I was invited to this really cool event called ORD Camp. ORD Camp is unique, yearly event put on by Inventables and Google in Chicago. It brings together 200 people with a far range of interests. The common thread is a exceptional passion for what you do.
You are encouraged to bring a “creation /invention” you are working on. I did not want to bring the 2.x laser because it is hard to move around, it takes up a lot of space, and is not real conducive to just operating in the middle of a room. I will probably bring the camera slider, but I really felt like using the opportunity to create something new and cool with the MakerSlide material.
I was recently inspired by this Kickstarter Printrbot 3D printer. It seemed like a real ‘outside the box’ look at 3D printers. Brook of printrbot contacted me recently about collaborating with some of the people he is working with on some projects which got me more inspired. I decided to try a similar concept using Makerslide.
MakerSlide has these main features. It is a linear bearing. It is a structural element. It is accurate and it is cheap. The concept is, if you keep some of this laying around and have access to a few tools, you can quickly brainstorm an idea and fabricate it right away. This project was hashed out in about 3 hours, fabricated in about 2 hours and assmebled in about 2 hours. That includes cutting all the custom parts.
The result is the ORD Bot 3D printer platform. The structure and linear bearings are 100% MakerSlide. The motion is smooth, ridged and accurate . The parts are cheap. This uses less than $60 dollars worth of MakerSlide rail, wheels and idler pulleys. The rest are off the shelf items or fabricated by CNC router, laser cutter, 3D printer or other means.
A huge feature of this design is the scalability. It can scale in X,Y, Z or any combination by simply using different lengths of MakerSlide. All brackets stay the same. You might need to change belt lengths, but all the belts are open ended belts, so you don’t need the exact length, just some belt stock. The lead screws also need to change if the Z changes, but that is standard cut threaded rod. The version I built is probably as small as you would ever want to go, so I called it the Quantum ORD Bot. The build area is slightly larger than a standard MakerBot.
The frame is extremely ridged. Cut squareness does not matter very much. Every parts has multiple adjustable points and does not rely on the quality of any cuts. Parts can be aligned with a square and bolted down.
Feet.
I initially had some screw on leveler feet in the design, but after some design tweaks, extra bracket were going to be needed to mount them. I made these feet out of HDPE. They are soft and will not scratch any surface. I added the holes at the bottom to get a little spring to them, but I also think it brought in a nice design element. The rounded end and three point contact make them self leveling. The rear feet also act as a secondary brace for the Z axis.
Handle.
The handel is not required, but adds a lot of strength, can be used to mount electronics and also serves as a gauge for alighning the uprights. If you use a handle and scale the X axis you would need a hew handle. An alternative is to use a standard 20×20 t-slot piece across the top.
Scaling
Here is the build area increased by 100mm in each direction. I put a 20×20 extrusion across the top instead of the handle. I just did it as an example to show a more easily scaled version. This cost would be $4 higher for the MakerSlide about $3-$4 more from Misumi, about $2 more for longer lead screws and about $5 more for the longer belts. You would also need a bigger build platform (not shown). The total increase is easily less than $20. The increase in Z weight is about 4 ounces (0.1kg). At very large widths you might want to add a second Y axis extrusion, but that would just be a repeat of the existing one.
Prototyping
The pictures above are mostly renderings. Here are some real pictures of the prototype. I cut all the parts on my CNC router. I could have used my laser cutter, but I wanted to make a few counter bores for some screw. I don’t think that is needed, but it looks cool. I also used some optional non laser cuttable materials like carbon fiber and HDPE.
I came up with this idea about 6 days before the ORD Camp date, so I was a little rushed. The biggest problem was lack of motors. I also was so busy that I really could only allocate about 6 hours to the project. I let the delivery time of the motors set the schedule so only worked an hour or so a day over the week.
This design is very strong. I could stand on it or hang from it without damaging it. It is quite light at about 6.25 lbs. I am very happy with it and hope to get some good feedback at ORD Camp.
