DIY CNC Set Up Tutorial - Budget CNC Dividing Head (TB6600)

G'day everyone,
Today I will be showing you the method I have used to CNC the dividing head, as well as the method I have used to CNC the lathe. CNC can sometimes feel like a can of worms, because there are some specialized components, control boards and software set up components to get your head around.
And whilst it can be a headache to do the first time, the process is actually quite simple. To CNC the dividing head i will be using the budget components that I have always used, which have always worked well for me. I will be using a TB6600 control board to control the stepper motors, and send pulses to them. I will also be using a basic 5 axis Mach 3 break out board. I will also be using Mach 3 CNC to control the dividing head. I will also show you how I set up the motors in Mach 3.
I hope you enjoy the video. Cheers
#DIY #CNC #machining
Timestamps
0:00 - Intro
1:46 - TB6600 Control Board
2:52 - CNC Breakout Board
4:02 - Power Supply
4:13 - How To Wire The Control Board
7:00 - Connecting To The Computer
8:10 - Mach 3 Set Up
10:38 - Testing The Stepper Motor

[@johncoops6897]

Always good audio / voice-over in these videos. That's for spending the time to set the audio levels properly so it's loud and clear but not distorted. I just wish all channels could be at least 1/2 as good, so I didn't have to keep setting volume to max just to hear them, then get blasted when Adverts and other videos start!

[@pkjmfineart1593]

Brilliant tutorial/assistance video thank you. It's one thing to make your own small machines using small improved machines for your own specific company requirements, but it's another level again to CNC things. Which IS the holy grail for me.

[@hoggif]

That was a great one. I never realized steppers and drivers have become that affordable. This really gives me some ideas.

[@dustinraymond9403]

You can call me triple whammy- tech stunted, monetarily disabled, and a newb. These videos are my education, and i really appreciate all the hard work youve done to make this information accessible. Ill be watching garage sales for old computers and building my own cnc mill around my 100 year old lathe. I love this shit, i wish id had a better guidance counselor.

[@aissamdemliarq7227]

Nice ..i always have problems with those 53,51,57 gears...but i calculate the ratio to machine them within the given tolerances.. even if it's time consuming.. good job mate⚙️👍

[@MaximKachurovskiy]

Perfect application for an Arduino with a few buttons and a display that would move the motor the exact amount you need for an N-toothed gear ☺

[@MF175mp]

For compact form, yes. For price nothing beats an old laptop, about 20€ you can get ones ready to use with parallel port

[@MaximKachurovskiy]

@@MF175mp price wise maybe - assuming space in your shop for another desktop, monitor, mouse and keyboard costs 0$ 😃

[@MF175mp]

@@MaximKachurovskiy laptop goes to less space and can be put on shelf when not in use. Arduino or something like that maybe best if you want an integrated enclosure for the buttons and screen but it requires more tinkering, that's why I wouldn't be making one for myself

[@cullendolan5619]

Awesome video, the attention to detail and quality of your videos are amazing

[@chickenman297]

Hey matey, 4:29 I would recommend that you make sure there is no exposed wire coming out of those screw connectors. Greatly reduces the risk of a short circuit and on the power line, that means greatly reduced risk of fire. Don't trust the current limitation on those thing. Remember that anything can go faulty and prevention is the best practice. Cool project though =) Edit: 5:30 Yikes!

[@j.dietrich]

The bigger problem is the lack of ferrules. Screw terminals aren't designed for bare stranded wire and the screw tends to splay and crush the individual conductors. The resistance of the connection tends to increase over time, so can turn into a serious fire hazard without you realising. Short circuits are usually fairly benign because they'll blow a fuse, trip a breaker or activate the OCP circuit of a power supply; there is no such protection against high-resistance connections. Tinning the ends with solder is better than nothing, but Chinese crimp tool kits are cheap as chips.

[@artisanmakes]

😅 Just a few things left over from my dodgy wiring days

[@Sheevlord]

I was about to comment on that when I saw this comment. Tinning the wire ends and trimming them so the part that sticks out of the insulation is just long enough for the purpose is a good idea. Those loose strands are asking for a disaster to happen. And that jumper wire that links two terminals on the same board? I'd use a solid core wire for that, since it doesn't need to be flexible. Having said that, the project is really cool.

