Making a new CNC machine

[EL34]

Cut some more pieces for the new machine.
Made some long motor mount screws, drilled lots of holes in the frame to mount the top.
Added L angled side upright supports.
Got more bracing and gussets to cut yet.

Made a little movie of the Oak machine cutting parts.
Got rid of the annoying rotozip motor whine and adding some music.
Lower quality windows media file
http://www.el34world.com/Misc/Movies/CNC1.wmv

My CNC page
http://www.el34world.com/Misc/Cnc/CNC0.htm

[tubenit]

Man, that was actually really cool!!!!!!!!   [smiley=potion.gif]

I found that to a nice blend of something interesting, informative and humorous. The music was the perfect mix of drama.

I especially liked the special effects and the chase scene! I hope there will be at least one sequel.
 [smiley=uzi2.gif]

 ;)

[Dynaflow]

 I'm glad to see you have your priorities straight in making useful tools. :D

http://www.el34world.com/Misc/Cnc/images/IMG_0623.jpg
 [smiley=gluck.gif]

Regards,

Dyna

[EL34]

Yes, the beer tool, maybe the best tool in the shop.

That one was for my girlfriend, it has her nickname on it.

Mine has a very tiny engraving of a bicycle.

[Hemi526]

excellent

[EL34]

Thanks guys.
I have too many hobbies and CNC'ing is now one of my top 3 hobbies.
It's really cool to design complex parts on CAD and then see them being cut by a machine.

Added some new pics today.
Made corner gussets and added limit switches.

I'll have some more new progress pics posted tomorrow on the web site of what I just finished this evening.
http://www.el34world.com/Misc/Cnc/CNC0.htm

[madison]

Doug, that's insanely cool.
Any chance of seeing something made for the Hoffman amp parts catalog?

[EL34]

The board mask are made on the cnc, but all it has to do is drill a bunch of holes.

I doubt I will make things to sell. I have ruined more than one hobby by making it a business.

The thing that makes it a fun hobby is I dream up one off things and then make them.

Making the same thing over and over again is what got me out of building amps.

[tubenit]

I looked at your CNC machine photos and explanations.

That is absolutely remarkable! Very cool. I am impressed you are able to do that. Looks to be a fun project.

With respect, Tubenit

[madison]

The thing that makes it a fun hobby is I dream up one off things and then make them.

Making the same thing over and over again is what got me out of building amps.

I hear ya.
I tend to get bored as soon as I find out how something works, and then move on to the next.
Energy and flight are on my short list.

Some may call it A.D.D.
I tend to think of it as a thirst for knowledge.

Time for a beer, wish I had a good opener.

[RicharD]

Yes, this DIY CNC stuff is very inspiring.  We ramped up the other night and increased our cut speed.  Unfortunately, the Y axis got out of whack about 3/4 of the way through the job.  It's painfully obvious we need bigger/better steppers, which dominoes into needing a better/more powerful controller.

I'm curious if you have feedback on your machine?  Obviously we don't.  I may plug you for some info when we decide to upgrade our machine.  I think a knee mill may come first.

I completely understand and agree about hobby vs. work.  It's fun to build 1 and 2 of a kind things, but it gets boring fast when you do the same thing over and over.  If we ever have to do a large run, we'll farm it out to someone with proper equipment.

[billcreller]

I never minded doing 4 or 5 examples of a piece, if I could find a way of improving the design, then tossing the early parts.  Luckily I have access to a CNC rig, but I can usually make a One-off quicker on a Bridgeport.
  It has to be a hobby though.  Production sucks.

[EKDENTON]

Hey EL I like the wooden CNC. Looks like it is a lot of fun.

Have you taught it how to play music yet? Check this....

&feature=related

[EL34]

No music yet, just a loud whine that is muffled through ear plugs.

I made a finger joint jig for the CNC and made a couple CD/DVD boxes.
http://www.el34world.com/Misc/Cnc/CNCproject5.htm

[EKDENTON]

Nice! Is that the new machine or the wood one?  Did you build your cnc  from a set of plans?

[EL34]

I have a ton of info and pics on the new machine here.
http://www.el34world.com/Misc/Cnc/CNC0.htm

I designed it in my head and built it from scratch.

[EKDENTON]

Hey that is pretty cool.  I like how you have your BOB and drivers inside the computer. Yours is quite different than what I am doing. Looks like a nice design.


