Guds first machine

[gudloki]

A few months ago I was surfing the web and stumbled upon CNCzone and starting lurking around. After about a month of lurking on here and being jealous of people machining designs in their garage/house I put the credit card down and ordered some stepper motors. I probably didn't go about the build in the most logical of processes....If I had I probably wouldn't be here right now saying I built one (just the way my mind works).

First thing I did was order some Nema 23 motors at 160in/oz. for $13/ea from mpja .

While I was waiting for those to come in I wrote a stepper controller using some Atmega48 microcontrollers...which taught me alot but I kept frying the output transistors...still not sure what was letting smoke out of em. (I hooked up the mega48 to EMC and did a 'burn in' by running a motor back and forth for about 20 minutes...after which the motor started twitching and going very slow...finally to no current) After this debacle I ordered some A3977's from digikey and got onto PMinmo's website to print out his board layout. I couldn't leave it alone because I did not order a few parts that go on the board so I modified it...jumpers everywhere lol.

While I was waiting for the A3977 chips to come in the mail I got to work on the machine itself. I saw a youtube video and an instructable where the machine was built out of some plumbing pipe and a dremel tool. I wanted something 'bigger' but kept his same principles. The entire machine was made using a handsaw, drywall screws, measuring tape, and square edge.

Its being powered by a single hacked ATX computer power supply only running 5v and 12v. I also set the A3977s at 1A/ph. I've been mainly using 0.02 to 0.05 endmills in the wood so its not like I can run em much faster anyway. My next revision (probably a whole new machine) now that I know what I'm doing will be the normal 30v+ motor supply @ rated current and alot better fixturing...I just wanted to get something to work for now, learn on the cheap stuff so to speak.

Router is a bosch colt...yeah cheap stand and nice motor :-) I figured I could use it around the house, well thats what I told the wife anyway :-P.


Its got some slop in it but I've put it to work to make my brother a wedding gift using Image to Gcode. Machining is done with EMC2.

Here is a video of the beast.

[FandZ]

Congrats my man. It's the coolest thing to actually see it cut on its own for the first time. Good job man. I'd truly be lost if I had to solder my own driver board.

I too am going to be building my second machine soon with what I learned on my first. If I could ask, what are you useing for CAM and machine control software?

[gudloki]

I too am going to be building my second machine soon with what I learned on my first. If I could ask, what are you useing for CAM and machine control software?

CAM was done with < Image to Gcode >
Machining was done with linux EMC2

[Truss-rod]

What are your lead screws? all thread?

[gudloki]

yeah 1/4-20 cheap-o lowes allthread. $0.99/foot.

Getting pretty good accuracy with it I think. Havent tried to do any specific measurements on it but its good enough to run a 0.03" endmill and make some images in wood.