How to document our system configuration

[eldonb46]

We have been slowly building our Masso CNC Router System with AutoTool Changer, and other nice features for the last nine months or so, along the way we have created some simple diagrams and a trial configuration board for most of our experimental circuits that are connected to the Masso System Controller. We are almost finished with our system configuration and very much like the results. The current electrical configuration is a combination of many circuits found on the web, custom configs, and the Masso Documentation.

To make our troubleshooting in the future easier, we need to finalize and document our current circuit configuration.

There appears to be several free software drawing tools, some could be adapted for CNC Systems Documentation, but may require much customization for the task. For example some drawing tools are: Scheme-it, Diptrace, Inkscape, Sketchup, etc, etc.

Question: What diagramming tools are used or suggested by other Masso Controller Users have used for their System Configuration Documentation needs?

Thank, Eldon

 

[zombieengineer]

@eldonb46

Some advice from a large scale industrial controls perspective (recommendations may be overkill for your system).

Label every signal wire with a unique identifier, label both ends of the wire. Doesn't matter if it is "Wire #42" or "X Axis Step +" as long as you can positively identify each wire. For power connections a label of "+24V" is acceptable, even if multiple wires have the same ID.

In a single document for each device create a table with 3 columns:

• Terminal ID
  
• Description of Terminal
  
• Wire identifier connected (or "Not Connected" if no wire present)
  

If push comes to shove, you can do a quick text search of a wire identifier and quickly identify where the other end of the wire should be.

Once you have the terminal connections documented then think about a nice graphical representation.