Hello all, Anyone here running the Planet CNC Mk3/4 controller board? Just curious what your experiences have been with it. I’m just wrapping up my Lead 1010 build and I have an OpenBuilds Blackbox and the Planet CNC controller with TB6600 drivers. But I also have a Minimill build coming up soon to follow. I’m undecided on which controller to use on which machine. Thx in advance, Chris P.S. - A huge shoutout to @Chris Laidlaw for making and shipping my spindle mount in only 3 days from CA to MI. Ultra-high quality, I’m very pleased with his work.
Hello Christopher! Nice machine! Water cooled? Brave. I'm running aplanet cnc mk4 with a custom jog controller / keypad. It works great. Love the software's nifty ability to loop my gcode sections at different offsets using bookmarks. Can duplicate and mirror sections on the fly. Supports o-word functions. Here are some pros and cons: Pros - Usb interface, works with different stepper motor and driver combos, easy to use software sender / gcode editor with built-in automations and support for advanced program functions, small footprint, plenty of digital inputs / outputs for accessory control (relays, sd card module) and really customizable. Cons - Need to buy a separate license, closed firmware / software environment that's stagnated some, accessory boards sold separately($$), need to build out the controller, only four limit switch inputs (not necessarily a con if you wire upper-lower in series), a support base that's waning. Altogether a nice little controller, and fairly cheap. Now, the black box is great, has most of whatever you may need integrated right in there in a slick enclosure. It's open source, powered by GRBL. Trouble is, it's MCU. The MCUs GRBL is built for have very limited nvm space (for firmware), and that restricts functionality of GRBL. Not a deal breaker as GRBL is pretty efficient and has most of everything you need (homing and park zones, offsets and modern gcode commands, etc..) It's really only limited by your frontend sender / editor. Hope this helps.
