Bart Dring

2,016 orders since Aug 14, 2017

River Forest, IL, United States of America

Ships from United States of America.

Custom Work Available

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Hardware and Electronics for Motion Control and CNC.

Overall Rating:

Review Breakdown

Average Ratings

Product: (4.72)

Documentation: (4.52)

Shipping: (4.85)

Communication: (4.67)

All Reviews

Scott | Aug. 21, 2023

Works as a CNC 6 axis Robot arm controller, too!

For 6 Pack Universal CNC Controller

It took me some time to get this all figured out. The help on Discord was great, including the seller, Bart Dring. I bit off a pretty big bite, and was trying to configure a 6 axis machine, as my first experience with this controller. Having said that, six axes is a main reason I bought it. The other huge reason, is that Bart is a major contributor to the FluidNC project. I really like FluidNC, so buying this controller is a way of supporting. Might buy another for future projects, and will definitely be ordering some more modules to go with this board.

Olivier | March 23, 2022

Keep up the good work !

For 6 Pack Universal CNC Controller

I am very pleased with my new controller built around Bart's hardware, I was struggling before with an arduino uno based controller for my rather large home made rack and pinion XYYZ milling CNC, it is night and day !
Also, repos have docs and the seller has a great channel for communication where they are really responsive.

Thank you so much !

Fraser | Sept. 7, 2021

Great board with a bit of a learning curve

For TMC2209 4 Axis Grbl_ESP32 CNC Controller

Very good ESP32 board with TMC2209 breakouts that allow for things like sensorless homing. Software has a bit of a learning curve so probably not recommended unless you know your way around arduino's and esp32's. Overall no issues with the hardware and just having a bit of trouble getting the SD card to work due to software bugs with SPIFFS size. Not Bart's fault and it's just one or maybe two people developing an entire GRBL compatibility, GUI software, and web interface so understand that you may end up on your own. Only negative was I found it slightly difficult to reach out to the Bart until I discovered some bug reporting on github.

Deveraux | March 30, 2021

Great product, with much room for future upgrades. Seller co

For 6 Pack Universal CNC Controller

Seller help me alot with coding, highly recommend.

One thing I would like to have is a pendant for cnc.

Nathan | Jan. 20, 2021

Good deal

For Grbl_ESP32 CNC Development Board V4.1

I'm in the process of using this for more of a robot than a traditional cnc machine. So far, everything is coming together fairly well albeit slow as I'm modifying the webui for my robot's functions. Bart and luc (esp3d web ui dev) have been very helpful in answering questions.

Steve | Dec. 18, 2020

Perfect replacement for my machine.

For 6 Pack Universal CNC Controller

I have scratch designed / built a laser plotter / cutter and even went to the trouble to writing my own controller code on a PIC but, like Arduinos, it was too slow. The ESP32 running at 240MHz seemed like the perfect solution as a replacement for my own board.

Like others have also said in comments, communications with Bart have been excellent and he answered a few of my queries before buying the board and helping me choose the right daughter boards to meet my needs. I got him to program an ESP32 with the correct code based on my stepper config. Shipping was great and I got my new board in good time.

Opening up the box, the first and overriding feeling that you get is that this is a board that has been well thought out and done by someone who has done a few of these before. The daughter boards were shipped fitted in the correct slots which made it easy. With excellent connectors on it and clear PCB annotations it seemed pretty clear. I did have to grab a few pin jumpers to set the voltages but fortunately I had a bag of them on hand - but it might have been useful to have had them included for people who do not keep a stock of bits about the place. I had to build the external stepper driver boards but was pleased to see in the documentation a picture of the wiring up to reasonably similar external stepper drivers to the ones I was using. Soldering up the external stepper driver boards was easy and uneventful.

Documentation overall is good but I could not find just a couple of parameters like the maximum motor voltage allowed to power the whole board so I used a buck converter to 12V to power it and it has been fine on that. My motors are running on 28V and I was not sure if that was too much. Its labled as an open hardware project and I am sure it exists, but I have not found the schematic for it. CNC is always complicated but overall there is a lot of documentation and for all that exists it is very clear and unambiguous. Bart also sent a forum link in case I wanted to ask anything else.

I looked at the stepper driver's IO line ICs and found that the maximum allowable current on them for all IO pins is 70mA. My external drivers having 3 lines to run appeared to have about 120R input resistance to their opto isolators on each so I decided to add 100R in series with the stepper IO's to the external driver modules. It has been running fine with that and that works out at 18mA LED drive per opto isolator for a total of 54mA for the driver IC instead of what would have been about double that without the resistors. I dont know if thats required but I thought it safer - depends on your particular external drivers.

Running up the board it provided the required WiFi access point straight away and I could connect to it. I got good motion on the steppers first time and it sounds smooth. I had one axis being driven in the wrong direction but the GRBL settings allow you to invert them with a bit mask. Trying a few times it did not work but when I set AND rebooted it worked great. More of an issue with GRBL than with the board but something to be aware of. I added an SD card and I think that is more required than the documentation says because if I ping the board then it can get a little slow on the ping times when running. But when driving the CNC from SD card programs, it has been flawless - again YMMV as it could be my other WiFi end.

The laser drive PWM has been great and GRBL has a laser mode with dynamic adjustment on the PWM vs head speed and as far as I can tell this supports it. So far all of my cuts have been clean and even so I guess that has been working well.

I opted for an RC servo board too and this has not worked because I can see on my scope that it is running at the default PWM 5KHz instead of 50Hz. The nice thing about buying from Tindie with open source is that I can opt to recompile the code and set this correctly. The RC servo was an optional thing that has yet to be fitted to the machine so it was no bother. Something I can fix up later if I need to.

