Mesa Suppliers

EU supplier:
eusurplus.com/
www.welectron.com/

NZ:
www.makershop.co.nz/CNC/Mesa

US:
store.mesanet.com
mesaus.com

Have you got any Asia suppliers?

Can't really find anywhere to give a shout out to a supplier but I would like to do so and this seems an appropriate place.

BigJohnT at Mesaus.com has recently walked my dumb arse through the board selection process answering all of my noob questions with great patience and knowledge.

As I am in Australia he went to great lengths to ensure I had the right card (7i96) on the way to me in very short time.
It arrived much sooner than I expected (and much faster than the stepper drivers which have only just arrived) and was packaged well enough to withstand a small nuclear blast.

Thanks John, motors are spinning, now to figure out E-Stop and Limit switch configuration

Hi sneaky,what mesa board are you using?iam indonesian...
Very interesting with this board..

7i96 on my current project and I have just ordered a 7i76 for another project.

There's a learning curve for sure, but there is plenty of good information on here, once you get over a couple of WTF moments it all seems to come together (at least it did for me).

As others have said, the video below is recommended viewing, it helped me enormously.

I might add that mesaus.com/ ships world wide.

JT

I am a NOOB and this question will surely confirm it but do I really need to spend north of 200 dollars/euros for a card from Mesa (7i76e is what I had recommended to me)? Is there not a chinese card (maybe a cheeky copy) for half that? I ask as I am short of the readies for a Mesa card although I am sure they are worth it once you are serious about CNC. I am just learning at the moment but I do need a router to operate direct from the pc via gcode. Any advice (including go away and do some research) gratefully received.

First you won't find a copy mesa card. You could look at a mesa 7i96 or even a 7i92 with a bob connected.

There must be thousands of machines using just a simple PPort card.

So if I go the 7i96 with breakout board route (I am guessing the Mach3 bob I have would do?) what is the downside versus the 7i76e?
When you say just a PPort- is that an option with no mesa card at all? What functionality does that miss out on?
Despite my shortage of cash, I want to be able to fully control a 3 axis router via the console. Ideally, I would like the ability to go to 6D one day- if I have to buy a Mesa card I would prefer to just buy one and not have to buy a second later on.
As always, all advice is gratefully received.

steveinjava wrote: So if I go the 7i96 with breakout board route (I am guessing the Mach3 bob I have would do?) what is the downside versus the 7i76e?
When you say just a PPort- is that an option with no mesa card at all? What functionality does that miss out on?
Despite my shortage of cash, I want to be able to fully control a 3 axis router

It is perfectly possible to control a 3-axis router with just your Mach3 BOB and the parallel port.

You might find that you can't read encoder fast enough for a high-count spindle encoder, and you might need to lower the microstep ratio to get the required axis speeds at the available pulse rate. (p-port can pulse at about 25kHz, typically. Mesa card at 10MHz)

You should probably configure the machine with what you have now. You will then have a better idea what you really need.