[@dieSpinnt]

​@@j.dietrich You are right. What a horrible wiring and don't using ferrules (for less than a cent a piece) as your LIFE-PROTECTION is one of the cardinal sins and worse than murder!!! (BTW Artisan Makes stated that this was footage from his "dodgy wiring days" which implies that all sins may be forgiven, now). Now to you, my friend. "Tinning the ends with solder" is exactly the same kind of madness (and not "better than nothing") and introduces an even MORE dangerous breaking point. Screw connections are NEVER suitable for stranded or tinned copper strands. There is not a single point about that topic to discuss. When it comes to electrical connections, you either do it right or you don't do it at all! (Reality has shown that not you, but friends and beloved ones, who are not familiar with your "creative wiring"/botches/(mis-)use of established techniques, get harmed or killed ... !!! Which in most cases gets the creative "engineer" behind bars) I don't mean that personally by the way, most of what you said are good tips. Just this one point brings everything into the category "Tips from the Internet from the bungler", for which one should be ashamed to spread this further. What do you think an amateur or beginner will do if given a choice? Just my opinion: What's 50 bucks for a tool (not the Chinese junk) with a set of ferrules that maybe lasts a lifetime? Or if cost really matters, why not ask your neighbor, friend, or local maker shop? Additional advantage: They'll blow your ass off if you come up with such bungling and often have advice or wash your head with rationality and responsibility!:) Learning by accident may be something. But some wounds don't heal or can't be healed! And some body parts are precious, that is why they are even grown on the own body:P This channel is great in giving ideas and advice. Also reading something like a machinists/electrician/etc. book hasn't hurt anyone, yet or asking an expert ... to my knowledge. Except that one case, where a master fell from the sky, directly on the reader. Have fun making and never put soldered strands, as an action or as an option, to the playtable again. Thank you!:) What the experts do: NEVER EVER use solder-joints on CNC/machine tools (as in "avoid in any case" ... except vibration protected cases. Just a pun:P). There is vibration. There is movement. There are changing environmental conditions. That is the ENEMY of tinned copper. Why do we think screw connections protected against vibration (extremely cheap to produce ... just a spring plate is enough!) exist? Certainly not for the fun of it. You can see them in the video. Even on the "China-Stepper-Driver". They are there for a reason and we use them with the proper wiring (and don't shoot us in the foot by perverting the reason why they are used in the first place ... not to use solder-joints ... hmm, which is really an action of a madman and absolutely embarrassing, when you think about it, hehe).

[@GoPaintman]

Good video as always, but I gotta say the TB6600 is no longer worth it. A DM556 is 20$ and runs “digital control”. Meaning that you get way more torque out of your motors, they run quieter and they run cooler. For the price difference, I’d highly recommend you consider the DM556.

[@artisanmakes]

Interesting, granted I first did this type of set up back in 2018, I guess they weren't around back then. Cheers

[@rohanbansal2324]

Very good video, super helpful. You shortened my research considerably. Thanks a million!

[@ragnoon]

G'day mate, love your videos, keep up the good work

[@KW-ei3pi]

Nicely done. Good, clear advice and explanations. Keep making these videos. I would like to see the procedure to cut a graduated dial on your dividing head. Thanks

[@guitarchitectural]

Beauty! I'm strongly considering a CNC lathe (a taig) and would love more info about how you set up the lathe cross slide as a mini mill table! This would be perfect for one thing I didn't think of doing previously, simple flat engraving work!

[@artisanmakes]

kzbin.info/www/bejne/iaGVeaiJoayqia8 I covered it in this old video. Just my take on a budget vertical axis. Cheers

[@patdowling5]

Really enjoyed your video here, it is really informative and very well produced. I for one would be really interested to see how you put together your cnc mill setup on your sherline lathe. I am exploring something similar with my emco unimat which has a similar form factor. Thanks again and greetings from Ireland !

[@adatr9410]

Thank you I had all this in a cart about to check out and thanks to you I didn’t wast money thanks . I would suggest a little better controller like ethercad

[@DavidHerscher]

This is a fantastic video. However, as i understand it there are some drawbacks to using the parallel port "old skool" BoB's. For example, in this configuration the PC acts as the real time controller, and depending on a lot of factors that can cause issues that may be intermittent and very hard to track down. In contrast, the newer USB boards, like the PMDX boards pass that task off to the board which has dedicated hardware for the RTC, making things a lot more reliable, and a lot faster. I know very little about this stuff though, so I could honestly be dead wrong lol. However i wanted to comment because this is a great vid and it deserves a like and a comment. love the channel btw.

[@de-bodgery]

Plug that hole in your adapter so metal can't get in there. A cork would work, but some sort of threaded plug would be more elegant. This is a nice add-on to a dividing head. I have to wonder if your stepper can make sufficiently small steps so that odd tooth numbers don't cause issues for the stepper increments.