Overall I have been very pleased and my laser cutter is working just great now. Thanks Bart !

Sergei | Sept. 14, 2020

I'd wish i just got mach3 board from ali

For 4 Axis Trinamic CNC Controller for Grbl_ESP32

Bad:
1. Wifi is working like a garbage, hard to tell if this is signal issue or the board itself. I suspect it's a board, but i could be wrong as i don't have tools to investigate this. It's just "this thing is not working" condition.
2. Not all g-code senders compatible. At least i failed to get it working with j-cnc - the esp-32 board just crash after few attempts to connect with j-cnc. Needless to say there is no tools to debug this?
3. Very basic functionality may not work even from master branch, like i spent few days trying to figure out why spindle is not working. Apparently it was broken in a code.
4. The board may just crash wo any reason. I figured out that chance of this is higher when web UI is connected, so the only way to get it working is to: open webui, quickly start gcode file, quickly close web browser tab. You want to check status of a job? You can open the browser, but you're skating on a thin ice. And web-browser is the only way to get it working, due to #2 you cannot use TTY and due to #1 you cannot send via TCP port.
5. Needless to say that i screwed up tons of stock material?

Good:
1. Developers really responsive - i have managed to get answers and attention for moderately complex problems within one day. For bigger problem most likely noone will want to investigate these kind of problem unless there is critical mass of people with same issue
2. Uniq set of features - that is the only board that support for stall guard

Tom | May 29, 2020

Excellent product

For External Stepper Motor Driver Ver 1.1

I purchased these drivers to allow me to connect NEMA 23 stepper motors (through external drivers) to my controller designed to operate NEMA 17 stepper motors.
There is excellent support for understanding how to I stall these on your controller online using the Slack app (buildlog.net).
Now I have the torque needed on all axes of my CNC. A clean, simple solution. I could not be happier with them.

Mike | Jan. 26, 2020

Great board and well thought out

For Grbl_ESP32 CNC Development Board V4.1

I was able to get the board up and running very quickly. Very will designed. I would recommend having the schematic available on this website as it is necessary to understand how it is wired. I did finally find it on www.buildlog.net

(I did have a soldering issue on the boards I bought, but they were obvious and quickly resolved)

Great product!

Louis | Dec. 15, 2019

Great Product a very small lack of communication

For midTbot ESP32 V2 Controller Kit

Great Product, but in my opinion it would be better if the seller explained some questions better. A Link to the Documentation is sometimes not enough.

Jeff | Dec. 12, 2019

Good Board

For Pen Plotter Controller for ESP32 & TMC2130 V2

I have three projects I'm using this board on. It works great. Nice and small, but full of compatibility and not too many distracting features.

George | Nov. 6, 2019

Nice Quality Board!

For Grbl_ESP32 CNC Development Board V4.1

I have had no problems with this board. My time was spent studying the firmware code from GitHub......but for me it was a fun challenge. I have limited and outdated programming skills but I was determined to crack that code!

I did have one question for Bart and he responded right away. It was regarding the proper memory allocation used uploading to the esp32. The information is online if you do the research. He pointed me right to it. (Thanks Bart)....It is here: https://github.com/bdring/Grbl_Esp32/wiki/Compiling-the-firmware

If you are unsure about your project and just want to get GRBL running on an esp32, I would suggest spending a week or two and get GRBL uploading in Demo Mode (which is default to insure that no shorts will fry any components). After you reach that point, you are only a few minutes away from enabling GRBL to run your machine.

I tested it with four G-Code senders and they all work. Universal G-Code sender 2.0 is fine. If you want more features, the board will also run with GrblGru using Grbl-Mega-5x mode.

The extra grounds provided on the inputs are very handy and make it easier to keep your wiring organised.

I wired my board for external drivers to use larger motors. That part is easy. Only 3 wires per axis will get your motors moving.

I am looking forward to watching and learning as Bart's project continues to grow.

Shawn | Oct. 20, 2019

This thing is awesome

For TWANG32 LED Strip Game

I bought a Twang32 almost ready to go. All I needed was LED strips, power supply, and to clip one end of the LED strips and attach it inside the Twang32. Super easy to do.

Hard to believe a game on a single LED wide strip can be so much fun, but everyone loved it. The sound is pretty loud.

The only reason I dinged it 1 star is the quality of the 3D print isn't the best. Looks like it was done on an old MakerBot or something. Does not affect performance or playability and is still highly recommend this.

Response from Bart Dring | Oct. 22, 2019

FWIW: The parts are printed on a Lulzbot Ta6 and a Matterhackers Pulse XE. I print with the maximum layer height possible for best durability. At public Maker Faire type events, people Twang the heck out of them, so they need to be tough.

Owen | Dec. 15, 2018

Fantastic CNC controller,

For Grbl_ESP32 CNC Development Board V4.1

Well made and good looking board; exactly as described. Arrived fast and well packed.

I have installed an AliExpress ESP32S and LV7829 stepper drivers, they simply plugged in and worked; initial software load went horribly awry due to me shortcutting stuff and corrupting the index file I uploaded then fighting that instead of going to sleep. Following morning I started by erasing the flash on the ESP32 using esptool; and then following the instructions linked above from scratch I arrived at a working box with a local access point half an hr later.. :-)

Software is still evolving, plenty usable right now, with more to come of course. Only thing I miss is 'Go To Zero' buttons for the axes; but these are normally done via macros so it's not an issue. Connectivity via the serial/USB works as normal for GRBL, and I even telnetted to it successfully. I have not tried the bluetooth features; I left them disabled in source since it's not in my roadmap.

Youtube video review and demo of it in action is here:
https://youtu.be/jcl5qk3Hnro