Unboxing of desktop CNC from MIB instruments China

[Leo]

GREAT thread.

Do you mind my asking - how much did this cost you, including shipping?

I don't mind if you do not want to answer - I am just curious.

Looking forward to the rest of the story

[aironeous]

Now I see what the note was talking about. The top part of the Z wire tow has to be screwed to the metal plate attached to the Z stepper motor.

When I turn on the power the fan on the control box comes on and you can see lights on inside. On the right side you can see a blue light come on when I press the PC/handwheel toggle.

The hand wheel is not moving X. Something is wrong. Video
or
http://s65.photobucket.com/user/gbbaker ... e.mp4.html

On a guess that they might have switched X and A I disconnect the X cable and plug it into the A axis connection on the back of the control box.

Yep, now it works. Whew, what a big relief.
So the hand controller recognizes it as x even though it is plugged into the connection labeled A. This is easy to fix, I'll just open the box and switch the connections after I get permission from the seller or if he says it will void my warranty then I will just leave it that way.

[aironeous]

Ooops, Correction, the hand controller recognizes X as A.
I have to use the A jog on the controller to move X.
Hey Vectric why cant I edit that post^ anymore. Your edit time limit is way too short. Super annoying.

I am waiting for the postman to get here with my ribbon so I can connect my smooth stepper to the db25 cable that is connected to the control box and do the setup for mach3.

[aironeous]

GREAT thread.
Do you mind my asking - how much did this cost you, including shipping?
I don't mind if you do not want to answer - I am just curious.
Looking forward to the rest of the story

I feel I would be betraying the confidentiality of their business transactions if I told you. What you can do to get the price is go to ebay and search for mib cnc and look at the prices and add the 300w spindle upgrade and the vice.

What is taking the postman so long today? He should have been here 2 hours ago.

[aironeous]

The ribbon is here

I just hooked it up. To complete the connection from pc to controller I plugged the usb into the smooth stepper after this picture.

Now it is time to do the mach3 setup.

[aironeous]

I keep getting an FTDI usb driver error in mach3 no matter what I do. Just clicking on the Estop gives me it saying the bytes requested and bytes received are vastly different even though I have the smooth stepper plugin installed. And mach3 is hugely complicated with so many details.
See this is why I bought a pre built cnc because look how complicated mach3 is, I already have enough complication and details in mach3 to worry about so I don't need the complication of "did I build the CNC right" added to that.
What a complicated hassle. I give up for the night. I'll try again tomorrow.

[Ms Wolffie]

Is that a backlash nut on the X? Because that is what it looks like. If it is, that is a nice/needed feature
Unfortunately not, it is a coupler between the stepper motor and the screw.
Cheers
Wolffie

[Leo]

GREAT thread.
Do you mind my asking - how much did this cost you, including shipping?
I don't mind if you do not want to answer - I am just curious.
Looking forward to the rest of the story

I feel I would be betraying the confidentiality of their business transactions if I told you. What you can do to get the price is go to ebay and search for mib cnc and look at the prices and add the 300w spindle upgrade and the vice.

What is taking the postman so long today? He should have been here 2 hours ago.

Thank you - that is sufficient for my curiosity.

I am excited to see how it runs as you get in going.

Can you do a video of it running?

[aironeous]

OK today is a new day and I have enough sleep this time as the windows in the house are all done.
I went to Lowes and got a 25' extension cord so that I can move around the whole garage with the shop vacuum while it is plugged in to the other side of the room. The garage is about 21-22 feet wide.

I also bought a surge protector. So this shows both pc and control box plugged into the same socket and protected.

The seller asked for the link to this thread by email and I gave it to him. Maybe it is the weekend for him so he has not joined the forum yet. I expected him to respond to both the positives of this unboxing and the mistake they made regarding the X and A axis wiring. He should be able to sign up for this forum as MIB shows the CNC using the photovcarve software in their videos.

MIB has only included 2 rectangular nuts that slide into the t-slotted table.

Likewise only 2 bolts and 2 washers so I had to go to lowes to replace all of this because look at the vice

It clearly needs a set of four of everything so it should have came with its own set of hardware to bolt it to the table. It's not a big deal but just a customer service detail they should have covered/included. Plus the washer they include for the little clamps are too small for the vice. It clearly needed to have a 4 set of hardware to go with it. It even has the 4 symbol on it for some reason.

I went to lowes with my micrometer and their rectangular bolt that slides into the t-slot table. The width is approx 550 thousandths (this is a crappy abused micrometer that I got at school that I graduated in December).

The closest I can get to their rectangular nut at Lowes is a rectangular 5/16-18 nut but it is convex on the Z side. It was in the specialty bolt drawer.

