Everything on my site is free. I am a teacher, and started studing stepper motors and programming on my own a few years back. I always thought it would be cool to have a computer control for a dremel tool. I knew a little about CNC, but not much. The school I teach at bought a CNC router system for the wood shop. It does very cool things and I was instantly impressed. However...It cost $15,000!! But I was convinced I could build one...cheaper. I started to study programming the parallel port and surfed theb for info on cnc and discovered this "underground world" of CNC hobbiest. Lots of people had pics of there machines but no one was "giving away" anything. So I built my own machine, with much frustration and fumbling around in the dark. Once I finally figured things out and got it to work (Just as well as our $15,000 machine at the school) I figured I would share my lessons. After all it is what I am trained to do. Learn something and pass on the knowledge to others. I have a lot of teacher friends who like me, work in schools with very little money. So why not give away as much info as possible to help them out? As for the software, my initial thought was to sell it for a small price. (Justify all the time I spend ignoring my Fianse' (SP) to work on my machine) But I have realised just how difficult it is to drive steppers in the windows enviroment. I am still working to develop the software, and will initially release it as a free, fully working version to iron out the bugs. Maybe once it is tightened up I will sell it...maybe not. Anyway, thats my story and I'm sticking to it. Thanks for looking. Feel free to ask any questions. Have you built/bought/are building/ a machine?
Mike  |