Am I on the right track?

Make sure that your spindle cables are not bundled with your motor and limit switch cables.

So do I take the spindle lead out of the drag chain too?

I have mine zipped tied to the outside of the drag chain, it stops interference with the motors

Hmm, I find it surprising that it makes that much difference. Are all the wires in your run shielded and grounded? Including the spindle lead?

I can see separation may be required but I can’t see that running it in the chain vs running on the outside of the chain would be that much different?
We used to make sure power cables for 2 way radios and their antennae cable in particular, sound systems power cables etc where not running along side vehicle PCM wiring due to the EMI and RFI interference problems even though the PCM sensor wires were shielded. The specification from most vehicle manufacturers was to avoid wires running parallel and a minimum of 200mm separation (if I remember correctly - can check Monday) if that was not possible, but only short runs. The power cables for those accessories were generally not shielded.
I’d be interested in the reasons why that small separation makes a difference.

Steve, I would think that coiling leads at the end of their run instead of cutting them to length would cause more issues with EMI than the difference of lead in or out of the chain. My dad who was a sparky all his working life taught me at a young age never to coil wiring due to creating an electro magnetic field. And the less distance there is less current drop, however small it may be.

Almost every Chinese machine I've seen, including all the ones I've owned, have always had all of the cabling bundled together along with the coolant lines. Noise was a massive problem with a lot of the clone 6040's due to the crappy "blue box" controllers, but that was because of a lack of earthing, and also inherently bad design limitations and deficiencies more than anything else. A decent star earthing/shielding pretty much solves most if not all noise issues for small hobby type machines.

Using a non-brushed motor for a spindle also helps a lot. Brushed motors generate so much noise.

Cal,

I’d suggest you leave it and see what happens first. No point trying to fix something that might not happen.

just be on the lookout for interference during the beginning.

Thanks Andrew, yes at this stage I will wait until I get it fired up. I can reroute if needed.

One thing I'd suggest if you haven't already Cal, is to bolt the machines frame to the table as these machines don't have a lot of mass to dampen vibration. So the more rigid the machine is, the less vibration and the better the finished product will be.

Doing this can also help with missed steps, as this can occur if the machine's vibration starts getting into a "rhythm" with the machining, opposing the steppers movements.

I clamped mine down with some wood that was cut to fit the profile. Preferred that to bolting it down as the machine was untouched. Concept was the same.

Yes, I used t nuts and right angle brackets to mount it to the table.

Well it runs! I have to work out how to control the VFD correctly, I can start it using commands but can’t stop it. I have to hit the emergency stop button. Need to do some more searches for the solution on the net.
Still need a spoil board and need to work out how fusion works with the open builds software. I will work out where to place computer etc once I can control everything.

https://uploads.tapatalk-cdn.com/202...c6e1d1ae5c.jpg

You just save your tool path as GRBL mm or in in fusion and open it the OB control

Do the setup commands in this link help?

Spindle / Relay Control - M3/M4/M5 * Issue #949 * grbl/grbl * GitHub