Saturday 13 September 2014

CNC Mk2 - Engraving Test

Head over to my youtube channel for a short vid on the engraving test I ran with the new spindle, rails and Z assembly.

http://youtu.be/3ROLkp-SySk

I still can't get the homing sequence right, so just resorting to jogging to the zero positions.

I also had a small issue of CamBam inserting G-codes into the output file that grbl doesn't support, but that was a 'user' problem and simply changing some option under the CamBam config.

Note:  If you upgrade grbl on the Arduino...just don't forget that all your custom settings will be back to the standard defaults.  So when your X/Y/Z starts heading off way too far...just remember your steps/mm setting.  I'm using nema17 2.5A steppers at 200 steps per revolution, and 6mm x 1mm pitch threaded rod..so one rev = 200 steps = 1mm.  Grbl is 250 steps by default.  Doh!

Anyhoo...comments/questions welcome.

Cheers.

Sunday 24 August 2014

CNC...slight mods

So after some engraving testing with pyCAM, and noticing how the workpiece was moving around the base plate, I decided to drop in a piece of 15mm MDF.  The uber magnet and silicon dots I was using before just wasn't cutting it (pardon the pun).  

I screwed in a bunch of M6 MDF inserts from the underside, countersunk slightly so as to keep the underside flat, which now gives me a range of screw anchor points for clamping down the material being engraved.  It also means I don't get stressed about the milling bit going too deep and messing up the sheet of 6mm acrylic that I used for the original bed.  After everything was up and running, I dropped a 13mm straight cut bit onto the CNC spindle and program in an overlapping grid cut run.  This shaves off a small layer of the MDF across the whole platform to make it absolutely parallel relative to the X & Y axis.



I was also having a bad time with the Y axis binding as the Z carrier got closer to the ends.  This was being caused by a misalignment between the ends of the threaded rod and the nut assembly on the Z carier.  Being 3 points of contact over a 270mm wide gap means that everything has to be perfectly parallel...which is not easy when you have a small bend in the threaded rod!  So my fix was move the bearing mount as close to the stepper as possible, which also makes it easier to line up. 



I then leave the far end of the rod to flap around in the breeze, doing it's thing.  I got the idea from the way my 3D printer Z axis is engineered (except the rods sit on top of the stepper shaft, and that carries the Z axis assembly weight).  It means that the threaded rod is free to move about and not cause binding.  The whole Y axis is now as smooth as silk and a vastly reduced load on the stepper.
I'm still getting my head around this CNC, g-code, homing (machine home and workpiece home), and not willing to fork out a small fortune to get some point-and-shoot software like CamBam or MeshCam..so I'm floundering along with  good old faithful SketchUp, pyCAM and Grbl Controller.  However, I will have a photo/video worthy run soon, and will see some nice output coming from it.

Cheers.



Tuesday 19 August 2014

CNC...revisited!

So it's been a couple of months since my last post, but it has been time spent planning, buying parts, printing parts and researching an upgrade path for the CNC machine.  The dremel was OK..ish, but anything other than lightweight engraving (with that 'rustic' look) it was hopeless.

So..the latest incarnation shopping list went like this:

  • 13mm smooth rod for the Y axis,
  • LM13UU linear bearings,
  • 400W 12,000 RPM air cooled CNC spindle + 48v 200W PSU + speed controler,
  • A bunch of ER11 collets,
  • A bunch of 3mm engraving and cutting bits (single flute cutter and 60deg engraver)

I knew it would be a close fit with a 66mm wide gap down from the top platform and a 50mm diameter CNC spindle.  I still wanted to keep the bodywork pretty much intact, so it called for some creative thinking, and I think I've done an OK job :-)

So rather than me waffle on about it, I'll let you see for yourself.

Now some might baulk at my  penchant for using acrylic..a lot...but it's actually a nice material to work with.

I made the base plate with 10mm acrylic, everything else is 6mm.

The top support/stepper motor mount is 3D printed on the Mendel90.  I love my 3D printer :-)


Here's a closer look at the new Y carrier and Z axis assembly.  The flexi tube clamp (for the spindle wiring), bearing mounts, top stepper mount and Z screw nut carrier (with anti-backlash) was all made on the 3D printer.

The screw rod is riding on a flanged bearing in the base plate, so the stepper and coupler is under no vertical load forces.

