Stop the CLOCK!!!!!!!!

34 : 23 : 33 : 33 Day Hr Min Sec

That's it! I have met my goal. I am almost a full 34 days past due but I'm finally there. A lot has gone on in the last two weeks so let me hit the highlights of that real quick.
I got the new hardware in not last Friday but the Friday before. As you can see I took a shot of the new motor vs. the old one. Its almost twice as large. I got all the hardware hooked up and installed the latest version of Linux CNC ( formerly Linux EMC) and did what anyone would do in their right mind. I found some double sided tape and a Sharpie and hit play. It came out twice as large as it should and reversed in the X-axis. Both easy fixes in EMC. I kept the rev per inch on the rod at the default of 20 in order to keep things nice and big since I had a whole poster board to work with







I played with a couple other test files including a couple spiral patterns and a snow flake. It was the greatest feeling on earth to see this thing run.


I spent several hours just going through the software and getting acclimated to the controls and which direction was what on the screen as opposed to on the table. My dad hung the posters from the wall in the garage like I was in kindergarten. It awesome. My parents weren't my parents during that period of my life so its fair game now. That was all the excitement I could handle last weekend.


I spent the entirety of last week thinking about the CNC. It was so bad I had dreams about it. I kept looking at parts from my small engines class and thinking if I could draw them up in AutoCAD. I picked up a copy of MasterCAM and installed it. Sadly there is almost no information on how to use it. There are two or three books on Amazon, a couple online classes you can pay for, and a couple DVDs you can buy but nothing for the person that's not sure what sources of information are really good and which ones are garbage. I finally came across this site;

http://www.cudacountry.net/html/mastercamx_toc.html

Those are free PDFs and are extremely well documented. They have window screen shots, button screen shots. Its simple to follow. I cant imagine how long it took to create them but man am I glad that I found them. I ran through a couple of the first CAM guides and waited for the weekend to roll around.

Once it did, we built a mount for a supercharged Dremel looking tool. Its made by Bosch but I didn't thing it was going to handle this job. I was glad to be wrong and another moment even better than what I mentioned came about. I crossed the line that I set for myself shortly after starting this blog. I cut a tangible object.  I cut an EMC logo in the double size and then recalibrated to cut a logo in a one-to-one scale. The one-to-one scale is sitting in front of me as I type. I may sleep with it under my pillow. The larger one stayed with my dad and I wouldn't be surprised to find it hanging on a wall somewhere the next time I go over to my parents place.

Here's a video just to show off. Enjoy the screaching sounds. I wanted to cut the sound and have it be a silent film but apparently that's not an option. YouTube should get one that but until then turn the volume down.

Where to now that I've met this goal? Well I'm going to take it all apart and sell it for scrap....Nope. Not even funny. Even as I look at the screen I'm not laughing. Well I've got some ideas. I'm thinking about making an enclosure to hold all my air ride equipment and sound equipment for the Blazer. Im also thinking about guitar bodies, and missing dashboard buttons, and signage, and random small engine parts.

Mechanical Portion....CHECK

The CNC has a method of travel now! I finished up adding the power-train components I picked up a couple of days back. I'm pretty excited about that. The X and Y axis are pretty smooth. The Z axis is slightly rough to turn but this may be to the weight of the carriages and router plate. I'm afraid that the motors that I have wont be able to work that axis. We'll see when we get there. For now, we celebrate the victory at hand.

Now I'm going to make you quit being lazy and read from the other side of the screen.

A small list of items that will need to be acquired is growing as we move forward in the project. First is a table surface. A simple half sheet of MDF should do the trick there. Next is a router mount. I haven't decided on what I'm going to use for a cutter but its going to start out small. I have available to me something about twice as large as a Dremel but half as big as a typical router.  Its my dad's. This will most likely be the starting implement due to it's weight.

The next chapter of the project begins today. The electronics section of the project will be executed mostly in my lab (AKA a small room of my house I clutter up with my junk) . I've dug out the hardware that I was preparing for the previous iterations of the CNC. It was like digging for fossils. I had to blow the saw dust and metal shavings off of it with compressed air. As I've mentioned previously the brains of the setup is a Boarduino with an Atmega328. That's now running the latest version of GRBL. Version 0.6. Fortunately flashing GRBL to the Arduino was much easier this time. Used to be you had to compile it from scratch and then run a string of commands to get it to flash onto the processor. Now you just load a hex file using the Hex Uploader found here. It seems that if I was booted into UBUNTU at the time I was doing this that it might still be as hard as it used to with the AVRDude commands and what not. If your forced to do that and get hung up I have instructions on my old blog at www.stevetotheo.weebly.com.  Things may have changed a bit over the past couple of years but the idea should be the same.

Where am I now? So far I have repaired one of the broken Reprap drivers that ended up with a damaged connector early in the process during my last attempt at a CNC. I built four because I fully expected one to not work since it was the first time I had ever ventured into the world of surface mount soldering. It turns out not to be as hard as people make it out to be. All four turned out great and working. Back on topic. I have a working boarduino loaded with the latest version of GRBL, four working v2.3 RepRap stepper drivers, and a modified computer power supply unit to run it all. Things I need. I need to run back and grab one of my stepper motors to test each of the driver boards and get the wiring to a more permanent stage. Then I need to mount it all up, find a test Gcode file,  and hope that the motors are beefy enough to do the job. So that's the plan. Ive got 47 days to finish this up and at this point I am on schedule to meet the goal! Tomorrow its back to the daily grind of school and end of the semester Senior projects. 

A home of its own.

Well, I finally got the spare cash flow to order the rest of the power train components for the CNC. I picked up the couplers, shafts, and collars from Ahren at CNCrouterParts. That dude is fast. I emailed him a question and within the hour he had replied. I ordered the gear from him and it was at my house 2 days later. He is legit and a great person to do business with. I also got some astounding service from McMaster. I ordered the ACME rods from them and they were on my door step the next day. Crazy stuff compared to some of the other troubles I've had in the past from other companies.







I went over to my Dads shop to get to work on the power train and ended up building a rolling cart from random scrap pieces of building materials he had laying around the shop! As you can see I've found out you can post pictures beside text. So enjoy this new feature! Any way. There it is. Its held together with what I would call sewing needles (air-gun "nails") and glue. ;-) Its on wheels so its easily movable and once I cut some slots out in the faces of the cart it will be able to hold the electronics pretty well. Unfortunately, building this also means that I didn't even touch the CNC other than to pick it up and put it on the cart.  With classes coming to an end I'm going to have to hit it hard to make some free time to finish this up.  As I sit here and type this post Ive got 52 days 10 hours 40 minutes and 5 seconds...4 seconds...3 seconds... Its coming up on the CNC deadline.

That brings me to my next point. What is finished? Where is the line? I'd like to define that. The end goal is to have a working CNC machine....and something cut from said machine. I want to start the 2012 with a working tool that can be used to take a drawing and translate it into a physical piece you can hold in your hand. With the current hardware I think I'm going to be limited to circuit boards and 2 dimensional objects  due to some of the limitations of my driver setup and the gcode interpreter. We'll have to start there.

What's my hardware setup? Fair question. I think I may have alluded to it in the past. Its another DIY project I did in the past. Its troublesome...its unreliable, Its even ugly but I built it. Its a trio of reprap driver boards that I learned to make using solder paste, surface mount components, and an electric skillet. Yeah it worked great. Really. Anyway the thing is that there's a bunch of wires coming and going from each of the drivers to a boarduino (also a DIY project. First thing I ever soldered). It needs to be cleaned up and wire managed. Currently its all mounted in an old PC case. It ran one of the previous CNC machines I attempted. When I say "ran" I mean that very...very...very loosely. I was able to feed the boarduino a single gcode command through a terminal and it would execute it. Above that things would go wrong instantly. There were timing issues, wiring issues, and above all the screws were just that. They were threaded rods from lowes. The would bind and get all kinds of messed up. Ill try to pull a picture of the one thing I cut with it. Its just a couple of lines in a piece of MDF. I use it as the picture for my Dad when he calls my phone. He takes time out of his life to help me with these projects so I figure he deserves that.

Moving on past that learning experience. This time I have real ACME rods and legit hardware. Things such as helical couplers and thrust bearings.  Things that I couldn't afford back in the first two iterations of this project. Ill end the post with this.

Precision isn't cheap and no amount of engineering and creativity can be substituted for a well designed part. Sometimes you have to bite the bullet and buy the $20 dollar couplers or the $30 dollar carriages rather than trying to engineer your own.

Steve-O

Competition motivates me!

I wasn't planning on working on the machine today but I was inspired by one of the other members on CNCzone. KriegKuts is in the process of building a FLA-100 as well. Dude's Build Thread can be found at the link provided! The rail system I set up to drill the holes for the X rail needed to be modified for the 6 inch Y rail. Basically instead of the small bolts and wing nuts I had to use a C clamp. Not as elegant but it worked. Today I didnt have the help of my dad so having a plethra (<---Nice word huh?) of C clamps of all shapes and sizes to hold the rail as I drilled it. I skipped the mid size bit this time and went straight from the center bit to the 3/8 bit.

 

I was going to stop here for the day but then I realized that the Z axis only needed 6 holes to be mounted. I didnt trim the rail or the supporting 8020 extrusion so pretend you don't see that. As for going straight to the 3/8 bit.

