Reiyuki

2.5″ Mortal Kombat logo

New Controller almost finished.

Thought I’d share the progress.

The acrylic frame was made from a single sheet of acrylic from the hardware store.  A 20$ heat gun was used to make the plastic soft and bendable.  Each bend took maybe 5min to complete.  It was really not as hard as expected.

Another view

I jury-rigged the controller to the motors long enough to cut a front panel so I could mount the ports and switches.  The design was made with Autocad and was translated into cnc code with Lazycam.

A little hot glue to hold it nothing too fancy.  Still needs a little sanding/filing to smooth out the edges.

The buttons will eventually control things like Emergency stop and Feedrates, though they are not wired in yet.   The back panel still needs to be cut, too.

I don’t smoke, but my Xylotex does

Here’s the jist..   My old connectors (4pin molex) were not treating me very well, pins kept coming loose.  To resolve this, I decided to rewire the motors to RJ45 connectors/jacks.

Alas, I must have put the wires on improperly, as my  board made a high frequency whine, and 5 seconds later, a puff of smoke came from the board.  I pried off the heatsinks to find a dark burn on one axis of the drive.  Bummer.

I won’t make that mistake again, that’s for sure.  The xylotex website states 90$ for repair of the board, but I suppose an 8$ chip and some practice with SMD soldering wouldn’t hurt.
In the meantime, I ordered a replacement board, 4axis Xylotex.  It’s a little bigger, so I have to build a new chassis, but it will give me the option for 4axis whenever I decide to upgrade.  The 3axis can sit in a dark corner until I build a router table one of these days.

In the interim, it’s a good time to start forming a box and thoroughly clean the Taig.  It’s been a season since I’ve fired it up, and it’s a good a time as any to turn my finely calibrated machine out of whack.  I’ve been reading about resonance issues above 15ipm which may be solved by a damper (link here) which may also be looked at.

Tiny Littoral ship

These are pics taken from using an engraving bit. The lines are about 1/32″ thick. The entire ship is 2″ tall.

Controller rebuild

have been rebuilding cnc controller chassis, this time with an actual project box and better connectors, etc.



The previous model was screwed together boards with no connectors or anything. Everything was a rats-nest of wires plugged right into the board.

This one will Molex plugs for the stepper motors, 3.5mm headphone plugs for limit switches, a spindle relay, and an RPM sensor, probably all-in-one. Everything will be plug-and-play ^_^

In related matter, I recalibrated the driver board (tweak the amount of current going to motors), and it seems I’ve only been running my motors at 50% capacity the whole time. Lesson of the day, don’t use a panel meter when you have a multitester.

Should be up and running this weekend. Hopefully the heat will not be unbearable during it.

Weekend Wrapup

New enclosure for the electronics, as well as some nice pretty wiring conduit. Definitely better than it was before.

Old:

New:

Spent plenty of time working on a fixture plate. It will allow better mounting when the 2″ vise won’t work. Circuit boards, engraving, etc.

Many holes and much tapping later..

Friday fixins

Latest step was to mount some home switches to the mill. These little things will keep the mill from crashing into the chassis if it encounters some bad G-Code. These 3 switches are mounted on the X,Y,Z axes. The software corrects for the boundry on the other side of each axis.

I plugged in the pen mount and did a test with it.

Each round of the spiral is 1/32″ apart. Tiny.

Historic TAIG Post

I received the final parts for my CNC mill 3 days ago, and I figured I’d start by posting all the pics, parts, and documentation I have produced up through that day.

The first bits came in last week, in a few pieces below:

I had purchased a small lathe a while back and made a couple simple projects out of it while waiting for the CNC(mosty chess pieces out of aluminum).

Here’s the completed setup, minus the motors and controller. Kind of a dead-weight without those.

Here’s a small tool I made. I epoxied a pen to a piece of aluminum, then sawed, drilled, and tapped a slot of aluminum on the other side. The pen had it’s spring-load modified, so it will start to retract into the body when the pen force on the paper reaches a certain amount.

The motors/controller came, and I quickly put the rest together and fired it up:
http://youtube.com/watch?v=9mxTwRO-LOM
http://youtube.com/watch?v=STvcM2YlMRo

Very first cut with the mill. (Technically, I had the steps-per-inch set incorrectly, so those letters should have been the full height of the board.)

That’s it