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John's Projects and Musings
I stumbled across one of these, and knew I had to have it. There are bigger, stronger, and faster ones, but there’s just no room for one of those currently. The work envelop on this one is only about 9.5” X 9.5” X 1-1/2”, and it’s open loop, but it’s still pretty cool to play with. It’s powered by an old P4/XP system that has had all but the base minimums of services removed from it. Programs get copied to it via sneakernet— anything that may interfere/preempt the control signals has been removed.
My first degree was in Numerical Control Technology, and I never had a chance to work with as much as I wanted: I was drafted into the IT Corps. So, when I saw this, it felt like I had come full circle.
The PC that controls this machine is a P4/XP with all services stripped out of it to avoid any interference with the contol signals that are being sent to the tool. I used to program these with straight G code - a lot of trigonometry! The control software is Mach3. I use CAMBAM as my CAM interface now, and it is capable of generating toolpaths, pocketing, islands, etc... at a reasonable price. CAMBAM can read an ASCII DXF file to obtain the geometry, and that gets generated from a CAD program named DraftSight. Having used AutoCad, Draftsight was quick to pick up on.
ADDENDUM: Draftsite is no longer free, a shame... I'm switching over to open souse LIBRECAD. Another learning curve...
Also, CAMBAM can read the Gerber files generated by Autodesk Eagle PCB! - Who knew?
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