Where Are The Wires?
The element I really liked when I did some initial renderings was the clean look. I knew it would quickly turn into a RepRap hair ball as I wired it, so I decided to take advantage of the built in passage ways in the MakerSlide. I drilled some holes into the faces in some areas to pass the wires from extrusion to extrusion. The wires to the gantry had to be exposed because they move with the gantry. I put the wires into an extrension spring. This is a 1/4 O.D. 0.018 wire springs. If you stretch a spring the diameter reduces. I used this feature to mount the spring. I drilled holes slightly less than 1/4″ and stretched the spring through the holes. When I released the spring the diameter expanded to fit snugly in the holes. I tried to find a tap that matched a spring pitch so I could just thread the spring in, but couldn’t find a match. This mod falls into the “its not worth doing, unless you overdue it” category. I also wanted to reinforce the extreme rigidity look, by using carbon fiber parts, but the budget limited me to just the small thin parts. Again, this was overkill and just for fun.
What is Next?
If there is any interest, I might add this as a kit to the Makerslide store. I would like to quote all the carriages and brackets in aluminum, so I don’t have to fabricate much. I would probably need a 50 piece buy to justify the work and cost.
I have developed an inexpensive control system (less than $70) that can be used to both get more cutting power out of a DC discharge laser and significantly improve cutting accuracy for home built laser systems. The control system implements a control technique known as Pulse-Per-Inch (PPI) control. PPI control involves pulsing the laser every time the head travels a certain distance. PPI control allows a CNC laser to produce consistent cuts at the same power level setting over over a wide range of speeds. In effect, pulsing the laser as a function of distance along a cut decouples the power input to cut from the speed that the head travels. Therefore, the speed and acceleration of the CNC system have minimal bearing on the cut characteristics. Furthermore, the unique transient rise response of a DC discharge laser allow PPI to deliver more power to a cut in comparison to the same laser system with just on/off control.
Background and Motivation
A while back, I was active on a forum in which we were discussing the time it takes to turn a laser on and off and how that relates to engraving control. One of the forum members from Full Spectrum Engineering posted a high-speed intensity spectra for the cheap DC discharge lasers that we use for DIY laser cutters. I was quite surprised by the spectra. I expected to see a nice exponential rise to set power level, but what we saw was a rapid rise to a very high power level (nearly double the set value) followed by an exponential decay to a set value. The Spectrum in question is shown below (credit for the spectrum rests with Full Spectrum Engineering). The yellow square wave is a 5ms pulse sent to the laser power supply. The green spectra is the intensity spectra of the laser. For whatever reason, the magnitude of the spectra is upside down (I think the ground and signal leads were reversed), so on for the digital signal and higher intensity for the laser power spectra are down rather than up. Anyhow, the spike in intensity is caused by the necessity voltage to start a plasma in a DC Laser. The laser power supply generates a very high voltage to start the plasma which is stored in a capacitor. When the signal comes to turn on the power, the power supply dumps this charge into the system and then supplies a nominal (still very high) voltage to sustain the plasma once it is on.
A guy I met at WorkShop 88 is putting together a Maker Faire like event through the local ASME group. It is called the “AMSE Open Source Microcontroller Workshop“. He wants to get a bunch of local open source people to show off their machines and electronics. If you are interested in a meet up, stop by. I can probably get a few free tickets.
I agreed to go, but I don’t like hauling my laser around because I might break something. I have a second laser build going to test the MakerSlide changes. This will be fully functional except for the tube and tube power supply. It will also be run via Mach3 rather than an expensive controller.
The only problem with Mach3 is that you need to haul around a complete computer, with keyboard mouse and monitor. I am already bringing my laptop, so I was trying to figure out a passable way of using that. I know there are options like SmoothStepper and PCMCIA (rarely works) parallel ports, but I did not want to spend any money just for this event.
