Originally Posted by LegendCJS  Thanks everyone for reading and posting in this thread with all your helpful advice. I didn't know the ProboStepVX controllers I was wanting to get were unipolar only. I had assumed it was possible to take any controller and make it drive a stepper any way you wanted by just changing the wiring. So with that new information and the reassurances that 300+ oz-in of torque will be plenty with 10 tpi screws I think I'm going to go with the 23-305-DS8A or something very similar for all three axes.
The lab digital camera seems to be missing, and I keep forgetting to bring my own camera form home so no pictures yet, but soon I promise. And the Minitech people are being very helpful. They seem so happy that this 16 year old machine of theirs is going to be back up and running in support of an Electrical Engineering class at MIT that they are sending me some electronics to help out with the resurrection. I'll post more about it all when it gets going.
Along with selecting new hardware for the mill I've also been learning cam programs for it. Since the target audience won't have a mechanical engineering undergraduates experience with cad programs like Solidworks or whatever, I've been searching for a simple and user friendly set of software. I currently really like CamBam and plan on getting the full up license for it if nothing better comes along. Could anyone who knows answer this question: once you've gotten CamBam pro do you get upgraded versions for free? And secondly: what is an easy to use 3D modeling program suitable for creating 3D files for importation into CamBam (STL, 3DS and RAW formats)?
The goal of the mill resurrection is to allow electrical engineering undergraduates to exercise some design creativity in a hardware sense by helping them make custom electronics enclosures for their EE projects. Everyone can imagine the standard EE class project leaves you with some circuit board based gizmo that does some neat trick, but is actually not very visually appetizing and is a fragile collection of components and wires that gets you flagged at any airport when you try to take it home and show your family (especially Logan airport.) Currently the only way around that is some standard off the shelf blocky enclosure.
The outline of the plan is to use the mill to carve single use (or low use) molds (i.e. could be wood, plastic, plaster...) These molds would then be used to form "clamshell halves" of their case designs on a thermal/ vacuum forming rig our of a sheet of plastic of their choosing. Then we cut the shapes out of the sheet of plastic and snap them together (if possible) or use rivet/jack nuts to give the thin shells threads and screw them together (more likely).
So imagine your an undergrad excited about taking this project class and you want your case to look just like an ipod- what would be the easiest/best program to use to make your 3D design in for importation into CamBam? After you've made your model the the future TA of this proposed class will be the only one to actually run the mill and will be in charge of approving any gcode or doing the gcode generation.
Thanks again for reading my posts.
I also ask the question about good tooling and raw material for these thermal/vacuum forming molds I want to make. Cheapness is ideal for the material- would something as flexible as dry bags of plaster powder that is mixed and set in the classroom make a good mold for this kind of thing? And I'll get those pictures up- both before and after. (Sorry the mill as already been cleaned- so I can't show anyone a picture of a 16 year old layer of dust...) |
Have a look at pourable urethanes. I use a bunch from smooth-on, but there are several others. Their Task line is really nice for stuff like this. You can get "molded" plastic results if you plan right. I cut molds out of plastic (delrin) and with a release agent they come out really nice.