[Coco] Homebrew CNC

[Roger Merchberger]

Rumor has it that Joel Ewy may have mentioned these words:
>  The bulk of the machine is made of plywood.

Works for me. I have a smallish slab of 3/4" hardwood plywood that might 
make a good base... ;-)

>  The tool I'm using is a Dremel.

I have one of those - with the requisite carbide cutters & lots of fine 
drill bits.

>   I bought the 3-axis stepper controller board from Dan Mauch
>as a kit and soldered it up.  It hooks up to a PC parallel port.  I'm
>currently using DANCAM (different Dan) for DOS to run the motors, but
>I'd like to switch it over to EMC.  To do that I'll have to redefine the
>way EMC uses the parallel port.

I'll have to check those out.

>The machine may be able to route PC boards.

...

>That would probably play havoc with any attempt
>to remove a thin layer of copper from a PCB.

I wasn't looking to remove a thin layer - I was looking at cutting out 
some/most of the board completely.

I have very good "fine motor control" (finger dexterity) for things like 
typing & soldering, but asking me to actually *cut* something at 30K RPM is 
just asking for trouble... ;-)

The (poor ascii) representation of the end of a CoCo cart:

          ________________________
  ___    /  ||||||||||||||||||||  \    ___
/   \   |  ||||||||||||||||||||  |   /   \
|   |   |                        |   |   |
|   \___/                        \___/   |
|                                        |
|                                        |
|                                        |

It's that stuff that I would find very difficult to "reproduce" by hand; if 
a CNC could do it (speed isn't an issue here - only if it's strong enough 
to fully go thru the PC board with a small routing/cutting bit) to cut out 
the "ground wings" mechanically would be a massive plus.

>Dan Mauch has a web site at:  http://www.camtronics-cnc.com/

I'll go have a look.

Thanks for the info!
Roger "Merch" Merchberger

--
Roger "Merch" Merchberger  --  SysAdmin, Iceberg Computers
  _±±_                          zmerch at 30below.com
(©||®)  If at first you don't succeed, nuclear warhead
  _)(_   disarmament should *not* be your first career choice.