[@MuzzahA1]

thank you

[@ComgrowOfficial]

wow! That's a great video! Thx for Artisan Makes. The tutorial is really comprehensive and detailed. 😄😄BTW, what do u think about Comgrow Robo CNC machines? We'll appreciate that if u can give us some advice. Thx a lot!😉😉

[@AlexanderBurgers]

I would highly recommend getting some ferrules and a crimping plier for all those wire ends, that was just painful to look at, all those loose little whiskers just waiting for a bad moment to short circuit or break.

[@johncoops6897]

100% agreed. I just replied to "EEF" above with my suggestions,

[@Ray-zu4mt]

I have a sherline lathe would you show or maybe you already have, how you went about making the stepper motor mounts. I’m pretty new to all this stuff so need all the help I can get. Great video.

[@okami1254]

Great build! i have a question, how do you think this would perform for the purposes of helical gears?

[@MF175mp]

Basically 300 lines of code is enough for most lathe work for example if it supports canned cycles.

[@MF175mp]

@Johannes Fiftyeight I had an Emco Compact 5, it lacked the canned cycles. Programs from the CAM software tended always to be near the 200 line limit of the machine. Now I have a Mori Seiki with canned cycles and I can write the programs by hand and they're short

[@Tinman97301]

👍💯👍

[@EEF2077]

I would recommend buying a ferrule set and putting those on the ends of your wires. Those are much safer than just bare stranded wires.

[@johncoops6897]

100% agreed, the 4-way crimpers are good enough, and much cheaper than the cooler-looking 6-way... Remember, the ferrule gets the shit squished out of it anyway, so the number of faces doesn't really matter. Oh, and never ever solder the ends of stranded cables that are going into screw terminals. That is a disaster waiting to happen!

[@marcusplanlos2037]

Once again a super video. I think but just for such a project an Arduino would be perfect. To control a stepper driver with an Arduino is really not very difficult. Then only a few buttons to adjust the angle and another to turn the dividing head by pressing a button.

[@artisanmakes]

Cheers, you are right Arduino grbl is better suited to this sort of set up, but I already had these mach 3 boards left over from an old build so it seemed easier and more straightforward. Cheers

[@marcusplanlos2037]

@@artisanmakes I didn't mean GRBL at all. I meant that you could solve this very elegantly with a few lines of self-written code. However, I also understand that not everyone wants to program. I myself come from the computer science and therefore see this relatively easily, but I have e.g. for it not much idea of conventional machining. So everyone just has his specialty. This is not to be misunderstood, that was only meant as an additional suggestion.

[@dikyoda1881]

⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️

[@gregwmanning]

I enjoyed your CNC approach to the problem and it covers all possible gear tooth counts, but if for now you just wanted 57 and 63 tooth gears, would making a specialised hole disc for the dividing head, leaving room to add more hole circles as required in the future? Would the PCD function on the mill DRO make this approach possible?

[@artisanmakes]

I talked about this in the first video. I could have done that, but having used this set up, it is just faster to cut gears this way, not having to much around with the sector arms. Plus I might have plans to turn this in to a universal dividing head, but that is a project for another time.

[@Festivejelly]

7:01 Naughty naughty looks like you were using a serial crack on that software :O

[@artisanmakes]

Sounds about right for that conputer :)

[@raymondcandiotes4639]

One question. How do you compensate for the back lash of the worm gear?

[@artisanmakes]

You dont have to since you are only going in one direction.

[@raymondcandiotes4639]

@@artisanmakes Yes but any machining will result in chatter as the chuck rotates in the bac-lash zone. only a disc brake will work except for rotational milling.

[@artisanmakes]

@@raymondcandiotes4639 Its not an issue here since I lock the dividing head spindle whilst machining. You'd do that even if you use the dividing plates. Cheers

[@raymondcandiotes4639]

@@artisanmakes Great stuff. Now a challenge for you to incorporate an electronic lock to make it more of CNC than semi-cnc. Please don't get me wrong. I appreciate what you have done, but there is always room for improvement. Keep it up.

[@artisanmakes]

Cheers mate, all good. What I do next will really depend on how much I need the set up. If i need to use ot more often I'll probably swap it over to a larger size stepper motor or servos. Cheers

[@Themetallica971]

There is any backlash while machining with the divided head? Mine use a brake to ensure the fixturing of the piece, i m interested in to the conversion

[@artisanmakes]

There is backlash which you can compensate for, but if you’re only turning in one direction it doesn’t matter much

[@manojkolhapure6714]

​@@artisanmakes thanks sir,one question in my mind is when we indexing that spindle is it nessesery to tighten the worm wheel on every indexing??Or no need to tight ,,i think worm and worm shaft is fited with no play in both then not nessesery to tighten that locking nut... please answer i am waiting sir please please.

