I thought some of you might get a kick out of just how overkill I went with my dust collection solution for my cnc. What it does is let me tell the dust collector to run for however long the cnc is running plus a fixed amount of time. I can’t just use the relay because i have a 240V dust collector, and I want to be able to run it independently of the CNC for use with other tools. And since it vents outdoors I think running for a while after I’m done is nice to try and keep the air in the room cleanish.
I’m happy to provide more details if anyone is interested in homebrewing on for themselves. The gist of it is that I have an esp32 microcontroller looking for the output of aux1 and aux2 to know when the cnc is running. It then sends that signal and a timer to an MQTT server, which is also monitored directly by the dust collector.
Greenleaf, how many HP is your DC running, and how are you turning it on? Solid state relay? A decent size DC would draw a lot of current on startup wouldn’t it?
I’m interested in doing something similar, but have been waiting to set up a cyclone running off a VFD so the actual on/off signal is a low voltage & current affair
The manufacturer claims 5hp, but i have never measured it myself. (It is an oneida supercell.)
To turn it on and off I have a second esp32 wired into the remote control it came with. It is probably more “correct” to have it wired in. However I wasn’t 100% sure I understood how to do that, so this seems like a good way to make sure I didn’t mess anything up on the DC.
and I have it drive the coil of a 40A mechanical relay
so it can handle the inrush current of my Laguna 1.5HP dust collector.
On top of that I use a current sensing switch (you only need one as you can feed multiple wires through the hole)
I mounted in my electrical panel that senses the current for all of my tools that need duct collection. That way I never forget to turn on the dust collector for any tool. The switch output goes to the timer relay circuit.
note that for those of you looking for big dust collectors, the Oneida ones have soft start - at least the ones with the Smart boost - they basically have a VFD and it reacts by boosting RPM as load on the motor decreases to increase the static pressure. Its nice because there’s no major jump in draw when it starts.
I’m happy to provide more details, but this wasn’t something that involved plans ahead of time.
Can I ask how comfortable you are with computer programming? What I have done works, but it isn’t a turnkey process that just works out of the box. For example if I said here is where you put in the address for your MQTT server, is that something you can just do? If not I suspect a relay like Pmageau mentioned might be much easier.
Do you control it with a keyfob style remote? And does the signal reach your DC from where you keep the CNC? I think I might be able to make things a little simpler and user friendly if I put it all in the same controller. (Although no promises on that yet. I’m happy to talk about it, but I don’t know if I have the time right now to make a new version.)
Do you control it with a keyfob style remote? And does the signal reach your DC from where you keep the CNC? I think I might be able to make things a little simpler and user friendly if I put it all in the same controller. (Although no promises on that yet. I’m happy to talk about it, but I don’t know if I have the time right now to make a new version.)
Maybe you should drop the wifi stuff and get something like a RPi Pico with the Whiznet 5500 chip and ethernet. Then make it TCP/IP ModBus. It will better integrate with Mach4.
I did that for my ATC Tool Carousel controller and have been really happy with the results… even if the ModBus plugin for Mach4 is essentially broken
After looking at your diagram above the TCP/IP ModBus solution would be much, much better.
You can give it an UI in Mach4 and you can script things like making it run for extra time after a cycle has complete and that kind of stuff. And you can get rid of all that extra wiring.
AND!! Most importantly, ethernet means it can be very far away from the controller. Like where the actual vacuum is. So even less clutter for a little extra code.
I don’t think that fundamentally changes anything. I didn’t want just an on/off switch. I needed to wire it into the smoothstepper in order to have dust be on while cnc is running plus a countdown timer.
I imagine I could still do that here, but then I need some kind of server that speaks to this thing via bluetooth.
I use the same boards as @Pmageau , however use a relay output from my acorn controller to turn on the timer for start and one board for stop. I run the power from the magnetic contactor switch thru the relays so it’s only carrying the current to power the magnetic switch, not the entire motor. Using Centroid Acorn controller. Both boards will fit in the older Oneida switch box if you remove their wireless remote control box. My modification basically replaced their wireless controller with these boards which can be controlled by one relay off of the controller to do the same functions as the wireless remote.
Oh and the reason I took this approach is to be able to trigger the dust collector when ANY tool in the shop that needs dust collection not just the cnc. I have conduit system that connects several power tools(table saw, band saw, sanders, …)
