Recent content by steve355

I had to post about this because it’s so unbelievably exciting. Making moulding plane blades is a pretty miserable business - it usually takes me a morning for a pair. So I spent the last 2 weeks building a CNC machine. I can now make plane blades out of hardboard. This is a #14 round, #4...

Thanks Ollie, yeah, basically working. Long way to go still though!

Myrtle is the wife’s cat.

My first GCODE. You may laugh but it’s been a long journey to get this far. I spent the day today mostly m ironing out issues with steps and related to the fact that it’s basically a metric machine, but I want to run it in imperial. 1 inch is 25.4 times 1 mm, which is quite enough to cause a...

That’s a really interesting point Phill, thanks. Yes, there are two packers, both of which could be designed out. Once I’ve got a bit further with it, I’ll look into that as I try to make it more rigid.

Well, it’s kind of done. All wired up and linked up today. Lots of glitches ironed out, but now all 3 axes, and spindle, the hand controller and the probe are doing what they should. Tomorrow I’ll try running some real Gcode. I might even try cutting out some wood or plastic plane blades. I...

Amazon is the go to place for reliable fast delivery, I agree. I’ve spent a fortune on their courier service on this project. There’s a basic EMI filter in my case, and much of the wiring has been done using shielded cables. I hope it’ll be ok. I’ve read about emi issues with Cnc and it seems...

Couple of steps forward today…. First, my shim stock came, so I made a shim for the carriage…. If it wasn’t for eBay, I’m not sure I would find 15 thou shim stock. It’s nice and tight now. Next, I wired the VFD, set it up, and got the spindle going. So, very nearly there. Unfortunately...

Back to the router itself, a few days ago I found an issue with it in that the carriage on the main ball screw was not correctly seated in the base of the gantry. I asked the supplier for some help and they fobbed me off, telling me it was a design feature and to add some washers. It isn’t, it’s...

I don’t know really, too early to tell. The control boxes that are factory made have the stepper drivers packed tight inside them so it’ll probably be ok. I can always add another fan circulating air through the box.

Little video showing all 3 motors now running. The wiring has all been pretty straightforward. I decided to use aviation plugs, which taught me how long it has been since I did some serious soldering. It needs tidying up a bit, some shields grounding etc but it’s gonna be okay. Spindle next...

Yes, I am definitely building a CNC controller

It lives!

Progress report… well, I made the box :) I knocked it up out of Wickes plywood, which delaminated so much that I decided to wrap it in sticky back plastic (wrapping credit to wife!) Once done, it looked so much like a piece of audio equipment that I couldn’t resist 3d printing the Marshall...

Dial indicators seem to mate and breed in my shed. The current plan is to get a bed laser-cut in steel to give it some decent rigidity. The current bed is less flimsy than I expected , but still too flimsy. I’m sure I can find a way to level it, but at first at least I’m just wanting to rout...