I have a very small desktop computer with a parallel port. I decided to try putting a VNC server on that computer to see if the laptop could be the display, keyboard and mouse for Mach3. I have used several flavors of VNC, but have found UltraVNC to be my favorite. VNC stands for Virtual Network Computing, but a better description is remote control software. You basically get to control the desktop of a remote computer.
I installed it as a service so that it would be available as soon as possible. I already had the computer setup to boot right into XP without a login. The server computer did not complain at all about not having a keyboard attached. I gave that computer and my laptop different static address on the same subnet. I connected the two computers with an Ethernet crossover cable. Once the VNC server (the Mach3 computer) booted, I connected with the viewer software from the laptop.
It connected fine and I was able to start Mach3 and run the laser. It worked quite well and the display update rate was acceptable, even on the DROs. The only issue I found was arrow key control of the axes was rough. It took me a little time too figure out the problem. The axis would start up fine then start to stutter a bit. I think it worked fine until the key went into auto repeat mode. If you hit the tab key to bring up the pendant looking thing, you can use the mouse to move the axes quite well.
I also hook up my Shuttle Pro and that works so much better than arrow keys any way.
Running G-Code worked perfectly. It is not a permanent solution, but it met my goal of not spending any money. It could also work as a simple remote monitor on a running job.
I just got my production boards for my Pololu compatible relay driver. This is a little plug in module that can be used to drive off board relays. It uses the signals that are normally used for step and direction to control two relays with the voltage that is normally used to power motors.
Pololu stepper drivers are great little items. They are inexpensive and very easy to use. You only need a step and direction signal to control them. If you use them in sockets, as I show here, they are portable between projects and experiments. If you accidentally smoke one, you only need to replace the single driver.
There are a lot of carrier boards for these. There are Arduino shields and many other applications. Often, it would be nice to be able to drive a larger external load like a spindle or blower. You can then use the existing step and direction signals to drive the relays. It uses the voltage normally used to drive the motors for the coil voltage. The only wiring required is two wires to the relay.
I chose to put the relays off board because the real estate was pretty limited and I wanted to provide the voltage isolation for AC powered devices. I am also a big fan of DIN rail mounted relays. They are very reliable and inexpensive. They are easy to swap around and have some nice features. The relays shown have a LED indicator and also a manually test button that moves the contacts. The relays shown are about $10 each, including the DIN rail sockets.
I got the boards from Gold Phoenix in 2 sheets of 50. They were not cut out, only V scored. Fortunately I have access to a depanelizer at work and was able to easily separate them. I probably could have snapped them apart too. The depanelizer looks similar to this one. Two slowly spinning sharp disks chop them apart.
The boards have all the components required to drive the relay including a supression diode. I am using a pretty hefty transistor here, but you could substitute a smaller one.
I have had a project going in the background to create a small, but strong and quiet spindle for small CNC routers. This is my second iteration of the design and I think it is close to what I want.
Frame
I started with an UHMW frame. This frame presses together then uses some hi-lo plastic screws to keep it together. UHMW is very stiff, but cuts well on a simple CNC router. I used a 1/8″ single flute end mill for all cuts. I try to ramp plunges wherever possible to limit the meterial that tries to climb the tool. It can all be cut from a sheet from one side with the exception of the pocket for the motor. This is needed to get enough shaft to come through. This pocket does not need close registration with the other so it is easy to flip it and run that side. The frame is rock solid. It feels like you could drive a car over it.
Spindle
The spindle shank was a key find off eBay. It has a ER11 collet which can handle a little larger then 1/4″ bits and there are plenty of cheap metric and inch collets available. The shank steps down to 8mm. This is great because the step can ride right on the lower bearing and cheap normal and angular contact 8mm bearings are available. I used an angular contact bearing on the bottom, and a normal bearing on the top. The top pulley installs with a spring washer to keep a 8-10 lb pre-load on the bearings to eliminate axial play. The bearings press fit into the end plates. The lower angular contact bearing takes the axial load from hard plunges. The axial bearing I found does not have a good seal on it, so I am a little worried about that. I am looking for a better bearing, but I might make my own seal that would seal to the spandle shaft. I might add a cover for the front and top.
