A buddy of mine got into the CNC thing to make parts for robots he
builds for his lab. I saw one he made from a kit, and figured I could
make one straightaway. He pointed me in the right direction
(cnczone.com) and after reading a bunch of stuff there I ordered some
slides from Igus (good German stuff, pricey but very nice), some lead
screws and bearings and anti-backlash nuts from Kerkmotion, and some
aluminum extrusions from here and there. I made the frame for it from
plywood, the gantry rides on 36" drill rods (and plastic slide bearings
I bought) my buddy had left over. The stepper motors I scavenged from
old Laserjet printers I scavenged at the recycle facility in Houston (I
would take some Gatorades and give them to the community-service doers
and they would put the old Ljets aside for me -- I told them I was
building robots and they thought I was some kind of mad wacko). I bought
a controller kit and soldered it up. Plug that into my daughter's
hand-me-down laptop (actually better than new ones since it has a good
parallel port to drive the controller) running some control software
(Mach3, there is a free version that is limited to so many lines of
g-code, I bought a license so I can run longer jobs) and some CAD/CAM
programs (free versions) to make designs and generate g-code for the
control software. G-code is very simple stuff, you can actually write
control stuff for simple things straightaway in a text editor and run it
-- it basically says move x/y/z some distance at some rate, line after
line of it.
I power it with an old power supply that came from a big film developer
that I bought at the electronics surplus shop for $35 -- 10 circuits
with breakers, 10V and 24V up to 10A, honkin big ass thing weighs about
40lb. That is about it for the machine, there really isn't that much to
it once you sorta figure it out. I probably have $500 in the whole
thing, mostly the slides and lead screws which I will re-use at some
point on a better machine, although this one does a fine job as it is.
You can bodge one up cheap from threaded rod and low-end stuff that is
probably OK for random fun stuff, I made a really rough single-axis
prototype from about $3 worth of parts and a small stepper from
something, and powered it with an old printer power supply, was getting
repeatable accuracy of 0.02" which ain't too bad for $3. I use a little
Bosch router with various bits, gotta make a mount for a Roto-zip too
since it uses some smaller bits and can make some smaller cuts. I might
make a smaller machine for a Dremel just to do smaller stuff with as I
have a bunch more scavenged motors (printers and scanners) and some
other bits (printers and scanners) that would work fine.
Once you start with it, there is a whole lot that can be done. The
controller has 4 axes so at some point I want to put a rotary axis on
(like a rotisserie) so I can do some fancy spiral turnings and stuff
like that. You can also use the controller to make a lathe or mill CNC
-- my buddy bought a small Harbor Freight mill and runs that now to
automatically make robot parts from metal. I bought one of their little
lathes, might CNC that at some point just for the hell of it. Once you
have the hang of it, you can make big ones too and make big stuff, go up
to 5 axes.
If you are interested read up on cnczone, I can give you any advice you
might want. Its a fun thing, fairly simple actually, and you can make
some nice stuff.
--R
LWB250 wrote:
Nice, but tell us more about the CNC machine with the router attached to it...
Dan
--- On Thu, 7/9/09, Rich Thomas <richthomas79td...@constructivity.net> wrote:
From: Rich Thomas <richthomas79td...@constructivity.net>
Subject: [MBZ] OT some woodworking
To: "Mercedes Discussion List" <mercedes@okiebenz.com>
Date: Thursday, July 9, 2009, 12:02 PM
If anyone is interested I endeavored
to make a Rhombicosidodecahedron from wood. I made a
little photo album here:
http://s707.photobucket.com/albums/ww79/RTChoke/Rhombicosidodecahedron/
First effort, some aspects to work out.
--R
_______________________________________
http://www.okiebenz.com
For new and used parts go to www.okiebenz.com
To search list archives http://www.okiebenz.com/archive/
To Unsubscribe or change delivery options go to:
http://okiebenz.com/mailman/listinfo/mercedes_okiebenz.com
_______________________________________
http://www.okiebenz.com
For new and used parts go to www.okiebenz.com
To search list archives http://www.okiebenz.com/archive/
To Unsubscribe or change delivery options go to:
http://okiebenz.com/mailman/listinfo/mercedes_okiebenz.com
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL:
<http://okiebenz.com/pipermail/mercedes_okiebenz.com/attachments/20090709/ed9da011/attachment.html>
_______________________________________
http://www.okiebenz.com
For new and used parts go to www.okiebenz.com
To search list archives http://www.okiebenz.com/archive/
To Unsubscribe or change delivery options go to:
http://okiebenz.com/mailman/listinfo/mercedes_okiebenz.com