Now..before you gasp at the lack of fixtures attaching the side plates to the base plate...it's glued on.  I used Weldon 4, making sure the edges were clean and square, and the bond is surprisingly strong.  Since it's primarily dealing with vertical forces, it is stressed in a directly upwards direction.  I messed up on my first Z movement test and almost split the top mount..so I reckon the bond is plenty strong.  Time will tell, but I have a plan for if it all turns ugly.

These are the new rods and mounts (designed and printed the mounts)

I colour co-ordinated the mounts so I would know which one went where.  Nah!!...not really..I just ran out of the blue filament when I was partway through a printing session! :-)



The old ink tank lid was an ideal place for the spindle speed controller, but required a removal of the potentiometer and wiring it back in so I could mount the pot through the side of the lid.




And the old paper tray cavity was just the right size for the 48v PSU for the spindle.

I have to run 2 PSUs (24v + 48v) which is a bit of a pain, but can't be helped.

I did have a hell time with the endstop switch signal firing and causing a hard stop, even though the axis's (axii?..axisees?) were nowhere near the microswitches..but only if the spindle was running.  So obviously I was getting some line noise, possibly from the brushless motor.

I went and got some shielded twin-core cable for the switches, tested one...fail army!  So I took the 48v PSU out from where you see it and moved it away from the rest of it..viola!..no line noise and no false triggers.  So now it appears that something inside the PSU is creating a lot of noise.  A quick test of clipping a small jumper lead from one of the the PSU output posts common to the case...and problem went right away.  I'm not an electrician or electronics engineer, but I reckon that by earthing the case, I'm basically turning it into a shield.  Scares me to think what's going on inside that thing...but the fix works, and hasn't let the smoke out, so I'm happy.

So now I'm getting my head around G-Simple CAM program to make some g-code to chuck at it and test the beastie.  I did a test with manual commands via grbl controller..and it's already looking a meelion times better than the previous attempt.

Will upload a video to the tube once I have tested it..providing it doesn't all go horribly wrong.

Enjoy.

[EDIT]
Some readers have asked for more detail about the new Z Axis assembly, so here's some Sketchup models to help explain what I did.
Note: Items in blue are the 3D printed parts, semi-transparent parts are the acrylic, and all others are standard hardware (bearings, rods, nuts and bolts, etc)


The side plates are glued to the base with Weldon #4 acrylic cement, and the top mount (which also acts as the Z axis stepper mount) is attached to 2 lengths of 25mm aluminium angle bolted to the inside of each side plate.


The 13mm linear bearing mounts and Y axis nut carrier are attached to the underside of the base plate.  The bearings are held in place by the snap fit of the mount recess, and also secured by zip ties that fit in the slots along the front and back faces of the mount.





Here is a close-up, sectional view of the Y axis nut carrier, which also incorporates an anti-backlash spring and Z axis screw rod lower support bearing.

Saturday 12 April 2014

Heaxpod (Pt 3)

The wireless PS2 controller and 32ch servo driver board arrived, and has proven to be a minor challenge to work with.

For the last couple of days, the Torobot site has been down, possibly patching for the SSL HeartBleed vulnerability, and quite clearly having a few issues..just been there and their backend database just spilled it's contents onscreen for me.  Since I'm an ethical hacker, I'll just leave them to it. :-)

However, it has given me an updated manual for the controller/servo board and also access to the command software used to create actions.

What has been really interesting is the stuff I have found regarding sending serial data to the servo board from an Arduino Uno, receiving command data from the PS2 controller over wifi!  The servo controller uses PWM, not the degree values I have been used to with the servo library.  As it turns out, it's reasonably easy, once you know the PWM upper and lower limits for the servos.

In my case, I'm using TowerPro MG996R servos for all joints.  With some messing around (trial and error), I have a PWM range of 800 to 2500 microseconds(us).  This gives me the full 180deg sweep from 0 to 180.

I'm a bit new to this, and I got un-invited to 6th Form high school so the maths skills aren't that great, but the guts of it is:

If 0deg is 800us and 180 is 2500, then midpoint is ((2500-800)/2)+800 = 1650.
It also goes that 180 deg / 1700us (PWM range 2500-800)  = 0.105 deg per microsecond.
Therefore 1 deg = 9.52us  (1 / 0.105)

So if I want to send the servo to 40 deg, then (40deg / 0.105us) + 800 = 1180.95us

Now, they aren't the most accurate servos, and when it reaches the edges of the limits, it can overshoot.  These things are capable of 10kg/cm torque, which is enough to split the casing if the servo reckons it can go past the physical stop pin.  To counter that, I knock about 5 deg off each end of the sweep, giving me a range of 5 to 175.