Pulleys
I am currently using MXL belting which is rated for about 20k RPM, but at this diameter and length I think it can go a lot higher. I was planning to use multiple rubber o-rings, but that requires custom pulleys.
Size & Weight
The overall size is rather small at 90mm x 84mm x 82mm and total weight is 0.72 kgs. You mount it by tapping holes into back side. I will have a standard set of holes, but leave room for custom mounts.
Motors
It accepts a variety of motors. You can use univeral motors for small power tools. These will work on AC or DC and are good if you want to run it off 120/220VAC. You can also use RC hobby motors. These are available in brushed and brushless DC. A brushed 12VDC motor is cheap and the you can use a cheap PC power supply. I also test a water cooled brushless DC motor. This is the quietest option, but has the added cost of a speed controller. The motor shown will do over 30k RPM. I need to modify the top to give clearance for the water fittings. It can run for a few minutes before it gets hot, if you don’t load the motor too much. This motor can pull over 550 watts continuously. That is more than 2/3HP. I am hoping a simple PC cooling system will do the cooling.
Speed Control
The speed controller is controlled like a hobby servo. It uses pulses in the range of 1ms to 2ms to set the speed. You can program the controller though the servo interface to determine if you want reverse, etc. I decided to use an Arduino to control the speed. There is a servo library that makes it easy. I have the Arduino reading a pot them setting the speed accordingly. You program the controller by powering it up with the pulse input set to max speed. You then can set a few options like range and direction.
Next Steps
The next step is to find a way to do real world testing with it. I need a water cooling system and something to mount it to. The design will be released as open source.
We use a lot of solder stencils where I work (during the day). We usually buy stainless steel framed stencils for about $300 each. For prototyping we usually hand paste each pad. We have an semi-automated dispenser, but it is still tedious work. I see several places like Pololu selling low cost mylar solder stencils. I wondered if my Buildlog.net 2.x home made laser cutter could do it.
I researched a few blogs and pulled some information from Pololu. Pololu sells 3mil and 4mil mylar stencils and recommended 3mil for fine pitch work. I decided to buy the 3 mil mylar. I picked it up on my way home from McMaster Carr. It was a life time supply for about $15.
I found a bunch of old small SMT PCBs that I could play with. I got the top side paste mask gerber file for it. I imported the file into a Gerber tool called ViewMate from Pentalogix. This is a great program that I have be using for years. A partially disabled version is free. I have found that it has plenty of useful features.
Most PCB layout software has layers for the solder stencil. There are industry standards (IPC) for the size of these pads, but they are generally a little smaller than the pad. Often large pads, like thermal pads under big power ICs are divided into smaller windows or dots. This prevents excess solder from causing problems. With this in mind you probably need to shrink the pads even further to deal with the kerf of the laser.
ViewMate has a nice feature that allows you to shrink the apertures. Apertures are a somewhat archaic term from when artworks were done optically on film. They basically mean the shapes. To use this feature select the Setup…D Codes menus.
Select all the shapes in the list and select the Operations…Swell menus.
Enter a negative value to shrink the shapes.
I then printed 1:1 to a PDF.
ViewMate has a lot of export options, but most of them are not available in the free version. PDF is fine for what I needed to do. I then imported the PDF into Corel. I cleaned up a few extra lines and text in Corel and moved it over near the origin.
If you were always going to make your own stencils, you could probably skip a few of these steps by defining your stencils layers with the right values. Pololu actually shrinks it differently in X than Y for even better performance. Many CAD programs could print straight to PDF or other formats then.
