{"id":500,"date":"2011-04-29T19:46:25","date_gmt":"2011-04-30T02:46:25","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.built-to-spec.com\/blog\/?p=500"},"modified":"2011-04-29T19:51:31","modified_gmt":"2011-04-30T02:51:31","slug":"r3-initial-electronics-progress","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.built-to-spec.com\/blog\/2011\/04\/29\/r3-initial-electronics-progress\/","title":{"rendered":"R3 Initial Electronics Progress"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><a href=\"http:\/\/www.built-to-spec.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2011\/04\/lpt_adapter.png\"><img loading=\"lazy\" class=\"aligncenter size-medium wp-image-501\" title=\"lpt_adapter\" src=\"http:\/\/www.built-to-spec.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2011\/04\/lpt_adapter-300x257.png\" alt=\"\" width=\"300\" height=\"257\" srcset=\"http:\/\/www.built-to-spec.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2011\/04\/lpt_adapter-300x257.png 300w, http:\/\/www.built-to-spec.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2011\/04\/lpt_adapter.png 596w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 300px) 100vw, 300px\" \/><\/a><\/p>\n<p>I haven't gotten much done on the hardware side of things lately, but I've been busy with the electronics of the R3 platform I'm working on.\u00a0 Above is the first draft of the parallel port adapter that will be used for the first round of machines.\u00a0 This board allows a PC running Mach3, EMC2, or any other G-Code interpreter with a parallel port driver to control up to 4 RepRap\/Makerbot stepper motor drivers and has separate inputs for X, Y, and Z axis home, emergency stop, and limit switches, as well as a few additional outputs and it exposes the enable functionality of the stepper motor drivers, allowing you to disable all stepper drivers if needed.\u00a0 I'm planning on using Mach3 for the initial prototypes and then moving to a microcontroller based G-Code interpreter (possibly based on <noindex><a rel=\"nofollow\" title=\"GRBL G-Code Interpreter\" href=\"http:\/\/dank.bengler.no\/-\/page\/show\/5470_grbl?ref=mst\" target=\"_blank\">GRBL<\/a><\/noindex>) once development is further along.<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"http:\/\/www.built-to-spec.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2011\/04\/mech_endstop.png\"><br \/>\n<\/a><a href=\"http:\/\/www.built-to-spec.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2011\/04\/mech_endstop1.png\"><img loading=\"lazy\" class=\"aligncenter size-full wp-image-510\" title=\"mech_endstop\" src=\"http:\/\/www.built-to-spec.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2011\/04\/mech_endstop1.png\" alt=\"\" width=\"151\" height=\"200\" \/><\/a><\/p>\n<p>Other than the main PC breakout board, I've also designed boards for mechanical end stops (seen above) and a stepper signal splitter board (seen below) that will allow two stepper drivers to be controlled by the same signals, allowing for some interesting mechanical drive options.<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"http:\/\/www.built-to-spec.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2011\/04\/splitter.png\"><img loading=\"lazy\" class=\"aligncenter size-full wp-image-505\" title=\"splitter\" src=\"http:\/\/www.built-to-spec.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2011\/04\/splitter.png\" alt=\"\" width=\"121\" height=\"238\" \/><\/a><\/p>\n<p>While designing these boards, I tried to keep them single sided if possible, keep the required part counts low, and use big parts where applicable to make them easy to construct.\u00a0 The idea is to make them easy to \"bootstrap\" via traditional DIY PCB etching methods and easy to mill once I've got a machine up and running.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>I haven't gotten much done on the hardware side of things lately, but I've been busy with the electronics of the R3 platform I'm working on.\u00a0 Above is the first draft of the parallel port adapter that will be used for the first round of machines.\u00a0 This board allows a PC running Mach3, EMC2, or [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[5],"tags":[24,23,8,41,42],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.built-to-spec.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/500"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.built-to-spec.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.built-to-spec.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.built-to-spec.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.built-to-spec.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=500"}],"version-history":[{"count":6,"href":"http:\/\/www.built-to-spec.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/500\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":511,"href":"http:\/\/www.built-to-spec.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/500\/revisions\/511"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.built-to-spec.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=500"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.built-to-spec.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=500"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.built-to-spec.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=500"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}