the center/yellow/wiper wire goes from 0-10V as it wipes from one end of the resistor to the other.
Looks like that board will do the trick for you although I didn’t see where you mention what board you were trying to interface the Spindle control to.
I bought the board because I dabble with Arduinos and Raspberry PIs. I was trying to find out if anyone had used the MACH 3 before and knew what it wanted. The Potentiometer is on its own three pins of the spindle controller (that has not identifying marks). There is a pair of pins to the left of the potentiometer that are just marked 0-10V over marks for + and -. I didn’t make to the shop tonite. Company. Will post back.
Hey Dougl, I decided on a Smoothieboard v2 for the controller. Still reading up on it, so not comfortable testing yet. Will test with Arduino UNO tomorrow. I hope. Life keeps getting in the way.