Corel is a front end for my DSP laser software, so I was ready to try making the stencil. The PDF has vector information so you could cut it or engrave it. Everyone seems to recommend engraving, so I gave that a try.
I was not sure what to put the mylar on. I decided to hang it in the air. I taped inside a wooden frame. I tried different power levels and speeds and looked for my best result. I onlt tried about 3 settings combinations before I ran out room. I looked closely and they all looked pretty good. I think I got the best at 200mm/s and about 60% power. The power was not too much of an issue. It seemed better to cut it with more power than it need. It tended not to heat the surrounding area. The step over was 0.15mm. That probably could have been smaller for more accuracy. There was a slight smoky haze after cutting that I rinsed off with water.
I saw an artical in EDN Magazine today called “So you want to build an H-bot?”. It describes a cool little light duty method to get XY motion. It is used in pick and place type machines. It uses two motors and one open belt. The belt is fixed at both ends to one end of an axis. The rest is run over idlers. By controlling the directions of the motors, you can move in 2D space. The article does a great job of explaining it. If you both motors in the same direction one axis moves. If they move in opposite directions, the other axis moves.
I thought it would be fun to try it in MakerSlide. This is a just a conceptual drawing with most of the parts free floating where they would be attached with brackets or plates. The two plates in the middle would be firmly bolted together.
This is a (4) axis stepper driver Arduino shield that is perfect for use with GRBL (garble) and other Arduino applications. The steppers drivers can be Pololu A4983, Pololu A4988 or open source StepStick drivers. These drivers can run steppers motors at up to 30V and 2 amp per coil. The resolution is jumper selectable per driver between full step,2x, 4x, 8x and 16x microstepping. Soon there will be relay driver board that is pin compatible with the stepper drivers that could be used to control spindle motors and coolant devices.
The plug in drivers are a great low cost solution for low power CNC devices. The drivers can easily be moved to other projects or replaced if they are damaged.
Features
Screw terminal blocks for all stepper motor connections
Screw terminal block for the motor power supply.
Arduino reset button for easy access to reset the Arduino.
Jumpers for resolution selection.
Motor enable wired to an Arduino pin. Default is set to enable motors.
Works with GRBL (see user guide for pin reassignments)
This is the new buildlog.net open source rotational adapter for laser engraving. This allows you to engrave on a round surface. This design uses a friction drive method to rotate the workpiece. This has the advantage of keeping a consistent surface resolution regardless of diameter. This was designed to be 1000 steps/inch resolution. The length was sized to fit the 2.x laser, but you could easily scale it up to much longer or shorter. One design goal was absolute minimum height. This allows Z challenged engravers to be able to do some rotational engraving
The main feature of the design is the the two drive wheels. These serve several functions. They hold the rubber o-rings used to provide traction on the work piece. They have built in MXL drive pulleys and they have a spacer to ride directly on the bearings. These were 3D printed at Ponoko. With 3D printing, complexity is free. This encourages you to make the part do as many jobs as possible. I was initially concerned about the strength of these, but they turned out to be quite strong. I can probably reduce the material to take some cost out. I used the basic, cheapest, white flexible material. I was impressed with the detail level the material was able to hold. The belt fit perfectly.
I started the design using convensional design techniques and off the shelf parts because I was concerned about the 3D printed part cost. I soon realized that it was going to take 3-4 separate parts to do the job of one 3D printed part. The cost was quickly getting close to even. The convensional parts were also starting to look a little mismatched. While I am a form follows function, type of designer, I am a big fan of a clean design.
Once I started playing with the 3D printed part approach, I quickly decided that was the route to take. It was fun knowing that increaing the details on the part has no affect on the cost and in some cases actually reduces the cost. The spokes and radiuses retain the strength, reduce the material and I think add a retro mechanical design asthetic. Dealing with a single supplier, with a fast turn around and no minimum order, was very nice.
I have done 3D printing from other vendors, but decided to give Ponoko a try on this part. Since this is an open source project, their online tools would allow others to easily order parts.
