Basic tools you will need to mount the boards.

Basic electrical components you will need to connect the boards to the power supply.

Locate the power supply, driver boards, breakout board, IDC cables, and relay board (if applicable).

Using a pencil and a straight edge, mark the holes for each board. Remember, a neat clean install will save you many troubles later in your project.

Evenly space the boards so that they take up as little room as possibly yet leave enough room so everythign is not crammed together.

Next mount up the power supply. You can mount it horisontillay or vertially depending on the space that you have.

Using a drill and a drill bit that is slightly smaller than the 4-40 stand off threads, drill holes where you previously marked. Do not drill with the board still in place.

Using a bit driver, screw theh 4-40 stand offs into the board. Since the holes are a little smaller than the threads you will need to use a little bit of downward force to get them started but after that they go right in. Be careful not to overtighten them so they will stay secure.

Using the 4-40 screws, start attaching the boards to the stand offs. Only screw the screws in a little bit untill you get all 4 in then you can screw them all the way down. Again you don't need to tighten them to much, just enough so the screws don't unscrew themselves over time.

Here is a picture showing all of our boards mounted.

Next connect the IDC cabls for each board. Make sure that you keep the cable going striaght accross. You can put loops in them like i did to keep them nice and neat, just make sure that the cable stays stright.

Next prepare you power cord for connection to the power supply. The cable can be anything from an extension cord to a pc power cable. The only requirement is that is is a 3 prong grounded wire. If you are using a pc power cord just cut the end that goes into the power supply off the cable. If you are using an extension cord, cut to appropriate lenth.

Strip the outter sheilding off of your power cable to expose about 1.5 to 2 inches of the three wires that are inside.Again, make sure that you have three wires. Once this is done, strip about 1/4 inch off the ends of each of the 3 wires.

Next you will need to crip and soder on your eye terminals. I say crimp and soder because you want to make sure that the wires don't fall out. If you just crimp them your asking for electrical trouble. Make sure you push the wires all the way in, if there is extra wire hanging out into the eye hole trim it off. Do leave a little extra though so that you can easily soder the wires to the connector.

Connect the wires to the power supply as shown. Power cords should all have the same wire colors inside. You may have to trim or squese the sides of the connector to make it fit in between the black shrouds on the power supply. Once you have it fit in there, tighten the screw.

Mount your fuse bocks and your distribution block(s) to the board next. You will see two distribution blocks on this picture and only one on the following pictures. This is because only one distribution block is necessary if you are using fuse blocks for your positive wires. If you are not (it is highly reccomended that you do) then you will need two of the distribution blocks, one for power and one for ground.

Connect your power and ground cables from the power supply to the distribution block(s) and or fuse blocks, then from the distribution block(s) and or fuse blocks to the driver and breakout boards. Don't put the fuses in the fuse bocks yet. If you are not using fuse blocks, do not connect the power cable from the power supply to the positive distribution block.

Now you will want to plug in your power supply. Before you do so you will want to make sure that all wires are secure and nothing is touching where it shouldn't be. Once plugged in, use a volt meter to measure the voltage between positive and negative terminals. You should have at least 24 volts. You can turn the voltage all the way up to achieve just under 30 volts if you so desire, this will help to charge the coils in the motors faster giving you a little more speed. If you have a decent amount less than 24 volts and you can not seem to get any higher when you adjust the voltage adjuster, check the red switch on the side of the power supply. It should be adjusted to whatever voltage you have comeing out of your wall outlets.

Once you have checked your voltage and everything is in order, you may place your fuses in the fuse blocks or connect your power wire to the positive distribution block.

You will want to set the VREF on the boards before you connect the motors. You will need a volt meter and a small philips or flat head screw driver to do this. Plug in your power supply and veryify that your leds are all one. If you have a PBX-RF berakout board, the led closest tot he parallel port will not light up unelss you have it connected to the computer already in which case you should disconnect it for right now. Place your positive and negative probs in the appropriate test points on the board. Use the screw driver to turn the potentiometer to adjust the VREF voltage. A table showing appropriate votages is in the user manual so consult that for which setting to use for your application. Sorry for the fuzy picture, it's hard to do this and take a picture at the same time.

Here is a picture of a system fully mounted and connected. We are using the heatsink because we are drawing the boards at a higher current. We also put a fan on for added thermal protection.

Same sytem up and running.

Close up 1

Close up 2

And what good is a fully running board assembly without any motors? Here we have our yellow motors. This is my favorite motor that we have.

you will need to prep the motor by twisting the common wires together. Yellow and blue will be on pair of commons and orange and brown will be our second pair of commons.

Start soldering the motor wires to the 5 conductor wire. You will want to use heatshrink tubing to cover your soder joints so make sure to slip it on one of the wires before you start sodering. (tip: slide the heatsrink tubing down the motor wire almost to the motor body or else the heat travling through the wire will shrink it on to the wire and you won't be able to move it causing you to have to start over)

Your common leads will all go to the same wire. So make sure that you have yellow, blue, orange, and brown all going to the same wire and remember that wire color as common.

We will be attaching the female end to the wire that has the motor connected to it, so grab your female xlr end and take the phillips screw out of the body. NO IMAGE! - images/29.jpg

Seperate the two peices to expose the terminals. Look on the plastic housing for the terminals. Nottice that they are numbered. The male plug is numbered correspondingly to the female plug so write down which collor wire you put on which number. It will save you a headache later if you make all connectors have the same wire patern. NO IMAGE! - images/30.jpg

Start connecting the peice of wire that will go from the male connector to the driver board to the connector. Remember to use the same color patern that you used on the female plug. NO IMAGE! - images/31.jpg

This is the male plug finished. NO IMAGE! - images/32.jpg

We now have our connectors soldered on to our motor wire. The only thing left to do is connect the other end of the male wire to the driver board. NO IMAGE! - images/33.jpg

So connect the remaining end of the cable from the male plug to your driver board. If you kept the colors the same then you will be able to easily figure out which wire goes on which terminal on the driver board. Now go mount up your motors and send us some pictures of your cool machine. NO IMAGE! - images/34.jpg