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There were a few unlabelled ports on the stepper board - perhaps for additional axes and endstops? The e-stop button is connected to the parallel port, and won’t stop the steppers or the spindle for you. There’s two other boards - one which seems to be the power supply and spindle driver, and another with three TB6560s and a substantial heatsink. Markings suggest it’s a 3:20 unit stepping 220v down to 36vac. There’s a huge transformer right behind the e-stop button, and it probably weighs a couple kilos. The control box is bloody heavy, and opening it up - which requires removing a literal dozen chincy wood screws holding the two-piece sheet metal box together - reveals why. I’ve been using Fusion360 to generate toolpaths, and used bCNC as a sender, although it seems like the ‘b’ stands for buggy - it’s crashed half a dozen times mid-cut. The planet-CNC controller’s rated for 25khz stepping, while GRBL is open source and manages 30.
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Instead, I flashed GRBL onto a spare Arduino and hooked it up to the parallel port (pins 2-7 are step/dir for x, y, z respectively), and it moved. It is possible to pay £70 for a licence for the USB-CNC software that runs the motion controller, but I wouldn’t suggest it. There may have been an authentic licence for it on the CD, but I doubt it. The control box only has a parallel port, and it came with a USB motion controller - which turned out to be a planet-cnc Mk1 clone.
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The CDs which I expect held the usual dodgy copy of Mach3 had been packed on top of the steppers in a carton with the control box and the tools, and they were cracked from being crushed against the sharp edges. There was a box of tools, a handful of bits (all HSS a ⅛ flat end mill, a ¼ ball end mill, and a bunch of little engraving bits). It took about a week to arrive, and it came mostly assembled in a styrofoam casket - the only thing to do was to screw on the steppers.
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In the UK right now, the machine costs about £300 from a number of Amazon and eBay sellers, and they all seem to ship from Germany. I realise that the spindle’s anaemic at 200w, that the tooling will be limited by the ER11 collet, and that while it looks pretty solid it isn’t going to be cutting inconel any time soon. I ummed and aaahd about it, but it looked like a lot more machine than the aluminium extrusion based 3018s and down, and most of what the more expensive small CNCs offered (3040 and up) but for much less.
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Full disclosure: I dabble in 3d printing, but I’ve never set foot in a workshop, and I’m only an engineer by vocation and not by education or career.