[edward.ford]

Hey All,
I've been working on this mill for a few months now and it's finally starting to come together. There are a couple more pieces I need before I can glue the sections (and remove those rubber bands) but once the pieces are done, this baby should be ready to make some chips (*fingers crossed!*)

I'm especially proud of where the spindle mounts to the Z axis. I made it out of one piece to include the spindle mount, the mount to the bearing, AND the acme nut. It's 3D printed from shapeways.com.

After the sections are glued/fastened together I will shoot some video of the machine sliding around on the bearings for everyone to see. However, I'm going to need a little bit of help getting the electronics working correctly as I'm trying a different (read: less expensive) setup than I have used in the past. If all works out as planned I will be driving the motors with 3 "easy driver v4" stepper controllers from Sparkfun (They should be delivered early next week). However, at this point I'm not sure how to get them up and running. I suppose we will cross that bridge when we get there.

So, the setup will be:
-8 wire steppers I bought from alltronics about a year ago
-Easy Driver v4 from Sparkfun
-Power supply? (I'm open for suggestions)
-EMC2
-CamBam

Here is the flicker feed of my new machine. I'd love to hear your thoughts on the design and any predictions as to where it might fail.The wood is lasercut 1/4" MDF.

[abomb55076]

Wow, looks great, did you get those parts made for you or did you cut them yourself?

[Jay C]

What program are you using to draw the "box joints" with? The next thing I want to try is milling some simple boxes.

[rot]

Hello,

nice little lasercut machine.

greetings

rene

[edward.ford]

Hey all, sorry for the slow reply. If you take a look at the flickr feed, there are quite a few new pictures of the machine! It's completely assembled, now all I need to do is figure out the electronics part.

@abomb55076: I had a company called Ponoko (www.ponoko.com) cut the pieces for me. They are laser cut 1/4" MDF. I highly recommend using ponoko, they are great.

@Jay C: I used Autodesk Inventor to Draw the machine. For the joints, I just used a rectangular pattern with .25" spacing.

@Rene: Thanks! I just hope it will actually make chips
I have an EasyDriver from Sparkfun that I want to test on one of the Axis, just to make sure my motors are going to drive the thing. However, I'm having a heck of a time figuring out how to wire an 8-wire stepper to a controller that only accepts 4 wires? Anyone have experience with this?

I figured out which wires have continuity to each other but now I'm not sure what to do with them. Do i just take one form each group and tie them all together for M+ or do I twist the pairs together to make 4?

[Arquibaldo]

Beautiful design, edward.ford.

Do you intend to sell the plans or make them available somehow?

I would be interested...

Nelson

[Jay C]

However, I'm having a heck of a time figuring out how to wire an 8-wire stepper to a controller that only accepts 4 wires? Anyone have experience with this?

I figured out which wires have continuity to each other but now I'm not sure what to do with them. Do i just take one form each group and tie them all together for M+ or do I twist the pairs together to make 4?

Not sure about if your EZDriver is bipolar or unipolar but have a look at this. It shows all 3 different hook ups (Unipolar, bipolar series and bipolar parallel.

Jay

[edward.ford]

All, thanks again for the feedback! This little machine is really close to being done. Other than the electronics, I only need to fab a holder for the dremel.

@Arquibaldo: Yes, I will definitely make the plans available when they're finished! The only problem is that for them to work correctly, you would have to obtain the same linear rails that i used.I bought mine on ebay so I'm not sure if they would expensive to buy new or if they would be easy to find used... We'd have to look into that.

@Jay C: Thanks for the link. I guess this is the problem about not knowing something though, even after looking over the PDF, i'm not sure what it means

I'll keep reading up on how steppers work, and maybe that will lead me to the answer of what to do with the 8 wires.... Wish me luck!

[jalessi]

Edward,

Please post the make and model stepper motors you have, I will draw a wiring diagram for you.

Jeff...

[Jay C]

if the wood doesn't work out, I just saw these

[edward.ford]

@Jeff: Thank you for the offer but after asking around in the Sparkfun forum and doing a little more research, I finally got it figured out. Here's a shot of X and Z running for the first time.





I ordered two more easy drivers from Sparkfun, which should be here next week sometime. I'm by no means an electronics wizard, see previous posts for proof , but I think i can use there to control all 3 axis'! Which is a pretty sweet deal considering they're only $15 each. I know there are some pretty inexpensive 3 axis controllers, but I've never seen one for $45.

After the EasyDrivers come in, I'll start trying to get them to work with EMC2 through the parallel port. So far I've only used an arduino to control them.

If anyone has experience with this sort of thing (especially pin assignments in EMC2) please let me know!

