#Shenzhen #CNC #video from #StrangeParts #toread
on 02026-04-22Jacques Mattheij (#jacquesm) did a #CNC #manufacturing startup in the 80s which used stepper motors instead of servos, which turned it into “the startup from hell”. “These people knew their stuff and when they found out that our machine was using steppers, not servos they were immediately skeptical. Rightly so. Step-loss, the situation where you have told a stepper to make a move but it hasn’t had been observed before but not on the scale that we’re talking about here. (...) At Fred’s house things were not all that rosy either, his wife tried to torch their boat, and nearly succeeded. Round about this time my wife left me, and she was completely right about doing so. I’d been working day and night for almost as long as we’d been together by then thinking that I might get us out of the financial hole we were in if only I worked just a bit harder. (...) They ended up ditching the ST (good for them) dropped the steppers in favor of servos and rebuilt the whole thing on the PC, the software that I wrote was translated line-by-line to give them their first version which formed the basis of the stuff they still sell to this day.
Years later Fred showed up at my offices in IJmuiden to ask if I felt like doing it all again, from a copy of the software that he’d kept after selling the company.
I declined the offer, he also confessed that he’d torched that factory so I threw him out.”
on 02025-07-23#video of #bootstrapping a #CNC mill under AU$500 with a focus on rigidity and a small footprint with #3D-printing, using a non-gantry design to improve rigidity. A steel Allthread skeleton is wrapped in 3-D printed forms for the concrete, PLA with seams sealed with superglue. I don’t really understand how the threaded inserts in the concrete work; maybe the screw presses the 3-D printed plastic out against the concrete walls? He uses a vibrating sander as his vibrator for the concrete pour; after initial one-hour set, scraping with a spatula removes excess concrete. He says “non-gantry” but he’s using two sets of two parallel linear rails for the X and Y axes; it’s just that he’s moving the workpiece with anti-backlash-spring-loaded leadscrews rather than the toolhead. He’s also just using NEMA 17 steppers instead of real servos. #manufacturing
on 02025-06-16#video by #Not-an-Engineer about #bootstrapping #CNC #manufacturing. About half talking-head filler. #toread
on 02025-05-29#video on #Hyperspace-Pirate #bootstrapping DIY #CNC upgrades. He drilled the aluminum parts (on his drill press, I assume) with locator jigs made with #3D-printing; that’s almost 3-D printing of aluminum, right? Two nuts on every leadscrew, separated by a nut block, can be preloaded (with four screws in each nut) to reduce leadscrew backlash. His gantry machine frame is largely #8020 rail held together with 3-D printed PLA brackets. He says FreeCAD is very intuitive and easy to use.
on 02024-12-27#Bitluni assembling a US$140 #CNC mill from a kit four years ago. After some trial and error and breaking a D-bit from having too low a speed and too high a speed, and an end mill from a mistake I didn’t understand, he does eventually succeed in #manufacturing a “PCB” from copper-clad. #video
on 02024-12-27#video on #bootstrapping a DIY #CNC #machining mill under US$100 by #Hyperspace-Pirate, somehow including multiple-start leadscrews, brass nuts for them, etc. He’s #3D-printing the brackets to hold the aluminum together. Basically a bunch of aluminum extrusions (largely 8020 style held onto the brackets with T-nuts) to make a bedslinger gantry, which he can now mill aluminum on. The slinging is all happening with leadscrews instead of timing belts. He’s using NEMA steppers with shaft couplers, lots of Allen screws, precision-ground rods with linear ball bearings running on them, etc. Not super practical for poor people! The simple rectangular design maximizes compliance, which is counterproductive. And it’s going to lose steps and ruin parts from the end effector side loading. “I’m using a 24V 20A power supply which is way beyond what the machine needs but it’s what I had sitting around.” He’s running GRBL on an Arduino Uno, with A4988 breakout boards on an Arduino shield on top of it to drive the steppers. For whatever reason he decided to run the spindle off a 555 PWM driving an IRLZ34N MOSFET. He’s using UGS (Universal Gcode Platform) on his laptop to send the G-code to GRBL. He engraves and routes some wood with a ⅛” endmill. Rigidity problems initially prevent cutting aluminum. Budget: US$30 for spindle motor and collet (1.5A), US$24 for the build plate (¼” aluminum), US$11 linear bearings, US$10 extra endmills, total US$75.
on 02024-09-24in-browser #CNC G-code simulator for milling wood
on 02024-09-19#video on #manufacturing a Le Corbusier style chaise longue from 19mm-thick #Portland #concrete reinforced with alkali-resistant chopped glass fibers and an alkali-resistant glass fiber scrim and an acrylic filler, laid over a #CNC routed MDF form.
on 02024-09-18#video on #CNC helical interpolation to mill holes in angle iron #manufacturing #toread #Abom79
on 02024-09-10#video on #CNC #machining a bolt circle with "conversational programming" #manufacturing #toread #Abom79
on 02024-09-10#TPAI #video #toread about #manufacturing his #CNC plasma cutter
on 02024-07-06#TPAI #video #manufacturing a #CNC milling machine from mostly scrap metal. He’s using the crankshaft timing pulley from a VW Golf 2 1.8 8V engine to couple his head-sized NEMA 34 junkyard stepper motors to his junkyard Acme leadscrews for the Y-axis, because the pulleys cost US$5. The pulleys have a size-L toothed belt with a 14.5mm bore and four M8 threads around the outside, one offset by 5°. He drills the pulleys out larger to fit onto the leadscrew shafts, then makes an aluminum driving adapter to bolt the pulleys to so he can couple them to the shaft. For coupling the other pulleys to the 14mm stepper shafts, he also drilled them out bigger, then made a brass tube adaptor to which the pulleys are held with three setscrews. For his X axis he’s using a junkyard ballscrew. He mentions that ATX power supply #electronics have their -12V rail connected to their enclosures and to the ground wire, which I didn’t think was correct, but anyway he removed that connection in order to be able to use four of them in series to get 48V. For sheet metal bending without a brake, he clamped his sheet metal to the edge of a table and whaled on it with a 4×4 board. He demonstrates the use of his existing homemade CNC plasma cutter. Finally he mounts a 2000-watt wood router onto the large gantry he’s built and uses it to route some beech butcher block and some aluminum plate, and even 4mm-deep grooves in steel (using a tungsten carbide bit). He mentions the need to minimize the number of piercing operations for CNC plasma cutting because of how they wear out the nozzle quickly, a consideration I hadn’t realized.
on 02024-07-06#self-replicating #Maslow #2d-cutting #CNC with a gallery of open furniture designs
on 02023-12-27"Root CNC", another 3-axis or 4-axis #CNC router built with #3D-printing, stepper motors, and ballscrews
on 02021-11-03https://archive.fo/gsNj8 #PrintNC #CNC Wiki
on 02021-11-03https://www.adambender.info/post/2017/03/25/epoxy-granite-machine-frame-how-to making an epoxy “granite” #CNC machine frame. Missing most of the images. He settled on 80% sand, 20% epoxy, and black dye, shaken with a shaker for 30 minutes in aluminum molds with a wax (paraffin?) mold release.
on 02021-11-03"printNC" is another 3-axis #CNC router with parts made with #3D-printing on a steel gantry, CC-BY-4.0
on 02021-11-03https://archive.fo/a8LV8 Max Fischer and others talk about his US$1100 #CNC build, covering most of the most important parts of #machining: Heidehein glass scales, ODrive, the thermal expansion coefficient of aluminum, etc.
on 02021-11-03Max Fischer’s notes on building a #CNC machine with 3-D printed parts based on Ivan Miranda’s design, clamping a Makita handheld wood router onto a gantry. #3D-printing
on 02021-11-03#CNC building tips, including jacquesm’s hard-won knowledge about steppers missing steps
on 02021-01-19"OrangeCNC" is a version of #LinuxCNC that runs on the #Orange-Pi, a Raspberry-Pi-like SBC which has BeagleBone-like real-time microcontrollers integrated into the main SoC, so they can do things like stepper control. #CNC
on 02020-12-21Fictiv’s #CNC capabilities include 3-axis milling, 5-axis milling, and turning.
on 02017-03-11this dude #CNC cut bone-dry clay (for #ceramics?) with his ShopBot, a 3-axis vertical milling machine. He was going to fire it, but that was 2013, so I guess he didn’t.
on 02017-01-05Opendesk is a #2d-cutting design exchange website (by the company Fabbed, which runs FabHub.io) with many open-source #furniture designs to #CNC route out of (mostly) 18mm Baltic birch plywood. Furniture makers listed on the site (who can thus submit quotes in response to enquiries from clients) pay a 38% markup: 8% for the designer, 30% for Opendesk. Currently they have 37 designs by 15 designers, and over 48 makers (“digital fabricators”) listed (probably around 100), including Pioppo Carpintería here in Buenos Aires, something like a dozen in France, 15 in England. tav's project
on 02016-10-14One of #jacquesm’s photos of his #CNC windmill #plasma-cutting machine from 2008
on 02016-10-14Discussion thread on #Maslow #CNC. Usually they do ⅛” (3mm) passes so 4 passes to cut ½” (12mm) plywood
on 02016-10-14"Maslow" #CNC source repositories, some cc-by-nc-sa, so not open source, others GPLv3, others PD
on 02016-10-14#video of the #Maslow #CNC #2d-cutting router for 4×8 plywood, basically a #hanging-plotter using #25 roller chain on a 200:1-reduced DC motor with a relatively coarse shaft encoder on the motor side of the gearbox, with a couple of bricks weighting down the router. 8148 steps/rev encoder, ± 1/64th inch (.4 mm) or better, 48 inches/minute. Not all open source, but all at least cc-by-nc-sa. By BarSmith, aka BarbourSmith. US$350, not including the router or bricks.
on 02016-10-14#manufacturing a #2d-cutting coffee-table design with a #CNC router; design is cc by-nc-sa, and DXF files are available.
on 02016-09-02More about #laser-cutter #CNC #manufacturing, including more about corner divots (inside divots, outside divots, and point divots aka overcut corners), edge laps, spiral spring seat cushions, etc. #2d-cutting
on 02016-08-16Guerrilla guide to #CNC #machining, mold making, and resin casting, by Michal Zalewski (Michał Załewski?, aka #lcamtuf @coredump.cx). #manufacturing #introduction
on 02016-08-11Hmm, a #CNC milling machine made out of circuit board materials (copper-clad fiber-reinforced epoxy). Preorder cost (as of 2016-08-11) is US$449. #hardware #machining
on 02016-06-29You can indeed control stepper #motors from a StarTech PCIe parallel port adaptor card under LinuxCNC with EPP mode. #hardware #cnc #machining
on 02016-05-06dxf2gcode generates G-code cutter paths and includes cutter compensation. Lots of #CNC #machining tips in the comments.
on 02016-01-14very basic #introduction to #CNC #machining
on 02016-01-06how to design panels to make on a #laser-cutter or other #CNC #manufacturing machine to be assembled into things, including inside corner divots, clips, finger joints, box joints, coplanar joints (including fully interlocking bulbed versions), Kanelba hinges, #flexures including the Snijlab living hinge (aka the lattice hinge), and whatnot. #2d-cutting
on 02015-11-12#Polar-3D is a #CNC #3D-printer using polar coordinates to get multiple print heads, which don’t have to move, and avoid linear actuators and linear bearings entirely, except for a Z-axis which raises and lowers the whole table, including the motors. Also, the platters provide precisely known movement for a laser #3D scanner, thus avoiding #photometric-stereo and the like. #video #manufacturing
on 02015-08-13another cheap #CNC machine made with drawer slides for the linear translation, and mostly lots of plywood with some square tube stock to stiffen it. Big NEMA steppers though. Hose-clamp U-joints made with fuel line. Noisy as hell. He’s got a Black-and-Decker clone of a Dremel tied down with hose clamps in the middle. More Allthread for the linear actuators. Powering the motors off cat-5 cable. #video
on 02015-08-13Norbert Heinz’s page about his very frugal large homemade #CNC machine.
on 02015-08-13#video demonstrating and explaining the construction of what surely must be the world’s most frugal large homemade #CNC #machining #hardware. Roughly 100μm repeatability over 50×50 cm. He uses threaded bars (Allthread) lubricated with used motor oil for the linear actuator, bare cartridge bearings as wheels. He uses low-power and therefore very slow (2mm/s) DC motors with an optical quadrature encoder (perhaps salvaged from a printer) for feedback, controlled by H-bridges from Arduino. Plastic tube couplings for U-joints on the threaded rods. A goofy little C program on his Linux box to control the Arduino. Calibrated against an inkjet printer. Engraves glass with a diamond milling cutter mounted in a flexible coupling to void breaking things. Cuts a Styrofoam wing cross-section with a soldering iron. Cuts gears from acrylic or aluminum with a milling cutter (like a Dremel mounted with hose clamps). Superb how-to video. By Norbert Heinz.
on 02015-08-13