School project; Building our own CNC-machine

[st3roid]

Hey there,

been i while since i updated this thread. Anyhow, we have come quite far in a rather short amount of time. We have now (finally...) made all of the brass bushings that will be used on the linear slides. We have also finished our aluminum- "engine blocks" that we made in the schools cnc-mill.

Today we also got hold of a thick aluminum sheet (approx 1" thick!!) for free that will be used as our "base-plate"...

Next up will be building the "controller-blocks" in the CNC, and mounting the frame, (which we also got for free, this is shaping up nice I tell you )

Well, thats all for now, now im of for holiday ;D...

Hugs from St3roiD

[acondit]

St3roid,

But where are the pictures???

Alan

[st3roid]

Hi there,

Ill be taking some shots on monday, and ill try to keep it up, sry about that.

[st3roid]

Ok, monday update,

today we`ve been able to spend the entire day in the workshop, unfortunately we didn`t get very much done... We finalized the mounting of the frame and managed to make one "controller-block", that won`t fit, whaay!
(I don`t have any pics of that piece though... :/)

This is what we started with today..


Our brass bushings mounted on my fingers simply for my own amusement... erhm... (Williebob is the guy im trying to use "the force" on, didnt succed with the strangling though, damn, he sure would make a nice trophy above the fireplace...)


Mounting the frame, quite IKEA-like


And finally we managed to get hold of a couple of bearings that will suit our needs



Thats all for today, new updates coming soon!

[st3roid]

Hey,

Im sorry for the non-existing updates of this thread for the last couple of months, the project is still very much alive though. The reason for why there hasn`t been any updates is mostly because we`ve been so busy working on the project and also because of several exams in different courses, and, the yuletide holiday :P.

Now, where are we right now?

The last problem we ran into was the "Drawer"-effect. Kinda sucky, but we managed to solve it by using synchronised driving. This required some changes to the original design, by swapping one linear-axis against a ballscrew and adding a "belt-drive" (remdrift on swedish, dont know the exact translation). Anyhow, i think pictures will explain better than I do, so, here you go, the latest updates to "Project CNC"







so, were pretty much done now, three more things that needs to be done though;

1. Mount the fixture for holding the milling objects in place

2. Fabricate the fixture for holding the dremel in place

3. Connect all the wires to the controllercard and commence the programming

[st3roid]

Hello,

We've manage to run each separate axis using the controllercard and the PC,
and it alll worked fine, except one thing with the X-axis which i cant explain further, except thats its a mecanical problem.

We've also run into a problem with the Linux OS, it doesnt want to install...
(we ran the cnc using the Live CD), but i guess we simply need to find another distribution of the same version and it will probably run fine, it has before.

that was all for this time,

have a good one!

[defector]

I'm a newbie at this, preparing a long time to make my own mill and lathe.

Have been running on many machines (in simulation) Live CD (as You did) without hard drive and with 2Gb stick which holds my imaginary configuration.

Are You also using Ubuntu 6.02 + EMC 2, live+install CD, also some people call it
BDI (Brain Dead Install). Since it is working fine without installing, I'm thinking not
to install for the time (have another distribution installed).

If You are not using something like this, please take a look at it, has many docs also,
explaining many things. I'm still reading how the HAL works.

With Best Regards,
defector.