Sew-Machine:This is a work in progress, and subject to change without notice. Please feel free to make suggestions or comments.
An old sewing machine ( Singer Merritt 4528 C ) about to meet the recyclers, I intervened, rescued the machine! It needed some work! A new controller would be in order, but not just any upgrade, this machine will have talents. The plot area is 150mm by 300mm max. The 150mm is the throat of the machine while 300mm is the plotter max.
1 / 4 • Singer Merritt 4528 C
This is an ESP32 with a MCP23017 i2c port expander where one of the ports are are connected to the two DRV8825 stepper motor logic which are driving the two NEMA 17 400 step/rev motors, as well as the Sewing Machine main motor via a MOC3041 / BTA16 triac combination. Note: The MOC3041 has a triac output good to 1A, the mode of operation for the main motor may pull more than an amp so the buffer triac was implemented. The old speed controller was of an old resistance shunt attached to a foot-peddle. I discarded the old peddle and the two wires are attached to the blue terminal block at the top right. The other port on the MCP23017 is set as an input and receives all limits sensors (X-HOME, Y-HOME, X-MAX, Y-MAX, NEEDLE-UP, NEEDLE-DOWN). I have also attached an i2c accelerometer (MPU6050) to the gantry to sense when the carriage is no longer in motion to cycle the needle at the desired co-ordinates.
The communication interface to the ESP32 is wireless via telnet, for now, later I will adapt to SSH for better security, files which the ESP32 can decode are stored on the SD card and can be accessed by FTP. Login for the ESP32 to your network is now done via Bluetooth serial and your phone instead of "hard-coding" your credentials into the app. Just to note: the ESP32 BT library is large! You might notice that it uses quite a bit of space. The ESP32 (4MB) partition size is set to Huge APP 3MB, no OTA, 1MB SPIFFS to accommodate this program.
PC:Currently I am using Putty to communicate with the device.
Communication to Sew-Machine will eventually be via a similar application like below;
1 / 2 • Stitch Controller
Written in VB.net this Windows 10 application provides the communication interface(ftp) and stitch modelling design so that Sew-Machine can perform the various tasks and generate a final output.
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