Now I have a PWM range of 850 to 2450, with midpoint still at 1650..cos all I did was trim 50us off each end.

Still with me then? :-)

Right....Arduino has a really cool function named "map()" which makes it an absolute doddle to translate the values coming from the PS2 controller to PWM values.  It goes like this...

map(value to change, min value it will be, max value it will be, min value to assign, max value to assign)

so...map(50, 0, 100, 0, 1000) will return 500...because 500 is the same to 0-1000 as 50 is to 0-100)

again..map(127, 0, 255, 850, 2450) will return the value 1650...because 1650 is to the range 850 - 2450 as 127 is to the range 0 - 255...which is really handy because the PS2 controller joysticks produce values ranging from 0 - 255 in their full left to full right range of movement...with 127 being the sticks neutral point.

The Torobot board uses a serial data string format of "#[servo port]P[PWM value]T[Time in ms]"
To send servo on port 1 to the midpoint => "#1P1650T500"

Now..to mash it all together:

Connect the PS2 wifi receiver to the Uno with some female/male jumpers.  The receiver pinouts are(left to right, looking into the socket end with the D shape smiling at you):

  1. Data -> UNO pin 12 (NOTE: Must use a 10k resistor for pullup..else the signal is all squiffy and won't work)
  2. Command -> UNO pin 11
  3. Not used
  4. Earth/ground -> Have a guess..
  5. 3.3v in -> You got it...
  6. Attention -> UNO pin 10
  7. Clock -> UNO pin 13
  8. Not Used
  9. Not Used
Connect the UNO to the Servo Controller board:
  • UNO TX -> RX0 (next to the mini USB socket, bank of 3x2 header pins ahead of "S1")
  • UNO RX -> TX0
  • (Screw block)
    • Gnd -> ..well...ground!
    • VS - Voltage supply in for the servo main power..this does not power the board itself
    • VSS -> 5v from UNO for powering the board processor.  Can power from the USB and has voltage protection so you don't zap back up the USB cable
Download and import the PS2 controller Arduino Library from Bill Porter (www.billporter.info)..BIG shout out to him and the awesome work he's done on this.

Connect your servos to the header pins...dealers choice which ones you use.

Here's my test sketch for one robot arm (3 servos), and has been vastly trimmed just for testing.
Note that you can move mulitple servos with a single line...just add the string with "#[servo number]P[PWM value]" prior to the "T" value and the final "println"  The servo controller reacts when it gets a newline character.

[code starts here]


#include <PS2X_lib.h>  //for v1.6

PS2X ps2x; // create PS2 Controller Class

//right now, the library does NOT support hot pluggable controllers, meaning 
//you must always either restart your Arduino after you conect the controller, 
//or call config_gamepad(pins) again after connecting the controller.
int error = 0; 
byte type = 0;
byte vibrate = 0;

void setup(){
  Serial.begin(9600);

 error = ps2x.config_gamepad(13,11,10,12, true, true);   //setup pins and settings:  GamePad(clock, command, attention, data, Pressures?, Rumble?) check for error
}

void loop(){
  //DualShock Controller

  ps2x.read_gamepad(false, vibrate);          //read controller and set large motor to spin at 'vibrate' speed

    Serial.print("#1P");
    Serial.print(map(ps2x.Analog(PSS_LY),0,255,900,2400));     // Read the left joystick values
    Serial.print("#2P");
    Serial.print(map(ps2x.Analog(PSS_LX),0,255,900,2400));
    Serial.print("#3P");
    Serial.print(map(ps2x.Analog(PSS_LX),0,255,2400,900));
    Serial.println("T500");    //Send the string off to the controller board
   delay(80);
}

[End code]

You may have seen the min/max for servo 3 is around the other way?..You can swap them to actually change the servo sweep direction.  This servo is for the shin section of the leg, and by swapping the values you can get it to move "leg cramping curling up" style..or "Mr Miyagi whoopass crane" style.

I have found that if you don't disconnect the power to the servo board (the 5v and/or the USB cable), the sketch won't upload to the arduino.  I'm not sure why, but I think it gets messed up with the serial data responses from the servo board?..anyone want to chip in here?

Well...after all that, I've got remote control of a hexapod leg with a wireless PS2 controller joystick.  The photo is a couple of the legs set up in a test rig to see how well the legs move and test range and servo jitter.

Just for $hits and giggles I moved the rig so it was resting in the middle of the table, then moved the leg in a "stand up" type of movement.  Impressed with those servos..because the rig is being held in place with a 3kg dive weight..and the leg tipped it off without any bother at all.

I am encouraged! :-)

I'll upload a video of the test when I can borrow the camera (again!).

UPDATE:
Video of the abovementioned rig in action..
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=N3KTvMkVIkg

See ya next post.

Friday 4 April 2014

Hexapod (Pt2)

OK...so it might seem a short timeframe between my last blog, and this one where I proudly announce that I have finished printing the leg parts for the hexapod.  I do actually have a day job, and as much as I would like to spend all day making robot stuff, it don't pay the bills.

I started printing the parts a couple of weeks ago, then had to wait for some hardware to turn up (long 3mm screws, 21mm brass standoffs, etc).  So tonight, I have finished the printing and assembly of the legs, complete with servos.  I did have to re-print a couple of parts because I hadn't taken into account the left side/right side thing.  However, because of the way I designed it, it was a simple case of mirroring a couple of parts in netFabb, slice and dice in slic3r, and print them out.

All in all though, everything has gone as planned, all the parts fit nice and snug, and now ready to be attached to a body.

As you can see...SU to the rescue again.  I plan to use 6mm acrylic sheet, but will wait until the servo controller board arrives so I can model it up and see where I might put the boards.

For a better view of the model, check out the new vid (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZRlKJpceGek) for a quick fly-around of the model.

Might be a while for the next instalment where I'll be getting the legs calibrated for midpoints on the servos as well as testing the (hopefully arriving soon!) 24 channel servo driver board with wireless PS controller.

Bye for now.

Tuesday 1 April 2014

The hexapod (Pt1)

OK....so now I have the printer, have learned some stuff from building the printer and the CNC conversion...those 6 legged roboty things look way cool!..So here I go.

Been looking at a large number of designs, blogs, thingiverse thingies, youtube, forums...you get the point.  So since I'm into doing things the hard way, I will design and build my own hexy...once I have finished the printed cats that her majesty found on thingiverse, and promised her workmates I would print for them.  Cats!!...all this technology, money, combined knowledge and resources...and she wants cats!

Anyhoo...I start with SketchUp (herein referred to as "SU"), and I have been playing with SU for years.  I'm still living on SU pro 8...It's perfect for my needs, so why upgrade?  SU has a massive number of plugins which are really useful for this sort of thing.  Granted, SU is not industrial strength like AutoCAD, AutoDesk, SolidWorks or Truespace (and the many, many others out there), but a powerful beast nonetheless.  Once you add in a few plugins, you start to see exactly how powerful it is.

Once of the first to get is SketchyPhysics.  If you want to do some basic mechanical design, and then test things like movement, clearances, and general aesthetic, then this is a must.  You can add servos, hinges, pistons, sliders and then animate them.

Then you get the STL exporter...kind of goes without saying what this is for, but for the readers that are new to this 3D thing, it's the 3D model format used to create the code used by 3D printers.

There's a couple of others that I recently added since building the printer.  Shape Bender and DrawHelix combo is awesome for creating nuts and bolts.  The standard followme tool in SU doesn't work that well to create the bolt threads, or even a nice smooth helix, but ShapeBender and DrawHelix are the schizzle at it.

One more...CurviLoft.  This is one I recently started using, and for organic shapes, you can't go past it.  This would be an interesting one to try with a laserline scan of something like a face, and then use the loft tool to create a surface over the profiles.  Hmm...that sounds like a project :-)

So the grand plan involves using an Arduino board (Uno, possibly Mega), some sort of servo controller chip like the JP Serial Servo chip (24ch), MG996R servos and a whole bunch of freshly printed parts.




Here's the basic concept, with some motion added to check the actions..

Of course, best laid plans and all....The legs went through a bit of a redesign because I could see there would be problems printing those shapes, and print them in a way that maintained a high degree of structural inegrity.  Trying to screw in a self tapping screw through the side of a printed item is no good..it just delaminates the plastic.  There's also the issue of assembly.  Very easy to design the impossible-to-assemble shape.

So what I ended up with is a little convoluted, possibly slightly over-engineered, but I reckon it might just work.  I've seen these set up with just struts on the servo horns, everything off to one side, and only pivoting on the servo shaft.  That would be OK for lasercut or CNC milled aluminium parts...but I'm printing mine and I want something a bit more robust...so here it is.

There's 8 parts to each leg, 4 parts are identical, so only 6 different models to deal with.
After some test parts, working out that you have to give items clearance (if you don't then things are such a close fit, you can't fit them!), I settled on the final design for the legs.

 Let the printing begin!



Next project...3D printer (Pt2)

(Yes...I could have written this in a single blog..but I have a short attention span and only 330ml bottles of beer)

In no particular order..here is some points from the Mendel90 build.

Spend the $$ and get the frame templates printed on a single sheet of paper!  It took an age to get 4 sheets lined up square, not stretched, and taped together enough to survive the hole drilling exercise (..or the whole drilling exercise...either one fits)

Careful when attaching heat sinks to the stepper driver chips.  The tops of the pins are pretty close to the edges of the aluminuim heatsink block..and they don't really like being powered up with a whole side all shorted to each other.  Lucky I bought a batch of 10 of them...I have 3 left (you only need 4 for the RAMPS board)

When wiring up the Z motors, check out how to wire them in series, rather than parallel.  The RAMPS board has header pins for parallel, but it works so much better in series keeping the Z axis steppers in sync.

Get your end stops sorted!..(seems a common theme from the CNC build)..especially those Z axis stops.  Seeing your extruder try and plow it's way through the top of the print bed is not a happy thing.  Be ready to hit that reset button!

Be prepared to chew through a lot of filament fine tuning the Z height.  I can't stress how important it is to get the bed level, and the zero height set properly to ensure that first print layer goes down properly, without zits (lumps that will make the steppers skip when they get hit by the nozzle), and with enough coverage to make the print stick to the print surface enough to hold on for the rest of the layers.

Search, search, and more search...before you ask.  It's a big community out there, and they have been doing this a while.  Chances are that a noob question has been asked before.  Go look for it, and you will find a wealth of additional information on the way.

That is all...for now.

Monday 31 March 2014

Next project...3D printer (Pt1)

OK...so I was going to blog as I went with this build, but then every man and his dog is doing the same, so it's a bit pointless regurgitating the same old stuff.  It gets a bit like dejavu...again.

So the upshot is, I had the parts for a Mendel90 (nophead's design) gathered up and looking all lonely whilst I did the Printer/CNC machine conversion.  To be honest, the CNC build seemed a lot less intimidating than a Mendel90 build, hence it jumped the build queue.

On that, the CNC machine didn't produce as good a quality product as I had hoped, and I've had a rethink about some of the design "features"...for want of a better word.  So on the hit list is:

  • Move the back Y carrier shaft rearward, which opens up the gap down the Z axis slot for the entire dremel.  The flexishaft has far too much drift in the collet, and the runout was pretty ugly too.  There's none in the collet for the direct attachment on the dremel.
  • Stablise the X axis platform with a couple of skate bearings pressed against the inside face of the rails.  The threaded rod has a very slight bend which has the effect of 'walking' the platform when moving at speed.  Movement is not a problem except when directly under the Z axis, so I figure that's the only place where I need to stabilise the sideways movement.
  • Cut a new mount for the Z axis carrier and make it 1.5 times wider to accommodate the dremel, then make mounts for the dremel and bolt to the Z axis.
In order to help me do this, and satisfy my new found curiosity with hexapods, I built the printer.  This was another several days work since I was building from self-sourced parts, rather than a kit supplied by nophead and crew.

There were a couple of interesting moments, and it came under threat of being thrown out onto the street several times, but with some serious encouragement and advice from Clayton (UK ebay-er that supplied me the printed parts for the beast) I finally have my very own 3D printer! [insert evil grin and rubbing hands with glee]

Thursday 9 January 2014

CNC - First real cut

 Here's the first real run with the CNC with a diamond engraving bit in the dremel.

I put a grid of silicon door bumper pads (about 7mm dia) on the bed as way to stop the acrylic work-piece from sliding.  I also used a pair of moly magnets from an old server HDD, one stick to the underside with double sided foam tape.  These things have enormous amount of magnetic pull, and with the other one directly above it, it clamped the work-piece to the bed without risk of distorting it.  Works a treat!

I used CamBam to generate the g-code, but I reckon I had the feed rate too high.  The dremel bit seemed to twitch when it got to the end of each run..like it was under too much side load.  This did cause the letters to have a small bump at the start/end point of each character.

This run was 1.0mm deep, 0.5mm each Z step, and 200mm/min feed rate.  I might be a bit ambitious with these settings :-)

It also doesn't help when the dremel collett seemed to swing the bit off-centre upwards of 0.25mm each way (a combined runout of 0.5mm).

The CNC router upgrade may be sooner that I had planned, but in its current state, a reasonably OK setup for learning with.

Next test..cutting a profile and drilling some holes.  If I don't update this for a while, it's most likely gone all horribly wrong...but that's just me being optimistic :-)

Cheers.

Wednesday 8 January 2014

Converting an A3 printer into CNC machine - In Summary

In short, it's been an awesome project to do, and I would do it again in a heartbeat.  I've still got some tidying up with cable routing, etc, but it has had it's first run with a pen zip-tied to the Z-axis.  The results are pretty good, and the accuracy is nice to see. (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=E5aqQXD04N4&feature=youtu.be)

There will be some enhancements and improvements:

  • Upgrade the rails and linear bearings to 12mm,
  • Expand the Z carrier to accommodate a 52mm CNC spindle,
  • Put in a 400W CNC spindle
  • Make the lights on the dash go blinky blink :-)
I would also like to drop in a 4x20 character LCD screen and get some output from the Arduino...some sort of job status maybe?




So on behalf of Dasher (she's been sitting here listening to me typing this blog) and myself, thanks for reading.  Feel free to leave feedback or ask questions.  Dasher won't give a fat rats bum about feedback or questions, but I'll do my best to get back you as soon as.


In the meantime, please check out the video of the first run, and I'll update the blog when I do something a bit more exciting than an electronic sketchograph.

Cheers.

Converting an A3 printer into CNC machine - Pt5

This was a time consuming part...sorting out the electrics to make sure that;

  • It didn't look ugly,
  • They worked,
  • Easily got at and unplugged, in case it didn't work
  • It wasn't going to get hung up, damaged, shorted, cooked something
  • They kept working.
An ideal area for the electrics was what used to be occupied by the old power supply (woefully under powered for this task) and all the messy bits of the printer, such as an ink scraper that had what can be best desrcibed as a biohazard in its little collection pot!

As you can see, plenty of room for the boards, a 200W PSU, some room underneath for excess wiring storage and a power bar.  I also hooked up a small jumper cable for a power switch to the earth + green wire from the ATX plug.

I tied 3 wires each of the red (5V), yellow (12V), 2 wires each of black (x 2) and wired them onto the power bar.  There's plenty left on the PSU loom of I want to do something like wire in the UV light strips I have when I was modding CPU cases :-)

Next thing was to make up some tidy, yet practical plugs for the CNC shield.  This thing is in a tight space, so I don't really want to be messing around with single header pin sockets.  So here's a good tip..and made life so much easier..

Get some of these..

Thread 2 bits of heatshrink onto them..

Heat the big bit first until it wraps nicely around the plug ends, then seal off the scruffy end with the smaller bit of heatshrink. Viola!

Now you can plug/unplug them as a group, they don't flex as much when you try to plug them in, and they stay in the right order.

 So here's the Arduino Uno, with the Protoneer CNC shield plugged in on top, and a small proto board I made up to connect the steppers to the CNC shield.

I made up another plug for the emergency stop, hold, resume and abort pins (hidden behind the plugs in the photo)  I was able to use the original printer control panel buttons and attach them to the CNC pins.

It was just a matter of working out the connections with a multimeter, and making the life changing decision on which button should do what.  I figured the E-Stop button should be the biggest one...'cause it's easier to hit in a panic.

I've already used it twice when I messed up my endstop switches!

On that note..if you have no previous CNC experience, please get your endstop switches sorted before playing.  Nothing is more distressing than seeing your creation attempt to wind the ends off your machine.  I'm only using the smaller Nema17 steppers @ 4.8kg/cm torque.  On a 6mm, 1.5mm pitch threaded rod, that's a lot of grunt.

Next...the final words.

Converting an A3 printer into CNC machine - Pt4

The Z Axis:

This was always going to create a challenge, mainly because of the limited space.  In fact, this one took a day to work out.


Basically, I put a 25mm sq section aluminium tube between 2 lengths of 25mm angle, and bolted and screwed 2 short bearing drawer slides between each piece (as seen in my rough sketchup drawing)  To allow the centre piece to move and clear the end pieces, I simply packed them out with a washer at each end.  Each end has 4 8G self stapping hex head screws to make sure it all stays square.  This arrangement allows for a very compact Z axis, and the centre section is the exact right size to take the dremel flexishaft handle that I have.

If I ever (and I reckon "ever" might be sooner than I wish) have to put a proper small CNC motor in there..I simply replace the 25mm sq section with a 25x50mm rectangle section, cut a new piece of acrylic to accommodate the extra width, and I can bolt it straight on (he says...casually!)

Here is the top half with the top bearing retainer and screw rod nut.  The bearing is a standard 6mm deep groove shielded bearing held in place with 2 pieces of acrylic.  The lower one has a hole to match the OD of the bearing, and the upper piece is drilled a bit smaller to keep the bearing from lifting out.

I also made an acrylic nut to hold the MDF insert in place.  I drilled out a larger piece of 6mm acrylic with a 10mm bit, heated the inside edge of the hole, and basically tapped a thread using the insert.  Then trim it to the right size and you are away.  You can excerpt a fair bit of pressure on it without cracking.

The steel bracket was then used to mount the insert to the centre section.




The lower end is where I mounted the stepper, and I made up a couple of small proto boards to hold the ribbon cable to power the stepper and take the wiring from a small momentary switch.  The switch is activated by a small tab (a suitably cut bit of 25mm angle) on the bottom of the screw rod mount, and acts as the Z endstop.

I soldered 4 lots of 3 wires from the ribbon cable for power to the stepper (see the next part for the other end), and laid it out so it would roll around as the Y axis moved, very much like the original print head ribbon cable.  Hey..it worked for the printer..so why not make it the same.

I also dropped in a balun retrieved from the printer just in case I got line noise.  Not sure if it needs it, but with the stepper being capable of drawing 2.5A, seems like a good idea.

I used the trusty MDF inserts to clamp the dremel handle inside the centre tube.  I drilled 2 x 10mm holes on one side, and directly opposite each hole, drilled 8mm holes.  That way I can screw in an insert from the inside out, using the 8mm holes as a place to feed the 6mm hex key needed to screw the inserts through.  Then I cut a saddle out of 6mm acrylic for the thin end of the handle, and a custom bent (hit it with a hammer) saddle from the 40mm aluminium angle.


The inserts give the 6mm bolts something to push against when screwed up tight against the dremel handle.

Nearly there....the electronics!

Converting an A3 printer into CNC machine - Pt3

The Y Axis:

The original print head carriage got a hack and slash so I could re-use the shaft runners.  These aren't linear bearings...more like a bronze bush.  I plan to replace them with linear bearings because there is a small amount of lateral movement in them.  However, since the shaft is only supporting the back side of the Z carrier platform, it's not such a biggie...at this stage.

I used some 40x40x1mm aluminium angle to make up a stepper mount, the mounting bracket of an 8mm smooth rod (recovered from another printer I pulled to bits) and the threaded rod mounts.  I had a bunch of LMUU8 linear bearing + mounts from ebay, which I put to use with the 8mm rod.  I had thought about a vertical Y axis arrangment, but there wasn't much point since the gap down through the top platform is only a couple of inches, and there is heaps of space to tuck the second rod into the front edge.  My thinking is that is also spreads the Z axis load across both shafts and keeps the moving mass a bit lower down.  I'm not a physicist/engineer/mathematician, and that argument probably flies in the face of all good CNC designs..but hey...it works.

Everything was screwed down with 8G hex head self tapping screws.  Having quite a few flat and level surfaces to measure from helped with the alignment..although some was done with the old "eye-o-meter".


