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.

IT'S ALIVE!!!!

Yeah that title is cliché as all get out but deal with it. :-) Currently I'm excited that the projects not dead. That sentence needs a little back story. Last week (that time I should have been studying for finals) I got everything hooked up and ready to go with the motor drivers and Boarduino sled I constructed to hook all those motors up in a cleaner manner. I eventually got enough spare time to get it all hooked up to the CNC and with bated breath to see if it would work. Yeah I spelled that right too! I googled it. Anyway, the whole thing went to hell as soon as I gave it the command to move any of the axes. The motor were skipping steps like crazy. There just wasn't anything that was going to make it all work.

I didn't throw anything. I didn't even get super upset. This project has been going on for years. Literally. Its just another hurdle in the road I told myself. So I left the garage and started looking for the solution. The Gecko g540 is probably the most recommended motor driver  over on CNCzone.com so thats where I started. Ahren over at CNCRP has a kit that comes with everything to fit the need I was having.

http://www.cncrouterparts.com/3-axis-electronics-kit-p-74.html?cPath=22

For the small price of $520 the quick and easy solution could be mine. Right? Well no. Since Ive spent the majority of my project fund on the table itself I don't have enough left over to purchase such a fine piece of equipment. More on that later though.

Back to the drawing board I went. (another cliché phrase, is this guy kidding?)  The RepRap stepper driver V2.3 that I've built and am using is built around the Allegro A3982. Not much information is out there about the max specs of the v2.3 driver boards but Allegro provides specs for their chips so I just assumed that the circuit was built to utilize its capabilities.

"The A3982 is a complete stepper motor driver with built in translator for easy operation. It is designed to operate bipolar stepper motors in full- and half-step modes, with an output drive capacity of up to 35 V and ±2 A. The A3982 includes a fixed off-time current regulator which has the ability to operate in slow or mixed decay modes."

Hey I've got four, count them four, of these little drivers and I planned on frying one in the process anyway. After frying a HobbyCNC driver back in the first days of this project Ive come to expect to break a few things from time to time. So I scrounged up the biggest laptop supply I could find, cut the end off of it, found another old ATX power supply, cut the end off that too. Then I wired it all together and gave it a go.

After all that you're wanting me to say it ran perfect and I went on to cut something out or anything spectacular. Well not exactly. It bound up but it did have moments where it ran like it should. Even after cleaning the screw, the rails, and a light WD-40ing, it still bound in places going at the G0 rapid linear motion speed. At the slower G1 speed it did much better. This signifies that the motors are at the edge of their performance curve. Fortunately, Im still only running them at a fraction of what their capable of. Currently Ive got a 20v 6A power supply. Meaning that if I can get a hold of one closer to 35V it should make enough difference to get back on track to hit that dead line.

 

For now, enjoy this video of my latest Rube Godlberg project that knocks over a can of WD-40

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. 

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.

Wow...No really...Wow

Alright in my research (time wasting between classes) Ive been scouring CNCzone.com. great reasource. Couldnt say enough about it. Ive been a member since 2008 when my ideals of making a CNC were just that...ideas. Not deep pits to try to and make money bridges over.

I know you like that. I just made that one up.

Any way I ran across a link, which I found a link in, which led me to some other page, that eventually led me to this internet win.

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

That link there is internet gold and its going down in the history books...well at least the history books of my blog.  Anyway for you lazy people out there it's basically a picture book of the build Im about to start. It includes everything. How to assemble it. Which way the screws should face. The common pitfalls.

Speaking of pitfalls, as a DIYer I sometimes find myself in one when I over estimate my ability. A story about trying to build a crap ton of iPod audio out connectors comes to mind where I found out my soldering skills were less than I had needed at the time. With this being said I was thinking about buying my own steel plate in order to save another hundred bucks.

Hey, How hard can it be to drill a couple holes and a hundred bucks brews a lot of beer (BTW I brew beer as another one of my hobbies).

Now I may still do this but in addition to my own personal second thoughts the author of the aforementioned article laments several time about his decision in not purchasing the pre-drilled steel. Now with that in mind, I do have possible access to the Biosystems engineering departments machine shop....maybe...hopefully.

More to come as this unfolds but be on the lookout for pictures of a 50" UPS box on my front door any day now cause Im notorious for asking people to guess whats in boxes delivered to my house. It could be anything. Truck parts, Arduino junk, Hiking gear, or even the occasional **insert something crazy here**

As always, have nice day
^^Completely stolen from FPS russia