I am kinda at a standstill waiting on laser cutt parts for my gantry right now. Once I get further along I will post a photo and so you can see what this one  looks like.

[EL34]

Cool, love to see pics of home made machines.
Let me know when you have some.

[RicharD]

Here's a picture of ISOTone's machine cutting out my chassis.

[EL34]

Cool, that looks like a messy job

[EKDENTON]

Hi Doug,
Say how did you wire your limit or homming switches? I am going to be using proximity switches for homming and in case something bad happens and the gantry comes derailed. The wiring layout they have at the website is from one of the users and to me I can't see that it would work as drawn.  Reason is that if any of the relays trip the other two relays are still NO and no signal from common to the BOB. I will post a picture maybe it makes more sense to you than me. Could you look at this and see if you think it would work?
thanks

[EL34]

My probotix board has separate ouputs for x,y,z limit switches.
I have NC switches for each axis.
Each axis is in series

So x has two switches in series, same with y and z.
Mach3 lets me setup which switch direction is home.
So x- is home, not x+

[EKDENTON]

That is pretty much what it looks like that I have. The directions on my break out board say that there are 4 inputs for switches or optical interupters, and that you can use NO or NC. One of those I will be using for pause/resume in case I need to take a leak in the middle of a job :)  That leaves me three that I can wire the way you have yours wired.

I got a little confused looking at his wiring layout. He says he has his working wired like that. I think it needs to be like yours and have each axis going from common to a seperate pin out on the board. I looks to me like the only way he could get a closed circut the way he has his is if all three proximity switches tripped all three relays. Guess if he had drawn the relays as NC rather than NO it would have made more sense to me.

[EL34]

All the commons leaving the switches are one wire that returns to the board.

You want NC switches, it's more fail safe. There always has to be a signal present, if not, a limit switch has been triggered.

If you have NO switches and you break a wire, it's the same thing as a NO switch and your limit will fail. A switch not hooked up is the same thing as a NO switch.

[PRR]

> if any of the relays trip the other two relays are still NO and no signal from common to the BOB.

Depends what "pin 15" senses.

If I assume pin 15 is wired through a resistor to a non-ground voltage, it can work. The detector looks to see if pin15 is essentially ground. If pin15 is not-ground, panic.

Then a break in any of R1 R2 R3 will cause a panic (presumably stop all action).

However I can't make this fit with what I can make out of the fuzz for the prox-switch "Wiring" details. We presumably want the relay "on" when the gantry is away from the end-stops. Then the prox-switches must be "Normally Closed (NC), and go open as they approach the magnet/light at the end-stop.

However seems like full safety needs 6 end-stop switches? You can shove the bit through the table or throw it at the ceiling. Mechanical stops prevent this, but the motor will keep trying until it smokes.

Also seems like the relays could be left out, unless pin15 needs substantial current.

As Doug says, three separate inputs may be simpler. However not essential. If some thing is wrong, you don't immediately care WHICH thing is wrong.... stop NOW and let the human check it out.

[EL34]

I use all 3 inputs x, y and z so I can also have separate home switches for each axis.

The X- direction is a limit switch, but it is also the X axis home switch.

Same with the other two axis.
The Y- direction is a limit switch, but it is also the Y axis home switch.
The Z- direction is a limit switch, but it is also the Z axis home switch.

You can zero the table when you fire up Mach 3 by saying,
Go to home for all 3 axis.

The machine will find and then trigger each home switch and then back off the switch enough to stop triggering the switch.
Then Mach3 will call each of those positions X=0, Y=0 and Z=0.

Now your table is at home for all 3 axis and the Mach3 shows 0,0,0 as the machine coordinates.

You don't have to have 3 home switches, you can series all the switches and just have limit switches.

[EKDENTON]

Okay I figured it out. I will be using 3 NO sesors(one for each axis), wired to three NO relays that have the contacts in series from common to one of the programable  pinouts on the breakout board. Once the sensors are  powered up they will go into a closed state because they are seeing the rail in close proximity, and therefore closing the relay. When the sensor gets to the end of the rail there is a hole drilled in the rail, below the sensor.  When  the distance between any of the sensors and the track change , that sensor goes back to an open state and opens the  relay that it is connected to. There is one sensor for each axis. Mach homes one axis at a time so supposidly I can use just one of the programable pinouts for all three of the sensors. They have some up and running like this already.
I couldn't figure out how it would work with the relays open like the photo above but I forgot that the sensors are NO and when they see the rails they go closed.

