Hello :-)
I just received my new CNC, it's a
Zenbot Mini CNC Router. Since on the official site there not many information about the internals, I decided to take some pictures so others can evaluate before buy. (I don't know if this is the correct forum place for this post - I will make PCB with this CNC).
(Sorry for the noisy pictures, I just hadn't more room light to take a better ones).
There structure of the machine looks a black metal, but is a black plastic, however machine looks very robust, I am very happy with it.
Now the box that controls the stepper motors. I had to see what was inside ;-) - it's a board with name
"3 Axis Stepper Motor Driver" from http://www.easy-cnc.com.
Am I happy with the seller and the product? -- yes, I am. I had to contact him by phone and e-mail, I had got every time help I was hopping.
The only thing I don't like, is the fact the official web site provide little technical information about the machine, I was hopping for information on how to get the machine working with EMC2 on Linux! Seller sent me the setup files for EMC2 but I had to ask for it by e-mail, before decided to buy the machine.
EMC2 and Open Source empower hackers as me, the ones who wants to keep learning and make new things. For example, I will hack this Zenbot CNC and EMC2 for making a
3D printer for plastic, the "Repstrap". Video:
The next hacks to Zenbot CNC
1. This CNC don't have axis limit switches. The manual of board for stepper motors says: "Individual enable/disable via hardware, using optocoupler input terminal (it can be used as axis limit switch), per axis". So, next hack will be putting that limit switches.
2. The board manual also says: "Full access to all unused DB25 port pins via terminal block". I will have to discover what pins are available, in the hope to use them (if any) for control the plastic extruder for the 3D printer :-)
Testing gcode files
I did convert the KiCAD exported gerber files to gcode using the program
pcb2gcode. Here are two pictures of EMC2 running with Zenbot CNC:
