Desktop CNC Part 2: No blue smoke

Welcome to the second installment of my CNC build. Today we will tackle building the controller assembly.
I'll admit that I was very leery of letting go of a few hundred dollars on a controller kit and motors. That feeling was quickly subdued when I opened the box. The quality of this kit is second to none.
Here are some of the unboxing photos.



The quality and care that went into this kit is really quite something else and the minute I opened the box I was excited to start building.
Now with most things I build I start with the instructions. I've been burnt too many times thinking "Ahh I can do this, who needs the instructions" and had left over parts and a poorly built product. So the instructions are the first step. Reading over all the steps first to get an idea of what I was into I found that it would be a reasonably quick build and to the basement workshop I went.

Thankfully the day before I had replaced the ballast in the lights above the bench and the scene was set and basking in the humming white light from above and I set to work. Fan going to suck away the solder and flux fumes and a nice hot soldering iron. On that note I really need to get a new one. Mine has had its day. The total build time was about 3 hours, taking my time and making sure it was all done right the first time. I fired it up per the instructions with a small power pack and thankfully there were no pops, clicks and no blue smoke. Voltages measured correctly as well. Success !
Once I had it all put together I took it over to a good friend of mine, Joel to check it out as he was interested in building a machine of his own. He's a master maker and hardware hacker of anything he can get his hands on. Check out his EV Ranger build. http://joelclemens.colinr.ca/Electric_Ranger/index.html
Now here is where I get to gloat a bit and flaunt my own glory. He asked me where I bought the board from, I had the great pleasure of telling him it was a kit that I just put together and he was rather surprised with my soldering job. Yes I know this is shameless self inflation, but I am proud of the job I did and even more proud that someone else found it decent as well.

Unfortunately my camera got more that a little wet in North Carolina while on vacation. Ocean water and cameras don't mix very well. I don't have any further photographs of the construction as a result. If or when I decide to take the board out of the case it's currently in I'll update with detailed pictures of the finished soldered board.

Once it was all completed I found in my piles of spare junk an old 5 1/4" dual bay external SCSI box. It was the perfect case. Fan already installed, switch and power plug as well. I set into gutting all of the parts from it down to a husk and doing some small cuts and bends and adding a few holes to mount parts.
Here is a couple of shots of the assembled kit, transformer, fuses, upgraded fan from case one to the kit one at 24v and and all motor lines and data line installed.



One of my buddies from work, James who moved in across the street, thankfully came over and took some shots of the completed unit for me as I am currently camera less. Cheers James !
Below you can see some of the motor shots. The tape on each is to designate the motor axis. Don't forget to label the motor axis lines properly when you install them. Do this on each end to save yourself some hassles. More tape is on each shaft so I can tell which direction the motor is spinning and the speed at which they are moving.



The motors are hooked up with some discount jumpers. They don't carry much current but in this situation the motors have no load on them and won't draw enough to melt the lines.
There is one correction I need to make and that is a larger heatsink for the driver IC's. When the motors are under load the heatsink that is on there now isn't going to cut it and the one provided in the kit is too large to fit in my case. It's time to get creative on building a one off heatsink.

Here is where I am going to stop for now. At this point I have everything setup and ready to go for the computer interface.
Next time I'll show you the computer setup, settings specific for this controller and motor setup and I'll get some videos of the motors running.
-Colin

Desktop CNC Part 1: A step into the new revolution

So you've spent hours, days even in CAD crafting your amazing new part or design. Now you have to cut it and doing it by hand is not an option so it's time to get it CNC cut. The realm of precisely cutting your design using a CNC machine has been designated to big budgets, large shops and expensive machines that required an apprenticeship and college diploma before even beginning to think about running it.
If you are like me you've dreamed of being able to do this but don't have the experience or money to essentially dive into what could be a new carrier, let alone the space for the typical CNC machine. Well thanks to a new revolution of DIY CNC tabletop machines you can now begin to prototype those parts you've always wanted to cut.
What you'll find is a growing community of people tinkering in their garages and basements and innovating on a daily basis. It's a throw back to the early days of personal computing of the mid to late 1970's. Amateur computer enthusiasts building the systems they wanted and starting a whole new industry called personal computing. Those personal computers would become available in store by the early to mid 1980's and much like those times I hope to see personal CNC machines and 3D printers available en mass in the next ten to fifteen years on the store shelf. Hopefully sooner. The stage we are at right now; we are still in the early cottage industry phase of people producing kits and parts for people to assemble their own machine, but there are no cheap readily available off the shelf desktop size machines on the market. With every machine built and every innovation discovered we will get closer to the off the shelf sub $1000 machine available in store along side the variety of printers and scanners and fax machines.

If you are like me, you can't wait and are determined to build your own and be a part of this growing community of basement hackers and genius makers.

In the next coming articles you'll see my machine from beginning to end along with the problems, solutions and progress as I build my very own tabletop CNC machine.
The goal is to build a machine to fit on my workbench in roughly a 3x3' footprint and cut parts using a spindle or hand held rotary tool and to be under $1000 Canadian. Additionally I would like to add a 3D print head to have both subtractive and additive methods of prototyping.

To start, I've decided to go with a build found on http://www.instructables.com/
(http://www.instructables.com/id/How-to-Make-a-Three-Axis-CNC-Machine-Cheaply-and-/) The user oomlout has graciously posted an amazing step by step article along with a full assembly manual, diagrams, schematics and cut diagrams in various formats, even one to be printed on 8.5x11 paper for cut templates.

To start off lets go with the easy part. The free stuff. If you look hard enough you should be able to find something similar, scrounge, trade, call in those favors and you should be able to cut some costs.

1) The Computer.
For this I have a surplus Dell Pentium 4 computer from my office. There had been a half dozen broken machines dating back to Pentium 100's up in the attic and I happened to be in the right place at the right time when the big boss said go take it and make it all disappear. We need the space. So I pieced together bits and parts and built a working system. Three actually. Two of which needed new capacitors soldered to the motherboard. Less than $5 in repairs. Perfect score!

Cost: $5

2) The Software.
www.linuxcnc.org
This is a custom version of Ubuntu Linux designed for the hobby CNC culture. Albeit a bit dated version wise, it is still able to be updated and I've had no compatibility problems with the various versions so far. It is prepackaged with EMC2, a powerful program for cutting your parts and you'll also have access to the wide variety of free software on the Ubuntu distribution should you need anything else. If you are new to Linux or have never used it, just dive in and have no fear. Ubuntu is a very friendly install with a large community of very helpful people on the net.

Cost:$0

3) The Electronics
For this I chose a popular setup from www.hobbycnc.com
I've gone with the Hobby CNC Pro kit with 208oz motors. All said and done, $310 after shipping plus $31.65 in border fees at the post office.
The main transformer was $65 US and just a hair over $100 Canadian after shipping and border fees.
Cost: $441.65

4) The Hardware
This part is still in the planning stages for cutting parts and gathering the required hardware.

Remaining: $553.35 left in the budget.

Stay tuned for the rest of the build as I progress along.
The next chapter will be The Electronics.
-Colin.

PMS the next generation

To continue on an old topic, the Playstation Media Server (PMS)
It is now available on all major platforms.
Recently I've installed this on Windows 7, no hitches save for having the wrong version of VLC installed. Make sure you have v0.98 running and don't update it or things go a bit wonky.
The same goes for the server running on OSX Snow Leopard.
I recently installed it on my Hackintosh (I own the cd's for my MacBook, semi legal install) and it runs flawlessly. It even has built in support for multi-core systems, iPhoto and iTunes libraries.
I'd recomend it to any one wanting to play HD/SD media from their PC to their PS3, Xbox, 360 and a range of other devices.
If you have any specific questions about my setup or ways around a problem feel free to ask.
As before, the PMS forums have proven to be a great resource as well.
-Colin