Matt Groh

Machine Design

Setting up the Electronics

This is a bit tricky! Here's the TL;DR version and some important insights. The first intermediate goal for building the electronics of a 3-axis machine is to get the electronics and networking working. What that means is you want to connect your computer to a router, which is connected to a driver which is connected to a stepper motor. Your computer will serve as a power source to the router. For the driver's power source, you want to use a 24.4 volt power supply. Do not connect the power supply to the router . If you connect your computer and the 24.4V power source, then you're providing the router with more than 24.4 volts and that's going to break things. Here's a picture of the setup.

Of course, there's a lot to get to the setup. This involves the following. For safety's sake, think about every step twice before doing stuff. It's easy to reverse the polarity of the wires (connecting ground to power), and it's easy to forget dangling components. We left two wires hanging from a 24 volt energy source and these two wires came into contact for a moment to make a large flash.

  • 1. Make sure you have what you need. Stepper motors, drivers, router, breadboard, red and black wires that you'll use to connect your power device to your boards, ethernet looking wire that you'll use to connect your drivers to your router, and M3 screws to screw in the red and black wires.
  • 2. Make sure connections all go the right way. For example, on the power input if it's an AC source, black goes to L (life), white goes to N (neutral), and green to G (ground). And connect the ground on the drivers to the DC Output negative and connect the power on the drivers to the DC Output positive. For the stepper motor to driver connection, just follow the video for which things go to which things. If the wires are crossed, the motor won't turn.

Running the Network

Installation 

git clone ssh://git@gitlab.cba.mit.edu:846/jakeread/rndmc.git
cd rndmc
npm install serialport
npm install ws
npm install mathjs

Run it 

node main