At the other end of the assembly are the idler wheels. These also are Ponoko 3D printed items. They have bearings that press on each side. This allows them to roll freely with virtually no wobble. One idler has a flange on it. This acts as an end stop to the workpiece. It prevents it from “walking” while it is spinning. The stepper motor pulley serves the same function on the other end. This end is highly adjustable. There are three positions the wheels can be placed in. The plate can slide on the extrusions and you can flip it over. While all the adjustments are manual, they only take a few seconds to do.
Below is a video of some testing I did. I was trying to test a variety of shapes to see how they performed. In actual use the speed is very slow, because the the laser is primarily rastering along the length of the workpiece and this adapter just advances it a faction of millimeter at a time.
They all performed quite well. The only item that did not test well was a roll of duct tape (not shown). It was not very round so it wobbled a bit. It also has a sticky edge so it did not ride against the stops real well. The screwdriver at the end is an interesting example. While it did spin smoothly, it shows that if the image is not going to be at the same diameter as the drive area, some image scaling will be required before engraving. The bit is only 1/8″ diameter!
The design will be open source. There are a few tweaks to make before I release the drawings and 3D files. I may sell a complete kit for this. I estimate it will cost less than $100 with motor and extrusions included. I have not tested it in my laser yet. I don’t have the time right now, so I am going to have another 2.x laser owner do that for me….stay tuned for part 2.
This a the new Laser Interface PCB. It adds a lot of new features including the stepper motor drivers. This board is designed to reduce the wiring requirement of a home build laser cutter/engraver. This should significantly reduce the cost of a laser cutter. If you use this with EMC2 (free) you should be controlling your laser for less than $100. There is a video at the end of the post.
Controller Connector
This is a standard 25 pin ‘D’ connector. The pinout is compatible with PC control (Mach3, EMC2) or the FSE Retina Engrave controller.
Stepper motor Drivers
The PCB provides three slots for Pololu stepper motors drivers. It can use the A4983 or the A4988 stepper drivers. The PCB provides the logic power so you use the cheaper versions of the boards. These drivers can provide up to 2amps of power at resolutions up to 1/16 step. The microstep mode is easily adjustable through rotary DIP switches. These are placed along the edge with the control connector so they can be made accessible through the enclosure wall. If you ever blow a driver, you can simply replace the broken one. There is a built in fan to cool the drivers that cools them to within a few degrees of the ambient temperature.
Safety Loop
The board creates a safety loop of switches to protect the user and laser tube. The loop runs through the emergency stop button, the cover switch and the water flow switch. If any of these items are are not in the run position or if there is a break in the loop, the laser tube cannot be enabled.
Laser Power Control
The board allows two different laser power control modes. The default mode is via a remotely located manual potentiometer. This is usually mounted on the front panel. You can also use a switch to change to PWM mode. This allows an external controller to provide a digital PWM power level control. This switch would be located on the front panel. The PWM signal can be configured to use pin 14 or pin 15 on the 25 pin connector.
Dual Relay Drivers
The board has two high current MOSFETs that can be used to drive external relays. these are controlled via pins 1 and 8 on the 25 pin control connector. These are typically used to control assist air and exhaust blowers. They can easily be configured through Mach3 or EMC and G-Code as if they were mist and flood coolant devices.
Laser Power Supply Connector
There is a direct 1:1 connection to standard laser power supplies. The board takes car of connecting all the grounds and safety interlocks.
Water Switch
There is a three pin terminal block to connect to the water switch. The switch can be a simple mechanical switch, plus there is a 5V power source to use if you want to power a more complex water monitor.
Enclosure Connections
There is a connector dedicated to the enclosure connections for the limit switches and cover interlock. The board provides the pull up resistors for these items so they can be wired in a mode where a break in the wiring would trigger signal an open circuit. The pull up value can be either 5V or 3.3V.