The 40mm angle is the perfect height to rest one edge on base of the Y carriage chassis.  It also ensures that it is parallel to the rest of the top assembly, and provides a great mounting point for both the Y axis screw rod and the endstop microswitch.






Again with the 25mm angle, I made up a screw rod bearing mount.  The acrylic is retaining a 6mm flange bearing.  The small pieces of white plastic are from one of the discarded printer parts (one of the flap hinges) and just the right size for bearing bushes.  Yes...I should double-nut the bushes, it's on my "enhancements to do" list.

The nut for the screw rod is a self tapping MDF machine insert.  It's ugly, but it works!  Because of the flange at one end, it butts up against the face to the mount, ensuring it is straight.  The length also removes all discernible backlash, and therefore no requirement for an anti-backlash nut setup.

The 2 small self tapping screws are there to anchor the insert from rotating.

I do plan to pull everything back off at a later stage and tidy up my rough-as-guts hacksaw cuts, remove barcode labels and pen marks..so please don't give me any grief about it :-)

And finally...the business end!

The 40mm angle has a bit of flex in it, so I braced it with a couple of 50mm tri-corner steel brackets, which made the whole thing rock solid.  In theory, the steppers shouldn't be subject to any linear pressure since the bearing at the other end should be stopping that.  The brackets helped with the torsional twist (although if you have the bearing, carrier nut and stepper all aligned properly...it should be as smooth as a baby's bum!)


Here's a close shot of the bearing arrangement that the Z axis rides on.  The 8mm rod and bearing was close enough to be a good point for mounting the Y+ endstop switch.

Next..the Z axis!



Converting an A3 printer into CNC machine - Pt2

The X Axis:

I decided to go with ball bearing drawer runners for the X axis platform.  They are compact, smooth, and virtually no play in them.  I mounted them between 2 lengths of 25x25x1mm aluminium angle...

This arrangement semi seals the runners to reduce the ingress of shavings and other mess into the ball bearing guides and carrier.

I did have to bend the end-stop tabs down so they could clear the screw heads used to attach the inner track to the inside rail.

This is where keeping the printer screws is a very good idea.  I was able to use the self tapping pan-head screws which were a perfect fit between the "U" shape...no chance of moving up or down.

Aligning them was dead easy...use a set square on the front edge of the printer base plate and simply line the rails up and screw them down.  I used flat head 8G x 12mm self tapping screws (pre drilling the pilot holes)  I put 3 down each side, but the centre screws seemed to pull the rails down and bound up the runners too much.  One at each end is adequate to hold everything in place.

There are a couple of places in the printer base plate that are pressed with ribs (obviously for strengthening) but you can put the rails close enough to the left/right edges to get full length support.

I drilled and tapped 4 x M4 machine screws along each side into a sheet of 6mm acrylic for the milling platform.  There wasn't quite enough rigidity in the acrylic to stop the edges rocking when pressing down on the platform, so I also screwed 2 lengths of 25mm square section aluminium across each end...which firmed it up just nicely.




I needed to cut out a small section at the end of the back square channel to clear a micoroswitch that I mounted for the axis + endstop.  This was a lesson learned when I crashed the channel into the switch and nearly tore the thing apart...bit of  heart stopper!

Next....the Y axis.

Converting an A3 printer into CNC machine - Pt1

Introduction:

This is a retrospective blog on my conversion of an old HP 2500C A3 printer into a CNC machine.  It's retrospective because the original plan was to just pull it to bits for parts!  If I had known (or planned) that it would become a CNC machine, I would have blogged as I went.

So what started as a deconstruction turned into a reconstruction once it became apparent that the bare bones chassis of the printer would be the perfect starting point for a desktop CNC machine.

The printer is approximately 12 years old, and I hadn't used it since it stripped off a few teeth from any one of many gears inside the beast.  You can pick these printers up off places like Ebay and Amazon for around $150-$200.  They had mixed reviews in their day, and the cartridges were hideously expensive.  The thing weighs around 30kg (66 lb) so it would be ideal for a small boat anchor.

The tear down:

It took a few hours to pull apart, and the panelwork did its usual thing of holding on for dear life via the hidden lock tabs, screws and various other clips.  Everything is held together with T-6 and T-20 star screws.  I was able to use most of them during the reconstruction.

So after trimming 3/4 of the weight out of it (including a nice collection of 7 motors), I was ready to start.