Also, I'm keeping tabs on the project through my blog, so if anyone is interested in more pictures, videos, etc. have a look over there. (www.edslifedaily.com).

[Jay C]

Increase your acceleration value Great progress.

[Jesse B]

This is awesome, I'm looking forward to seeing this completed. I'm looking at making my own CNC machine in a few months, and I think it'd be awesome if you released your design! It pretty much looks like exactly what I'm wanting

[Jesse B]

After watching your videos I've noticed that the Y-Axis seems to have quiet a bit of a wobble to it, almost too much to be useful. Have you resolved this issue?

[cyclestart]

Hi Edward

That's a pretty machine. With a bit of tweaking and possibly a bit of reinforcement it should be fully functional as well.

Your concept of using the Arduino as the control is interesting. Will you be updating that progress here or on another site ? I'm not sure how to subscribe to your blog.

Edit// Think I figured out how to subscribe. We'll see. I have an immediate use for a low-buck open source embedded control btw. Anything you discover is of interest.

Quick follow-up//
It definitely looks possible although it probably isn't interpreting g-code.
http://www.flickr.com/photos/pixl8ed/3550190829/

Final Edit//(promise)
Bah ! The Etch-a-Sketch isn't using an Arduino and it still depends on a host PC. It does appear to have wireless ability which is cool in itself
http://www.flickr.com/photos/pixl8ed/3280887094/

The real final Edit// (and first broken promise of the day)
In case you haven't already seen it
http://www.cnczone.com/forums/showth...hlight=arduino
According to info read elsewhere, the Arduino doesn't do realtime but that's real enough for my project

[Jesse B]

Me again

I noticed on your home page you were speaking about how cool you think it'd be to be able to keep the footprint of your machine as small as possible, and run it off the arduino. If it ends up not being powerful enough for you, I can think of a possible solution for your problem!

You could run a single-board computer (here's a random example: http://www.eurotech-inc.com/single-b...c104-titan.asp . I'm not suggesting that, it's just for a reference). That thing is powerful enough to run Linux, or Windows CE (as noted on the website), while maintaining a tiny footprint. Just something to think about

[RiseUp]

How much did this machine cost you? Without electronics, seems like it could be built for <$150. Ponoko does great work, and so have you. I love this little thing! What's the total travel/footprint?

[RiseUp]

"I'm imagining something like this: Obviously, do the CAD/CAM on a workstation but save the G-code to an SD card. Then, insert the SD card into the arduino, turn the arduino on, it would then look for a specific text file. Parse the file and run the machine! I know it's a lot harder than that and I'm doubting there would be enough room on the arduino to store the code to both control the reading of the SD card and parse the file and run the machine. Either way, a guy can dream right?" Taken from your blog.
As far as I know, the RepRap community does exactly this with their arduino controllers. here's the link to their motherboard. I'm not sure if they use G-Code, but it seems very possible to modify a bit of the programming to make it work. I am EXTREMELY interested in this area(GCode to SD to CNC) and would absolutely LOVE to help in any way possible

[edward.ford]

Sorry for the slow reply guys. For some reason I'm not receiving the notifications of posts on this thread....

@JesseB: The Y axis is wobbling like that simply because I forgot to glue one of the pieces! Talk about feeling foolish....it took me about a week to figure that out

@Cycle: As far as the arduino/headless CNC controller goes, I've been talking to Simen a little bit, and will give his software a run tomorrow night, so I'll let you know how that goes as well.

@RiseUp: Although $150 would be great! It's cost right now is around $500 (ponoko services, shapeways services, linear rails, hardware, stepper motors, stepper controllers, power supply, etc).

My goal is to get the cost down to around $250-$300. I really believe that after the next set of minor design changes, it's completely possible that this could happen.

I'm not going to be selling kits or anything, just releasing the files and information for people to create their own. The community has given me all of the information I have used to build the machine, and that is the only way I can think it give it back

Happy holidays!

[Jesse B]

Sorry for the slow reply guys. For some reason I'm not receiving the notifications of posts on this thread....

Try clicking "Thread Tools" in the top right corner of this thread, subscribing, and selecting "Instant Notification" Even if you've already done this, I find it often seems to work if you just do it again.

@JesseB: The Y axis is wobbling like that simply because I forgot to glue one of the pieces! Talk about feeling foolish....it took me about a week to figure that out

Haha alright, well I guess that's better than it just being like that normally

I'm not going to be selling kits or anything, just releasing the files and information for people to create their own. The community has given me all of the information I have used to build the machine, and that is the only way I can think it give it back

Happy holidays!

Looking forward to that! Happy Holidays!