Looking for X-Controller Testers

Hear hear!

Looking forward to hear your experiences with the new controller!

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Congratulations to Allen and Dan. Wow, what a great company. Looking forward to their input. Maybe start a new thread we can all follow.

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Very interested. Going to build my first X-Carve this week. I’m a software developer and have some cool ideas to take the X-Carve to another level since it’s Open Source out of the box. The X-Controller would be a fantastic upgrade and may have some capability to build upon.

Just replaced my Z-limit switch (broke it a while back and had just been probing for Z instead of homing it) and cleaned up the bench, looks like the X-Controller will arrive this afternoon. Soldering iron, shrink tube and screwdriver are standing by!

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I have to wait till I get home from work :frowning:

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Me too, dagnabbit!

EDIT: And this would be the day that UPS is running epic-levels of behind schedule!

I would love to be a tester for the new controller. Of course I would also need an x-carve to go along with it.

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Mine was waiting for me when I got home!

It was very easy to replace the old power supply and controller with the new X-Controller.

Here is a picture comparing the X-Controller to the old power supply for scale.

The first thing you notice about the X-Controller is that it is made to last. It is heavy duty and very solid! Look at how thick those enclosure walls are!

Here are the motor voltage adjustment pots, they even have a helpful diagram silkscreened on the board show the voltage levels at different positions.

The Z touch probe is also a serious hunk of brass, about 15mm thick and 29mm in diameter it is heavy. There is a nice socket in the brass for the lead to attach to, and the alligator clip is large enough (and strong enough) to clamp over the collet. Clamping on the collet is something my old probe could not do and that made it impossible to use with my big 60 deg vbit. So I am very happy with the new probe from Inventables.

I have not carved anything yet, but I did make a few test air cuts to be sure everything was moving correctly and so far all looks perfect. Tomorrow I will carve some wood and see how it really performs.

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Working very slick for me so far, was a nice, easy replacement. I’ll be posting photos of the work and a write-up in a new thread tomorrow, once I have the time to do a decent job of it, but I am really pleased. After a few false starts, I just ran my first air run of a program I have a lot of experience with, and everything looks good. I’ll be trying it for real right after work tomorrow. Once that is verified good, I’m going to add the AC relay box to the mix, and use it to run my spindle and dust collection!

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Nice. What a huge tease! Keep the details coming.

We heard a few pilot users ask for control buttons. We put a header connector for these, but were not sure how many people would want them. We have been using them internally like this.

We decided to go ahead with them, but got hung up on the labeling. The official names are a little confusing to some people.

  • Grbl Name: Cycle Start. What is does: It basically restarts/resumes a job after being feed held
  • Grbl Name: Feed Hold. What is does: It very quickly and safely stops the job even in the middle of a long move, without loss of position.
  • Grbl Name: Reset. What it does: If you feed hold a job, but you don’t want to resume it, you use reset to clear the rest of the moves in the planner and return the machine start to where it can run another job. It does not loose position.

We decided it was better to use some icons. We also thought it would probably be best to put the feedhold as the first button, because that is typically the first thing you do.

We are sort looking for a pause, restart, reset type concept. What do you think of these ideas? We need to get the the silk screen artwork done soon.

or

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The second one.

Will this face plate and buttons be available to the beta testers as an option to add?

This is awesome! I might need to implement something like this on my stock grill shield controller! Looks great guys, I’m sure once I want to upgrade my steppers I’ll be looking at the X-Controller!

Are you still needing some testers? I have an upgraded SO2 converted to X-carve that would work well with that.

This may be an odd question, but which end of the controller should be facing the front of the workspace?

I have mine oriented with the connectors and power switch facing forward. I do this for two reasons:

  1. All of the motor wires from my X-Carve come out of the front of the drag chain, I guess I could lengthen the cables and snake them around to the back of my workspace. But that seems like a lot of trouble

  2. I like the controller’s power switch facing the front. The first thing I do when I am ready to carve a project is turn on the controller. Reaching around to the back every time to do that seems strange.

Why would the USB connector be on the “front”?

If I was given a blank piece of paper and told to layout where the connectors, power, USB and control buttons would be placed on a controller case. I would put the AC power connector and USB connector on the back, then put the motor connectors, power switch and control button on the front.

Am I just plain wrong about how I have the controller oriented?

The only thing I can think of for why the USB would be on front would be for use with laptops. That’s a pretty weak explanation, but it’s the only thing I could think of that makes sense.

I agree with the power switch issue, it’s the main reason I have to touch my controller. If I were to design it, basically everything would be on the back and just the power switch and the control buttons would be on the front.

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Same here, Allen. I have mine turned connectors-forward for wire length. For me, the USB would be best placed on the left side, since that’s the side that reaches “over” the edge of my bench. My X-Carve is on a table across the room from my computer, so the cable is a bit long and obnoxious to reach it. And is just barely long enough. I really should get around to re-arranging at some point.

Had my first successful carve with the X-controller tonight!

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@BartDring

I would recommend that you move the main power switch to the same face as the buttons and USB connection. One of my main gripes with the current 24 volt power supply is that you have to navigate the wiring to get to the master power switch. Same problem with the X-Controller.

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I agree Larry, the wiring does interfere with operating the power switch.

Maybe the power switch should be on the top of the controller next to the E-Stop. Or better yet replace the button E-Stop with a paddle power switch that can be used to turn the entire controller on and off and function as an E-stop.

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