Hey Doug, this Mach programing and cnc stuff is almost as interesting a guitar amps :) :)

[EL34]

Actually, this is heresy, but I find a bit more interesting.  :o

I have been doing amps so long and have so many of them, I am a bit burned out on amps. I don't need any more of them stacking up and gathering dust.

I always have to have something new I am learning about to keep my brain from going soft. I get bored doing the same thing aver and over and that's why I have so mant hobbies.

I like things that there doesn't seem to be any limits on, like guitar playing.
Computer programming/home automation always keep my interest cause it's always so cool to make that damn machine do crap for me.

[EKDENTON]

If you go to this link and click on the guitar body cnc there is a short video of cutting a cnc guitar blank. That and making my amp cabs is what I am mostely interested in. Making signs and other things would be alot of fun also. I liked the lexan projects you did, I guess there are alot of things that you can use the cnc router for.
Fun video, it really gets with it on the guitar  body cavities.

http://www.k2cnc.com/FAQ_GuitarMaking.asp

guess I am guilty of heresy also, building a wood routing machine for my steel company LOL. When I get tired of the wood I will convert it to plasma cutting

[RicharD]

Hey Doug,

Have you done any text engraving with your machine?  I'm toying with the idea of making a fixture to attach a dremel.  Am I wasting my time?

[EL34]

I have engraved aluminum, wood and plastic and it comes out great.
I did several reverse engraved faceplates for some of my homebrew amps.

I just use my regular machine tool, not a dremel and a 60 degree single flute engraving bit.

see my cnc projects page for examples.
http://www.el34world.com/Misc/Cnc/CNC0.htm

[Hemi526]

  I have been watching this thread since the beginning and its very interesting to me.
  Doug in an earlier post on this thread you said "I always have to have something new I am learning about to keep my brain from going soft. I get bored doing the same thing aver and over and that's why I have so mant hobbies.

I like things that there doesn't seem to be any limits on, like guitar playing."

  I am the same and thats exactly one of the reasons I took up guitar.
  I think I would like to build one of these CNCs. Is there a paticular software your using to run it? Are all of the parts you use hand made (other than the motors of course). Is there anywhere in the web that I can get more information on building one?

Thanks, Mike

[EL34]

Hemi,
My CNC page link up above has links at the bottom to software, hardware and the CNC zone forum, which is huge and all about making and using cnc's

You need 3 pieces of softwrae
CAD program to draw designs
Cam program to turn the CAD into machine code
Machine controller program like Mach3 that runs the computer that in turn runs the CNC machine

[Hemi526]

 Thanks Doug, I will check it out. Are you engraving face plates for a fee now? If so I have one I need to have done.

[RicharD]

What I learned the hard way last night:

Check that your material is actually cut square.  I felt like a 6th grader learning about parallelograms.   :-[

[EL34]

Are you engraving face plates for a fee now? If so I have one I need to have done.

no, not for $100 each even
It's a huge amount of work and this is a hobby that I won't turn into a business.

Butter, I always incude a perimeter profile cut in my machine ops.
that way, the piece is always square

[DummyLoad]

Are you engraving face plates for a fee now? If so I have one I need to have done.

no, not for $100 each even
It's a huge amount of work and this is a hobby that I won't turn into a business.

Butter, I always incude a perimeter profile cut in my machine ops.
that way, the piece is always square

we usually do as well... however, this piece was too tall to make a perimeter cut on. butter just didn't check for square before i loaded and ran the cut job. fortunately the piece is still usable.  :)

it looks like we'll be doing something else for chassis' anyway, as the only supplier i could find that did stock a 2"x8"x.125" rectangular extrusion no longer carries it.   back to drawing board...  :-/

[Hemi526]

  No problem Doug. Its just another good reason for me to build my own  ::)

[EKDENTON]

Iv'e made some progress on my cnc machine. Takes awhile to make one of these. ;) I am waiting for some machined parts but have most every thing else I need. I did my motor testing a couple weeks ago and all that is good to go. I still have a little wiring for my proximity sensors but all the rest of my wiring works just needs to be run to the motors and router when I am finished with the table. I have the gantry and z car finished and I am working on making a box for my computer that will control the dust and still alow for cooling fans to work. I am getting anxious to see it cutt.

