Looking for X-Controller Testers

I would think they want complete noobie so they can see if you can break it. If you can then they have more work to do to make it noobie proof.

Fill out the paper work and see what happens.

Dave

I agree with @DavidSohlstrom

Fill out the form @NickHomrich because part of the point of the X-Controller is to ease the pain of entry into CNC and ā€œnoobiesā€ will be helped by it. So, your opinion might matter more than you think.

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Donā€™t get me wrong I would love to test drive an X controller, but i think inventables knows that I am a guaranteed sale. So why give it to the guy who is going to buy it anyway? :stuck_out_tongue_winking_eye:

I did start to fill out the formā€¦but I realized I am not a good candidate when I had to open a new window and googled what a Chillipeppr was!

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If you havenā€™t used it yet, give it a shot! Iā€™ve started using it more or less exclusively, it works extremely well with Fusion 360 posts, after a couple of manual tweaks.

Bart, I live in the UKā€¦ would that exclude me from the programme? I would pay for my own postage if it was an issue as I am keen to be a generative member of the community (and get to test the product).

Thanks for all the interest. We had over 50 people volunteer.

We have picked the 2 users. They have been notified. In interest of privacy, I will not divulge the names, but they can speak up if they like.

A lot of good feed back is coming from the previous group of users. We hope to jump into full product very soon.

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Oh man, looks like my notification got lost in the virtual mail! :wink:

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Question: I dont know if this is a silly question, but I am new to this. People are adjusting the pots to the stepper motors on their current motion controllers. Would I have to adjust them on the X controller too? If so are they going to be easily accessible? @BartDring

We have tested those stepper motor connectors here extensively over the past 14 years. Our CNC machines stepper motor controllers in our machine shop has that same Molex type connector (except there 5 pin) and itā€™s the weakest link in the system. They gave us the most problems with intermittent connections which has scrapped out many parts over the years. They have even taken out a couple stepper driver boards because of arcing.

I had to bend the pins in the male connectors in the opposite direction from each adjoining pin to ensure a good connection and have the stepper wires restrained near the controller very good because if they get bumped slightly, they become unplugged very easy. This is the only way I could resolve this issue without changing to a different type of connector all together.

Iā€™m only making this suggestion solely based on my experience. You may want to consider changing to another type of stepper motor connector before going into production.

@NickHomrich The pots will be pre-adjusted to a good value for our popular NEMA23 motors.

You will need to remove four screws to remove the from panel. The cover then slides to expose the pots. We lengthened the e-stop cable to make this possible.

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Thatā€™s smart, I love designs that have accessibility like this built in. Shows us that the people who designed it actually use the product!

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Thatā€™s excellent, it should also provide superb access for blowing out the electronics when it becomes necessary. No matter HOW clean you are, saw dust and general room-dust fills up any box like that, just look at the inside of a PC case! Seems particularly critical on something with heat sinks.

Iā€™m certainly not going to be bothered by people knowing Iā€™m going to test one out, Iā€™ll certainly be posting experiences with it on the forums anyway! :smile:

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Good to hear! Iā€™ll be eager hear about your experience with the X Controller. Thanks in advance!

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Iā€™m really looking forward to giving it a try! Should give another kick to my X-Carve, particularly once I (probably a month or two down the road) stiffen all my axies a bit, and re-build the table to level and stiffen things up a bit more. Iā€™m particularly interested in seeing how it compares to the existing one in terms of ease-of-assembly and use.

I think the original X-Carve controller will end up on an old manual micro-mill I have, see if I can build up my own little CNC using the same general ideas. Think Iā€™ll have to order some NEMA17s from Inventables, then X-carve myself the necessary brackets and hardwareā€¦ Gonnaā€™ be awesome there too!

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Dan, I got the other test unit. I am really happy that I will have a chance to clean up my wiring and make everything look perfect with the new X-Controller.

I was thinking the same thing about putting my old controller on a micromill.

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Awesome! Weā€™re going to have to compare notes as we go along, it looks like itā€™ll be a fairly easy change-out. Only thing I see that will take any time at all is that Iā€™ll have to extend the second X-axis stepper wire so it can run through the drag chain with the rest, since they all no longer run through a single wire. The rest looks more or less plug-and-go! Iā€™m really looking forward to having an easy access to the touch plate attachment!

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@DanBrown we sent some extra stepper wire to all pilot testers and some, including these 2 pilot units, got Z touch disks.

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Bart, I was just about to write a post about how horrible my $9 touch probe turned out to be. The main problem with the cheap one I got is that it is very light. So light that the weight of the wire moves it around. So as soon as I set it on the surface and let go of it to start the bit down it moves. So I need to keep one hand on it all the time.

I had just convinced myself that I was going to need to buy a new one.

Hey, awesome, thatā€™ll save me digging out the coil Iā€™ve got left from before. I am a firm believer in having plenty of wire, so I went out and picked up an extra 20 feet of it from Home Depot. Itā€™s somewhere in the shop spare parts.

Itā€™ll be fun to work with a proper touch disk, mine was fairly light as well. I solved that by epoxying it to a piece of steel plate, measuring the thickness of the combination with my micrometers, and writing it on the face with a sharpie. :smile: Not high-tech, but it worked! I really like the idea of just having a proper external connection for it, though. MUCH more professional.

That is what I am looking forward to also. Having a dedicated (and labeled) screw connector for each accessory will be such a huge improvement over my rats nest of wiring.

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