As I was looking around for something else today, I ran across the spare motor controller for the G540, and decided to install it before I put the computer back together fully. It was another uninstallation of the G540, but now that it’s all back together, I feel great knowing that, barring the failure of some part, I won’t have to touch the G540 again.
I spent the rest of the afternoon (and much of the evening) working out the CAD files for a case for the Super-PID. There are a lot of pieces that need to be considered, the size of the S-PID, the sizes of all the ports and parts that need to go into the case, the size of the area on the gantry it’s getting installed on, and the directions of all the cable runs.
I decided to do the case as stacked layers, rather than 6 separate parts. This means that I can get perfectly square corners for the side-porting cables, but also made things a bit of a challenge, as I had to really think “in 3D” to determine both the geometry and the depth-of-cut to make the holes the right size.
The router AC plugin required the most thought; it’s wide enough that it would be difficult to put it in only 2 layers of MDF. So I went with 3 layers, one all the way through, and 2 pocketed (mirror images of course).
The next piece I needed to place was the home sensors and RPM sensor. I had decided to use a piece of perfboard to set up the circuit, but I needed to figure out how to have part of the circuit “inside” the box, and part “outside” and accessible. So, I decided to have a “cutout” area, which I think will look pretty sharp and took a moment to figure out.
With the two major ports done, all that was left was the DB9 input for the “All in One” port, and the port for the AC in cable. I found some technical drawings for the DB9 port, and guesstimated the port for the AC cable.
I threw in a hole for the LCD and some guesses about holes for a switch (to switch from computer control to Pot control, and maybe for “open loop” or PID) and a Pot (most of the time this will be unused, but might as well put it in, in case I do want it).
I decided that I could probably cut the top and bottom out of 1/4″ ply, and the center pieces out of 3/4″ MDF.
I’m almost ready to cut the S-PID case out, just need to set up all the MOPs and get the machine zeroed.
And with some “real” cuts done on the machine, I think I’ll be really ready to call the CNC ready to roll!