I get a pretty good shadow under my gantry and sometimes I need a little more light. I’m thinking some LED strip lights mounted to the bottom of the gantry might be a good solution. Any thoughts?
Ed
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Is this something like a “Pimp My CNC” thread?
I kid. That’s a really good idea, especially for anyone who films/streams their CNC in action. I plan to attach a video feed to mine so I can keep tabs on it while my son is running it.
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I have tons of LEDs. I have just been waiting for someone to find a spot to pull power from in the Avid plug and play boxes, other than the external relay plugs. I dont want to have to run another 110v whip to my machine for some dinky 0.2A LEDS.
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I installed led strip in the two channels on the underside of the gantry. Lights up pretty good. I don’t have the plug and play, built my own and have power supplies for 5, 12, 24 and 48vdc. I fed the led strip with figure 8 from the 12vdc supply. There must be 12vdc to tap into in the plug and play box.
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I did this over a year ago and I am very happy with the result. I bought the LED light strip off of Amazon and ran 2 strips under the gantry. 12 volt power supply plugged into one of the 110 relay outputs on the control box (relay1). No issues what so ever and I now have a water table for plasma cutting and that doesn’t affect it in anyway either. The light output is very helpful.
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We just did this at a show with a machine. We used an inexpensive led strip for Amazon that came with some C clips that we were about to bolt to the extrusion.
It ran on 110 so we just ran an extension cord through the cable track.
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I put one strip of LEDs on the bottom of the gantry not only to help with the dimmed lighting but also to remind me to shut the machine off when I leave the shop. If it’s bright in the back corner when I shut the lights off, the machine electronics are still powered on.
I milled a 1/2" thick strip mount that bolts to the bottom of the gantry. Of course when I’m looking for the completed images, I can’t find them. I did find a screenshot of my 3d model tho. I intended to assemble with a acrylic shield but never did and haven’t had an issue.
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Sorry for the delayed response. Thanks for all the pictures and comments. I am going to work on installing mine later this week and I’ll post pictures.
Ed
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@Googs How did I never see those 2 relay outlets on bottom of the control box before!? There they were, right out of view the entire time! Thanks for the heads up on that 
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If you don’t want to use the two relays, there are extra general purpose I/O’s on the ESS board that can be used to run a solid state relay. You can pull power for LEDs from one of the 48V DC power supplies (unless you lighting your whole shop with them :-)), or pull from the AC on the control box switch and run them though a dedicated power supply.
You can assign a spare output pin to a port in the Mach4 pins/outputs tabs, and then use M64 P# to turn on the pin, and M65 P# to turn it off in your GCode or MDI or lua script
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I have always wanted to add LEDs to the gantry too. After reading this thread I feel motivated to make it happen. I see the Relay1 In and Relay 1 Out. Is Relay 1 out energized when the control box is powered on? Does it have to be activated by a Mach 4 command? Just trying to understand how the Relay 1 output port works and if it provides 120vac and at what max. current?
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I think I found the answer here to the Relay 1 connection.
Should have searched further before posting.
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@Acolar ha! I was just researching the same, just found that at
page 10
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@woodenyaknowit - so after looking at the schematic and reviewing the operation of the output relays I may consider grabbing power from the rotary switch to power the LEDs up when I turn on the system power rotary switch. Its low current draw for the LEDS so hopfully will not cause any issues. Just seems awkward to manually toggle the switch on in Mach 4 - so still undecided. I’ll make the final decision once I get started. Did you buy your LEDs yet? Did you have to trim them down to size?
One thing to note is that the two relays are AC only, so you can’t switch DC power with them. If you want to switch DC, then you have to replace the relay, or you can just power the DC power supply with the relay.
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Hi @Acolar - That’s clever, I didn’t consider the rotary switch…
I’ve been playing around a bit, since yes I did find some LEDs. I bought several strip types on Amazon and think I like these because they are bright, you can choose which “color” of white (from warm whites at 2700K up to blueish white at 6500K, also they are COB LEDs, which is a solid line (not bunch of visible dots like the original led strips. I really like them and you can also dim whichever color you choose, to medium low brightness up to blinding.
I also did a project recently where I got comfortable enough trimming/soldering so I think I can make any custom size now fairly well. This youtube vid helped me, and soldering kits are cheap on amz also.
Ive got a custom enclosure around my CNC which I’ll post about when I get some time, so I’m debating currently whether to illumine the entire enclosure, or just have strips hidden beneath the gantry as others have shown in this thread. Or both! More to come
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@jjneeb Good call – yes I just plugged the DC adapter right into the relay and that worked ok for these LEDs
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Oh one more thing @Acolar , the LEDs I linked to have their own handy remote control, so unless you really want to switch on the LEDs ONLY when the CNC is cutting, you might just plug them right into the wall and hit the on button once when you power up the machine. It is one more button press – but the upside is you could turn the LEDs on while the CNC is totally off, which might make no sense for your case, just depends. I kind of like the area lit up regardless since they will bring a lot more light to that area of my shop, which I always like. (Plus it just looks cool).
I used the automotive strips, mine are solid aluminum, not the soft roll LED. I have them under the gantry and one on each side. It has a remote and I can do any color, its fun, but mostly it stays on white. The Led’s turn on and off with the machine and I can use the remote to override to turn it off while the machine runs change colors etc. The wiring hub is no longer on top, this was a testing phase. I have a metal Machine(all Avid controller, Spindle and R&P’s) so I tapped for screws to hold them in. There is also super sticky double sided tape under each run too. They have been going strong for years now.
This is what I used:
Here is an old Video so it not very clear and I used an older phone that I keep in the shop. When I sell the machine I’ll update everything:
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