Your cart is currently empty!
Featured
Sagrada Familia Knight
One of the first requirements for a Raspberry Pi is to get a case to put it in. Now there are plenty around and mostly not too expensive, but anyone that has read even a few of my blog posts would realise I’m really not the kind of person that buys something like a case when I could just try to make one myself.
My awesome new spindle is a serious piece of equipment and the rest of my machine now seems somewhat inadequate to deserve such a beauty of precision engineering. One way in which the rest of my machine fell short was in its ability to cope with the Electro-Magnetic interference being thrown out by the variable frequency spindle.
For Christmas I was lucky enough to be given a new spindle for my DIY CNC machine. Until this point I had been using a combination of a small rotary tool, essentially a knock-off Dremel, and a Bosch palm router.
Every year in the run up to Christmas, I go quiet on the blog, and other places where I would normally share the projects I’m working on. Because the projects I’m spending my time on are gift for Christmas, and I don’t want the recepients seeing details before they get the present. This year I worked on two things, one for my wife, and one for a secret Santa that was going to one of my brothers.
I have a Nexus 4, which I think is a great phone. I have it in a fairly reasonable hard aluminium case to protect it. Using a case is normally a good idea; however, the thing about most cases is that they are incompatible with a dock.
I very recently completed rebuilding the y and z axis of my homebuilt CNC router. However even as I was finishing that build, I knew the z-axis design was no good.
I’ve been quite busy over the summer, and with the lovely weather I’ve been less inclined to spend any time locked away in my workshop with no windows. However, I have been designing and thinking about my CNC.
One of the things I wanted to try with my CNC router from the start was cutting metal. I’ve been building up to it as I learned the limits of my machine and got a sense for what it can do.
If you have been following along at home, then you’ll know that last time I had a successful attempt at engraving a sign. With one main caveat. The backlash on the x-axis was still evident and ran to about 2mm.
Woo hoo! Today I had what I’m categorising as my first full on successful run though a whole sign engrave program.
Pretty much since the first time I turned on my CNC machine I became familiar with the term ‘binding’. The various axis had points where due to slight inaccuracies of construction the threaded rod was rubbing against something causing so much friction that the motor stalled.
In my last tests of my CNC router it became very clear that calibration was not right.
Last weekend was the first time I got my cnc router to do something recognisable. After some tuning I got it to plot out a simplified version of my blog logo, backwards…
This week I figured out what I needed to in order to send sensible gcode to my DIY CNC.
Today for the first time I attached all the motors to my CNC router. Here are a couple of time-lapsefilms of me tinkering with the system
After some considerable delay since I first started with the idea of building myself a cnc router, I am now working on the electronics in earnest.
I am a man of many interests. I generally feel there is not enough time to do and learn all the things I would like.
F2!? seriously openSCAD F2!!!???what the hell? It was an hour into my first experience with designing with openSCAD, when disaster struck. But I’m jumping ahead, lets go back to the beginning…
Last weekend I managed to get the last of the mechanical assembly done.I made a fairly rough, but secure, mounting for my rotary tool.
At this point I realised I needed a hole in each leg to take the threaded rod that drives the Y axis. No problem, some careful meassuring and drilling and presto. But now I realise my previous tightening of the bearings in place on the Y axis had left the central hole not quite central.
I ordered some new bolts with allen key heads, and some nylon insert nuts. The idea being that I’d get more torque on my tightening, higher locking force and better resistance to coming loose.
For some time I’ve toyed with the idea of building my own cnc router, or perhaps a 3d printer. The idea, of having a tool which allows me to fabricate parts using a computer to control the process, is pretty compelling.