Let's Get The Show On The Road......

[santiniuk]

Hi All,

Like a lot of people on here, this forum has captured my interest.

I now no longer pass heaps of scrap metal without wondering what use they can be used for....

I'm from the U.K and would like to pass my thanks to Alan at www.fromorbit.com as his Picstep controller design will be the 1st elements of my project.

It's early days but hopefully writing my log here will be an incentive to keep going...

Enough rambling.... thanks for having me on here....

[santiniuk]

Stage 1

I need to make 3 controller boards and 1 interface board.

Had some spare photo-resist board so after printing the artwork on a HP laserjet printer to clear film It was time to hunt out the UV exposure box.

Some of the pads are not as thick as I would like, especially as they need to be hand drilled.

Photoresist was not too bad so I will continue.

[santiniuk]

After exposing the 4 boards to UV light, the exposed resist was removed.
Not one of my favourite jobs !

The boards were then placed in the etching tank and overall I was quite happy with the track detail.

After washing the boards I hunted for some tin plating solution I knew I had somewhere.....

This certainly helps when soldering to the boards and it stops the copper contamination.

So with 4 boards etched I call it a day... I will drill them tomorrow. Oh how I will enjoy that....

(As a side note can anyone recommend a pcb prototyping company in the UK ?)

End of day 1

Image of boards after using the tin plating solution

[arvidb]

Originally Posted by santiniuk (As a side note can anyone recommend a pcb prototyping company in the UK ?)

http://www.pcb-pool.com/ppuk/info.html

Arvid

[BobLWeiss]

I must say they came out really good. I am also in the process of making these boards although I wanted some more bells and whistles so I redesigned the layout but still using the same firmware and basic design he layed out. I am interested to see how they perform when you get that far. What size motors are you using for this? What size power supply?

[MrBean]

I'm also building these boards for my router. I'm trying to, "isolation mill" the tracks on the boards using my CNC. Still some work to do on them to get them usable. You can check out the progress at:

http://www.terry-is.f2s.com/


Regards Terry.....

[BobLWeiss]

Well I started etching the driver boards and they came out really well. I used the "toner transfer" method to make them which has to be the best way to make a board I have ever come across. (that is until I get my CNC working )



And then I tinned them. I made all 3 drivers boards and the breakout board.



Thanks Alan for the design!

[santiniuk]

I should know better !

Things never go to plan. Somewhere in my workshop is a large collection of pcb drills. The problem is I searched high and low and didn't find them. I ordered a few mail order after a frustrating hour or two.

Unfortunately these have still not turned up. No progress at all.

I have found a few useful looking items at work. Linear rails and what looks like a sealed ball-screw assembly. I'll grab some pics and post shortly.

To answer a few questions posted.

Thanks for the link arvidb. Will check this out for future pcb's. I mailed one company who are quite local to me. They have quoted £12 approx per pcb. If anyone is interested I can pass on the details.


@ BobLWeiss, I'm afraid I have not really planned this project very well. At this stage I knew that the Picstep controller would be suitable, I'm more biased to electronics than mechanical construction so I thought, Get the controllers built as an incentive and then research the mechanical bits. I'm still at the research stage

The toner transfer method certainly looks like it produces good quality boards. I have never used this method but would like to understand it a bit more. Time to ask Google how it's done.

(If I make any more of the Picstep boards I will change a few pads as some are on the small side.)

I will be interested how your construction goes. Maybe you can keep me on the right track !

@MrBean, Really enjoyed visiting your site. I have often wanted to do pcb's in the method you are using. Good to see someone else in the UK. (North East here).

Thanks all,

(Alan if your reading any of this. Your artwork still shows v2.0 for the V2.1 boards. - I thought I had etched the wrong ones !)

[BobLWeiss]

You can find more about the toner transfer method by going to the yahoo-group for homemade pcb's and also here:

Toner Transfer Method

I am also waiting on bits to arrive so I can drill out those boards and begin contrustion of the drivers. I have most of the machine finsihed and can post pictures later on when I get the camera back..(wife...hehe)

[Garfield2]

Originally Posted by santiniuk (Alan if your reading any of this. Your artwork still shows v2.0 for the V2.1 boards. - I thought I had etched the wrong ones !)

Doh! I'll fix that now. I've also got to upload my latest firmware that fixes a small bug. It's nothing major and almost completely cosmetic but it should be fixed (I brain faded and used a call instead of a goto in the main loop, so it just overflowing the stack each iteration. No harm done).

I'm glad you guys have built these boards with such furvor. It's impressive! Let me know if you have any problems or if you need help. PICStep has been throughly tested, but you never know what happens in different situations.

Thanks,
Alan.

[santiniuk]

I have just spent a good 10 minutes on the site you posted BobLWeiss, quite impressive !

This is certainly a method I will investigate in future. Can you comment on how easy / successful it is ? From the images you posted it looks great.

It sounds like your well ahead of me if your machine is built. I look forward to seeing the pics. (And grab some ideas...)

@Alan,

Good to see the master is watching ! Thanks again. Will post any queries here.

Cheers

[BobLWeiss]

Alen, what kind of speed (rpm's) are you getting with your design? I built one as a test and I cannot get it to move fast at all. I changed the source to make it run continuoulsy so I can test my hardware and I had to put a delay loop in between each step (40ms). With this delay its painfully slow. It could be something on my end that is wrong but I just wanted to see what speed you were able to get by using the computer to generate steps (TurboCNC, etc). Thanks!