Annotating links + electrical issues.

Because, this blog has been so useful at keeping me on track with tasks, i'm going to lay down a few things for my own references:

Troy wants me to do stellar electrical wiring, so he referenced me to:
http://workmanship.nasa.gov/guidadv_recmeth_wusplice.jsp

Electrical Problems to tackle:

Opto-isolation
We are also discussing the prospect of integrating Opto-isolation into the circuit. From what I read on http://www.epanorama.net/circuits/parallel_output.html#circuithow the introduction references that simply installing a PCI Parallel port card should protect your motherboard from frying. Troy makes the good point that just because there is a card that it doesn't protect your PCI bus. (sadface) But from Newegg at 15$, it's not a steep price in the offhand chance that the guy is right. Maybe some inspection of the components of the card would do the trick, or questioning folks on CNCzone may do the trick as well.

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16815166006
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16815166007

Wiring in the CNC4PC controller.
Since Mach3 functions through the parallel port only (i think.) We cannot use the RJ45 port to control spindle speed (i think - i must verify this.) As such that means we will have to wire in that board into the specific pins we decide on the parallel port. Naturally, this means we will have to make our own circuit for this purpose. The interesting bit, is that we can integrate the opto-isolation components at this phase (hopefully.) The first 7 pins are reserved already so we are going to using the next couple pins for 6 limit switches (which I just bought from Fry's at 2$ a piece,) an estop button, and then finally the spindle control com pins.

Voltage Drop
Lastly, we need to figure out how to voltage drop from 49VDC to 36VDC to make full use of the steppers, currently we are at 24VDC. So our blunder of not accounting for Vrms of the toroid transformer is causing us problems. Fortunately, with the 18VAC line, we get 24VDC through the rectifier/cap. So we are at least functioning, and without opto-isolation. We considered using a bunch of resisters for a moment, but it looks like we would need literally about 100 to do the job. Frankly, that is not acceptable. Another option is to simply buy another toroid transformer with different output. I wish I had tried harder in fundamentals of electrical circuits. Now I must research more. Oh well, lesson to be learned, do well in school! Always! LOL.