[aironeous]

All of this is getting replaced with 5/16-18 nuts, bolts and washers. The police line-up

Oh no it's the landlords tiny poodle. Look away, don't look in her eyes! Oh no it's too late!!!

Tiny poodle: subliminal command - Kind sir, I am so tiny and hungwy and you are happy to see me. Surely you could spare some meat for me. You will go into your fridge now and look for some meat for me.
Me: I will go and look right now in my fridge for some meat for her, she is tiny and hungry and I am happy to see her.

The convex nuts I bought at Lowes fit!!

The bolts I bought at Lowes are a little bit longer than the ones that came from MIB

so that is why I got nuts to go with all of them.


Here I screwed a nut onto each bolt all the way up and then tightened it down against the Lowes rectangular nuts I bought that are sitting inside the t-slot.

It works very well! Just finger tightening them the vice is very stable on the table. I cannot budge it.

[aironeous]

Setup:
Now lets try this again.
I already have mach3 installed so now I just need to go over whether or not I need the plugin and the usb driver from
http://www.warp9td.com/index.php/sw
because as far as I know I already did this
Here are the instructions http://warp9td.com/documentation/Smooth ... alV1.0.pdf
I just reinstalled the latest usb driver and I still get this.

Smooth stepper what a joke, I followed their directions and it still gives me usb ftdi driver errors. They have a monopoly so they overcharge for a little circuit board ($165, twice the price it should be) and even sent me the wrong item the first time. There are only 2 choices and I very clearly asked for a usb smooth stepper and they instead sent me an ethernet smooth stepper. If I complain about either customer service or product not working they can just say "go away and never come back" to me and then I am screwed with no where to turn to. Therefore they have a monopoly.

[Ms Wolffie]

This is very entertaining
How old are you?

Cheers
Wolffie

[aironeous]

*go to the asterisk below to skip my reply to previous poster and get straight back into the CNC setup

Reply: Over 40 but since I was stuck in a cult during my early life (I was born into it kind of, one parent in one not) you can kind of subtract about 15 years of development economically, socially, (careerwise subtract 20) etc. plus people say I look mid or early 30's. It can be kind of confusing talking to me as you see a middle aged man except minus the 2 cars, career, 401k, college degree, social and romantic experience and all the fun you had in college etc., all of that stuff I never got to have so maybe you ask yourself why is this guy talking like he is in his late 20's?

My voice distorts very easy so that is why I sound funny on tape. Just the slightest error (or lack of quality) in sound recording and I sound weird I guess that is why I can do a few cartoon voices.

I've never had a career and pretty much been on my own since I was 16. Graduating machinist school in December, being able to go to school on the feds expense, I really feel I deserved it since I've been putting into the system since I was 16 well actually I was working in the family business half the time as a kid so...

I helped that school a lot, reorganized their tool crib (took a week), went through all the Mastercam tutorial booklets, taught others how to use Mastercharge-I-mean-cam and I figured out how to operate and send g-code files to the old fadal vertical mill that no one was using bringing the schools operational mills to 2. I made plaques for many of the faculty there, the students and even the principal and my teacher using Mastercam.

I'm trying to reverse/halt/make up for as much of that early life that the cult took from me by spending a portion of my paychecks at lef.org on various anti aging stuff plus It pretty much teaches me everything I need to know to avoid getting tricked by the medical industry and keep myself young.
I'm not in to poodles, it's the gay landlords dog but she always comes up with that little "I'm so small and hungwy look" and tries to get me to stare into her eyes it's really quite funny. While all the other dogs are running around barking and bouncing off of me or getting in my way or causing mischief she just waits until they are all gone and quiety comes over and puts her 2 front legs on me and just stares at me like she is trying to hypnotize me. She's like the size of a 32 ouncer. Like a little Paris Hilton purse dog.

*I'm really getting frustrated with this FTDI USB driver error. I don't need this right now I need it to work. I want to get going making stuff and being creative and learning from you more experienced guys.
I've signed up to the mach3 forums and I will post a thread in the smooth stepper subforum to see if someone can help me.

Just to clarify - cnc4pc did initially send me the wrong smooth stepper but when I told them that they immediately sent me the correct one and gave me some time to return the mistaken one. They were very quick in fixing the error.

[Ms Wolffie]

Thank you for your reply.
I find your ramblings very amusing and enjoy the giggle
Sounds like you have a happy life now.
Cheers
Wolffie
I am in Australia by the way.

[Xxray]

When you buy a Chinese CNC on ebay, I guess you can't expect customer service to be a top priority, hope it works out for ya.
Curious, why would anyone "purposely quote a large post with many pictures and then just make one little comment" ?