There are plenty of Break out boards to choose from when setting up a CNC system. Here’s a very low lost CNC breakout board that can be had from ebay for about five bucks with free shipping from China. I have one on my demo/setup board (everyone needs one of those) and the board works for me running LinuxCNC on an old IBM/Lenovo PC directly out the parallel port.
Sometimes these boards are abbreviated BOB (Break Out Board) and if you didn’t know the abbreviation you wondered what Bob was doing in your machine. Here’s an Ebay link to on of the BOBs that is sure to break immediately after posting:-) And, another.
The key here is the pinout and setup of the board. I’ve consolidated a few images from around the web here:
Here’s a PDF for installation of the BOB with the same images and setup screens for Mach 3.
Providing references for the images above:
Archivist from LinuxCNC IRC chat He also has a PDF on this page I didn’t post/reference.
Mach Support for PDF above
Aliexpress
Art of Circuits
Steppersonline, Main site for OMC-Steppersonline
banggood sale page
Iam having difficulty with getting limit switches to activate and if a missed wiring steps to this same board on mach3
Can I read RPM by putting sensor to tool probe pin in instead?
Hello
I am glad I found your page. I am planing to buy some parts an eventually build a CNC machine out of a drill-press. I am very confused with the choice of breakout boards. There are some many inexpensive options on ebay but not one of them make any mention on compatibility with LinuxCNC ( I am all Linux developer and will have no access to any Windows machine). Any advice is highly appreciated on this matter.
Thank you for the nice blog.
Hello.I would like to ask in this board where i am supposed to connect the laser?Thank you in advance.
How does you wire and configure this board with LinuxCNC? The stepper drivers work fine, but the switches on P10 to P15 have absolutely no function. So there must be some magic to get the switches from this board get to work wit LinuxCNC ……