[@JoshuaDavidson]

Can you show the options you've used for the x,y,z CNC? It was hard to understand why you picked some of the motor set up options you did.

[@JoshuaDavidson]

@Johannes Fiftyeight I appreciate that, which is why I'm asking for a follow up video to show those other options, and explain the reason why those numbers.

[@yanmi3956]

日本語の字幕を付けて欲しいです I want you to add Japanese subtitles

[@isverque74]

Relação 40/1 ?

[@artisanmakes]

Yes, mine is 40:1

[@JesseSchoch]

If you have this stuff on hand great but I hate to say it but TB6600 are garbage and you are much better off with something more modern. Most of these you can buy new are not actually using the old tb6600 chip. I'd also avoid mach3 and 8 bit micro grbl. linuxCNC, grblHAL, or fluidNC are better options. For a single axis indexer you can probably use a 3d printer stepper driver and a 32bit mcu with grbl with very little problems.

[@artisanmakes]

Like I said, these are left over from a project from around 2018, I know that these work and how to set them up, so ill use these, same for mach 3. I used linux CNC for about a year but I just didn't like it that much for various reasons. I might have plans to turn this in to a universal dividing head so setting this up this way gives me the room to add the other axis later.

[@Queracus]

wasted 1 day with trying to install mach3 drivers.. first on win 10, than on win8.1... finaly it workewd on win7 32 bit. so just go for that and save headache and waiting ages for updates on these old machines hahaha

[@artisanmakes]

I use windows xp for Mach 3. Seems to run into the fewest problems

[@wizrom3046]

It's a shame about that 22.222 thing, ends up at 7999.92 steps per revolution of the rotary table (should be 8000). Errors like that bug me. Is there a way to calibrate it in steps per 360 degree rotation, instead of steps per degree? Steps per degree seems a poor way of doing it. Also, why aren't you using microstepping? I'm sure those drivers support it, and it will be quieter and smoother can potentially reduce your "steps per degree" error.

[@artisanmakes]

I do use micro stepping, I just glossed over it for sake of clarity in this video. It reduces the error a bit. I'm sure there are ways around it but for cutting gears this is good enough.

[@wizrom3046]

@@artisanmakes ah, great, thanks for clearing that up. 👍

[@MADxHAWK]

Well the TB6600 is the worst stepper driver I ever had. I have tested it and it doesn't even manage to make one 360 degree turn precisely. I have tested it with an incremental rotary encoder with 600 steps per revolution. I let the motor do 200 steps = 1 revolution clockwise and always got 580 to 620 counts on the encoder. I repeated it multiple times letting the motor do 200 steps clockwise fowed by 200 steps counterclockwise and let it repeat for a few minutes storing the counts on the rotary encoder after every cw And ccw cycle. With micro stepping the problem got even worse. When doing fast movements lots of steps got lost. Then I repeated the experiment wit a DM556 And the same motor and got precise positions. You can lose steps on a digital driver to but you can drive the motor much faster then with the TB6600, even in microstepping. The DM556 is a bit more expensive but it's a digital driver not an analog. So if you need precisely positioning avoid the analog TB6600 and buy a digital DM type driver.

[@artisanmakes]

Your experience isn't too surprising. Over the many years that I have used these motor drivers I have used some rubbish and great tb6600 drivers. From memory there were a lot of knock off ones. These ones that I use do tend to work quite well. If I did more cnc work than I currently do id probably buy better drivers. Cheers

[@lepianist9593]

bla bla bla

[@watahyahknow]

think the mecanical part of building the cnc machine isnt that hard , problems start having to learn the desighn and execute software i would like to build this setup for a manual operated machine to cut gears , theres less of a chance to go wrong as when using the holeplate thingies and counting youre rotations to do this with a steppermotor on the dividing head you shouldnt need to use mach 3 , you do need something that moves the servo / steppermotor a amount of steps / pulses at the press of a button (and possibly the same amount of steps in reverse in case it moves 2 sets forward by accident ) not sure how to call a pulse generator that puts out an exact amount of pulses (adjustable) to move the head a certan rotation every time , i know it can be done with an arduino but there has to be sumting simpler like sumting you set the amount of pulses on and have a counter countdown to zero every time you press the button think this would work : nl.aliexpress.com/item/1005003561031959.html?gatewayAdapt=glo2nld