 

 

You can see it turned out fine. Im sure it shortened the life of the bit but after today Im done with it and its paid for itself. I bought 2 and only needed 1. That means Lowes gets to have one of their nice $11 kick ass bits back Im am so amazed that Im able to work with raw steel and get precise enough results to even slide the rail into the extrusion. 

Without adjustment of anything I checked the height of the bottom of the Z rail on both sides. Less than 1/16th of an inch different. Thats nuts. Now Im off to check my bank account and see what I need to do to pick up the power components.

$310 plus shipping. Ouch. But that's all that stands between me and moving on to the electronics....which Ill be salvaging from my last build. Arduino + DIY Reprap drivers + some creative thinking. Thats the teaser of the day.

X Rails and Ganty assembly

Its days like this that make me proud to be a DIYer. Drilling the holes for the rails was much simpler than I had anticipated! I also noticed that CNCRouterParts just put out a jig to help people do the drilling. My dad owns a lower end drill press from Harbor freight. It works pretty well but you can tell it has a noticeable amount of play in the chuck so every hole has a small amount of variation in it.

In order to avoid compounding the variability I took extra precautions to ensure each hole was as close as possible. It worked out really well this time and I saved a good amount of cash by drilling the holes myself rather than buying the rails pre-drilled from FLA (not to mention the time I would have spent waiting for them to be shipped and get here )

For those of you willing to take the venture into making your own rails heres what I did.

Set up a guide to make sure your at least the same distance from the edge each time. I used a small piece of aluminum angle I picked up from Lowes  Use a center bit or a counter bore bit to start a small pilot  hole. Use some cutting fluid with every hole you drill. It makes things go so much better...like butter. lol not really but it did make a big difference. After you have each of the holes started, move up to a drill bit about half the size of the final 3/8 bit your going to use. Any thing will do, just make sure you use the cutting oil. With this bit you can either go all the way through or only partially. Both are good but we found that not going all the way through helped to hold the cutting fluid when you move up to the final 3/8 bit.

Here's a couple pictures of the setup I had going on the drill press. It worked really well.

Once all the holes are cut it all goes together like seen in the drawings. An interesting side note is that the assembly forum post that I mentioned

http://www.overclock.net/case-mod-work-logs/755828-complete-2-x-3-custom-cnc.html

Yeah that one. It shows him placing the carriage bolts on the 8020 and then tring to get the rail to go on it. That seems really difficult so I just put a bolt and nut in each of the holes and slid the rail into place. It only took a couple minutes. One of the legs was a wee-bit (sp?) close but in the end it all worked out.

That's all I had planned on doing today but I finished pretty early in the day so I got to throw the gantry together. That was much more complicated. The 3030 extrusion is extremely hard to drill through in a straight line. Even when using a jig made from another piece of 8020 I was typically not perpendicular to the piece.

Getting to this point never loses its appeal. Being able to push the gantry along that x-rail is the first pay off you get in a CNC build like this. This time I plan on cutting something. The original machine I tried to construct out of MDF never made it past the gantry push stage.

This machine is without a doubt the most sturdy machine I've attempted to construct so far. I feel confident that it will withstand the abuse were going to put it through.

Ok so whats next? Next I need to drill the holes for the Y rail. Mount that and the associated bearings. Drill the Z axis rail and mount that plate.. Then comes the hard part.... Finishing. Ive got some power train parts I need to order but that going to wait until I get the table assembled.

One step closer - Base Assembled

Here is a couple pictures of one of the more beautiful things I have made. Alright alright. I didn't really make that. I assembled it. A lot of work went into it to get it from the raw t-slot to its current state. Its incredible how many times you have to take that thing apart in order to fit everything and then you realize that something else needed to go on there so you have to take it all apart again

Extruded Aluminum CNC frame

Extruded Aluminum CNC frame

Next task is to drill the hole in the x-axis rails. That's going to be a long hard task to do in a steel rail.

Turning $350 in $670

Before I go into the aw inspiring way I cut $320 from the bottom line of this project, lets first take a moment to look at a fine piece of hardware purchased from FLA and explain why I have this big countdown running now. The bearing blocks are crazy cool in the way that they are adjustable. Much better than anything that I have attempted in the past.

Now on to this count down thing. As I mentioned in a previous post, I need a dead line. so here it is.



If that's not enough time then I deserve to fail.




Here sits $350 worth of aluminum.


And here is $670 worth of aluminum.






The difference is a five dollar saw blade from Lowe's and the ability to accurately cut the different lengths. The lengths needed to make the bed have been cut. Holes still need to be located in all of the pieces in order to assemble the bed.

I have ordered the flat steel bar stock for the X and Y rail. I'm not looking forward to drilling the multitude of holes in each of them but I will save over a hundred dollars by drilling them myself...If I can manage to get them accurately located.

Other news is that I found out I'm going to have to order some 8020 gussets that aren't included in the fastener bundle I picked up. Not a big deal but another expense to add to the list.