Sunday, December 16, 2007

Site Moved

This site will no longer be updated, to the three users who actually view this blog, go to:
http://www.reiyuki.com

Monday, August 13, 2007

Tiny Littoral ship

These are pics taken from using an engraving bit. The lines are about 1/32" thick. The entire ship is 2" tall.



Friday, August 10, 2007

Controller rebuild

have been rebuilding cnc controller chassis, this time with an actual project box and better connectors, etc.



The previous model was screwed together boards with no connectors or anything. Everything was a rats-nest of wires plugged right into the board.

This one will Molex plugs for the stepper motors, 3.5mm headphone plugs for limit switches, a spindle relay, and an RPM sensor, probably all-in-one. Everything will be plug-and-play ^_^


In related matter, I recalibrated the driver board (tweak the amount of current going to motors), and it seems I've only been running my motors at 50% capacity the whole time. Lesson of the day, don't use a panel meter when you have a multitester.

Should be up and running this weekend. Hopefully the heat will not be unbearable during it.

Sunday, July 22, 2007

Weekend Wrapup

New enclosure for the electronics, as well as some nice pretty wiring conduit. Definitely better than it was before.

Old:


New:



Spent plenty of time working on a fixture plate. It will allow better mounting when the 2" vise won't work. Circuit boards, engraving, etc.


Many holes and much tapping later..

Saturday, July 21, 2007

Friday fixins

Latest step was to mount some home switches to the mill. These little things will keep the mill from crashing into the chassis if it encounters some bad G-Code. These 3 switches are mounted on the X,Y,Z axes. The software corrects for the boundry on the other side of each axis.





I plugged in the pen mount and did a test with it.

Each round of the spiral is 1/32" apart. Tiny.

Historic TAIG Post

I received the final parts for my CNC mill 3 days ago, and I figured I'd start by posting all the pics, parts, and documentation I have produced up through that day.


The first bits came in last week, in a few pieces below:




I had purchased a small lathe a while back and made a couple simple projects out of it while waiting for the CNC(mosty chess pieces out of aluminum).


Here's the completed setup, minus the motors and controller. Kind of a dead-weight without those.



Here's a small tool I made. I epoxied a pen to a piece of aluminum, then sawed, drilled, and tapped a slot of aluminum on the other side. The pen had it's spring-load modified, so it will start to retract into the body when the pen force on the paper reaches a certain amount.



The motors/controller came, and I quickly put the rest together and fired it up:
http://youtube.com/watch?v=9mxTwRO-LOM
http://youtube.com/watch?v=STvcM2YlMRo



Very first cut with the mill. (Technically, I had the steps-per-inch set incorrectly, so those letters should have been the full height of the board.)


That's it