[EKDENTON]

Here is my control board when I was testing my motors and pause resume estop pushbutton station. This is the board that is in the red box behind the table. My computer box will be next to it and my LCD and keyboard will be closer to the table. I am looking at getting a shuttle pro which will reach all the way around the table and alow you to jog the router from a position that is easier to see from.

[Ritchie200]

Are you engraving face plates for a fee now? If so I have one I need to have done.

no, not for $100 each even
It's a huge amount of work and this is a hobby that I won't turn into a business.

Butter, I always incude a perimeter profile cut in my machine ops.
that way, the piece is always square

we usually do as well... however, this piece was too tall to make a perimeter cut on. butter just didn't check for square before i loaded and ran the cut job. fortunately the piece is still usable.  :)

it looks like we'll be doing something else for chassis' anyway, as the only supplier i could find that did stock a 2"x8"x.125" rectangular extrusion no longer carries it.   back to drawing board...  :-/

I may be preaching to the choir, if so, tell me to shut it.  Just buy a little dial indicator with a mag base that has jointed arms.  Stick it on your head (Machine Head....dur....dur....dur, dur....dur....dee..dur...sorry, could not resist! ;D) and run it across your part to check squareness/square it up.  It only takes a second.  Your controller does have a jog on it for each axis?
Jim

ps If you are running several of the same parts, set up a square backstop and an endstop.  Put your parts in against the backstop, slide them over against your endstop and toe clamp (or secure with whatever you are using).  It should be plenty close to repeat for general work within .020-.030".

[RicharD]

Preach away, I've earned it.  The sad part is we knew the material was short by an eight inch so I adjusted the job.  I went to the trouble of measuring the material but didn't check square.  No excuse.  We just got all excited and threw caution to the wind.  The irritating part is we paid top dollar for this material and it's supposed to be precision cut.  furthermore, 1 side of the box was completely beat, as in looked like fork lift damage.  To add insult to injury, they have no more of this product and we can't find another source unless we buy like 100 feet.

Given all this, I decided to go ahead and run with the build.  I started assembly last night.  I don't think this imperfection will effect the sound too drastically.   ;)

[Ritchie200]

Noboby will see that!  Nice work!

If you are dealing with a regional supplier ask if he is selling this item to a local shop.  I'm sure he will refer since ultimately it may result in him selling more.  You can then contact the shop.  OR ask him about another region's activity with this product.  You may have to talk with the manager for this info.  Also look online for suppliers.  More than one way to skin a cat - it just may take some legwork.

Gotta ask, what is that wood box to the right with all the screw terminals on it?  A big breadboard?

Good luck!
Jim

Jim

[RicharD]

That's exactly what it is.  I'm in the process of taking this circuit off of the bread-board and putting it in a chassis.  I've already robbed the iron and a few resistors so the circuit in this pic is down.

[Ritchie200]

THAT is too cool!  I guess you really have to be careful where you lean on this one!  No stray cats jumping around the house?  At least any more.....!  Nice work again! 8-) 8-)

Jim

[supro66]

Here is an idea I have been thinking about a good job for a CNC I work at BOEING but no acess to a CNC machine

This is for a Lap Steel Guitar some people use a Palm Pedals
http://bigsbypalmpedal.com/

 to change the pitch of the strings some time the strings break

THEY NEED ROLLERS ON THE NUT

So here is my idea

I would like to get some made and sell them on my site

http://www.geocities.com/insp/SUPRO6420.html

[billcreller]

That's a good set-up Supro.  I've built some lap steels, and getting the string buzz to go away is always a pain.  The nut usually has to be lubed with something to let the strings slide thru easier, etc.

[supro66]

What do you think of this one

http://www.rockler.com/product.cfm?page=19441&utm_source=NL&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=V9758

[tubesornothing]

Cool little machine.  All depends what you are wanting to make with it.  Guitars? Engraving? Making Chassis?  Cabinets? Logos?  I don't think it has enough surface area to fit one.  15-3/4" x 31-1/2" is the size of the table not the size of the cut.    On the product manufacturers web site, they say cut size is 13" x 24" x 4.5"  It looks like the Y axis uses unsupported rails.  Not a big deal for a small machine - its a way to keep costs down.  Can't tell if X axis is unsupported or not.  Although they say resolution is .001", its repeatability that matters - they dont list it.  Probably is OK for wood working.

[tubesornothing]

Ekdenton, I notice four geckos in your control box, whats the 4 axis on the mechmate for?