Lot of noob info

[wenderro]

I am trying to design and build an simple cnc milling machine ,so please help me too. I have little knowledge about this machines( I know the basic concepts but I don't have any experience). I can handle the electronics but I don't know what drivers to choose and some help in designing the circuit will be usefull.
So I want that my machine to be capable to cut in foam at least and to be as large as posible.
I have 3 unipolar 5,2V ( one 1,4A the others too it's not speciefied) and hope to use them, I'm thinking to use the UCN5804B to control them.
For the software I have TurboCNC but I don't know how good it is.
Please help me.

[chuckknigh]

Take a look around the site. You'll see discussions of all sorts of drivers. Some terms to use in the search include Gecko, HobbyCNC (or HCNC), and actually many others, too. But those are probably the most popular pair of pre-built driver circuits you can get.

There are quite a few people who design and build their own, too. Do you want to make your own boards, or just populate them? Pminmo (on this forum) sells a nice kit that's been getting some good reviews.

-- Chuck Knight

P.S. TurboCNC is a fairly simple program, but extremely good. It should be more than adequate, and especially to get you started.

[wenderro]

Thanks for the reply, so I want to make my own board but I have limited knowledge at designing the circuit but in rest I can handle it so if u have or know an circuit pls help. Also I'm reading as much of this forum as I can but if u have links to good and simple tutorials it will help me much.
Another problem I have I made 2 driver boards for bipolar steppers one using Tea3718 and one using L6219 but they don't work. I used the circuit provided in the datasheet of these drivers. The problem seems to be that it provides very little current, at 12V it hardly lights up an LED. I used for control an AVR microcontroller kit and I'm sure that the commands are good.

[project5k]

if you want to build your own, do a google search (or whatever search engine you like) and look up L297 and L298, these are matched working parts avilable from digikey.. its a really simple circuit and will drive 2-2.5 amps...up to something like 40V... its what im using, and the board layout is very simple...

[wenderro]

Yeah I was thinking the same thing after I read more of the forum, I think I will go for PMinMo schematic (L297-8).

[project5k]

while i have not studdied his setup, i have heard good things... im going to build my own just cause thats a challenge that i enjoy... all of this is to end up with a working machine, but the journey of building each part is a string of accomplishments that i will be proud of in the end... that and i'm really short on $$ so i can generally build things myself alot cheaper than i can buy them...my time isnt an issue, so less $$ means more time, so be it...