Good morning all,
I am looking to do a little modification to my X-Carve that will let me turn a shop vac on and off utilizing the spindle wiring.
I realize that this is a little outside the engraving world, but I think it will be an interesting modification if I can make it work. I am trying to make an automatic seeding machine. I will load the table with 2 or 3 plastic seed trays and the Xcarve will move to a seed holding bin, turn on the vacuum and suck up a couple of seeds, then it will move to the trays, shut off vacuum and release seeds into the trays. I like the idea of using the spindle leads because I can code it to turn on and off when I need it.
So I unplugged my spindle leads and wired in my shop vac. I’m sure many of you already know this, but it actually turned the shop vac on as expected, but there isnt enough power running through to actually make the shop vac function as necessary. Long story longer, my question is, can is somehow use the spindle connections as a switch to turn on and off, but actually supply power to the shop vac, via another 110 source? I have a little concern that I would be back feeding power into my controller and end up burning it up. If anyone has some ideas, it would be greatly appreciated.