SuperPID v2.0 Closed-loop Router Speed Controller

Last crawled date: 1 year, 11 months ago

Super-PID (http://www.vhipe.com/product-private/SuperPID-Home.htm) is a closed loop speed controller that allows low-cost 1/4" and 1/2" routers to be used as speed-regulated spindles.

The addition of a Super-PID to your router setup allows the use of lower cutting RPM, quiet operation, exact regulated speeds and gives massive power improvements when operating 1/4" and 1/2" routers at low speeds.

Super-PID uses a reflective optical infra-red sensor that is simply pointed at the router output shaft and detects a spot of white paint on the shaft. This enables closed-loop speed control and a microprocessor chip inside the Super-PID executes an industrial style P.I.D. algorithm to give precise speed control with dramatically increased power at low and medium revs.

I modeled the board using the dimensional drawing provided in the SuperPID manual, as well as physically measuring the one I purchased. The main features of the model are the mounting hole locations, the head sink plate, the terminal blocks (modeled as bodies, c/w solidworks routing points) and the LCD standoffs. All of these items are dimensionally accurate and can be used to design enclosures or boxes for the SuperPID. I started modeling other features, such as capacitors and integrated circuits, but decided it was unnecessary for my purposes (mounting in a box).

I used the LCD screen model from Anders Lohmann (https://grabcad.com/library/16x2-character-lcd-display-1) which was absolutely fantastic, if just a bit heavy. I made some changes to the screen by deleting the original feature showing the entire LCD board dots, and replaced it with my own. I used the led calculator font, downloaded from here (http://www.dafont.com/led-calculator.font) and created a cut feature using this text. I also fiddled a bit with the transparency and colors of all three pieces of screen glass to give the color of screen and text I was looking for.

The SuperPID assembly (SuperPID-v2.sldasm) contains 3 parts --
SuperPID v2.sldprt (board)
DFRobot_1602 (LCD screen)
16pin_header.sldprt

The other part (SuperPID-v2_board assembly) and the step file are the entire assembly exported as a part and a step file, respectively.