[Coco] Homebrew CNC

[Mark Marlette]

Better have LOTS of bits and cutters if you are working with FR4.

It eats them for lunch.

Mark



Quoting Roger Merchberger <zmerch-coco at 30below.com>:

> 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.
>
>
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