Next Project – Wooden Nickel Engraver
I started working on my next backpack scale CNC project. My backpack scale projects are tiny CNC machines that I can easy carry in a backpack to tech meetups and events. This machine is going to be a wooden nickel laser engraver.
Wooden nickels are small wooden discs. You can buy blanks from various places, including Amazon. You can usually get 100 for less than $10. The goal is to create a machine that loads them from a feed tube, engraves them, then ejects them.
Mechatronics
The basic drive will be an H-Bot. It will be similar to the midTbot, but the motors are at the ends of the X axis. It will be fully enclosed, but I not started work on that part yet.
Disc Feed System
I hope to be able to use a single hobby servo to handle the loading and unloading of the blanks. The servo will control a sliding device that has three positions.
- In the first position it acts like a support shelf for the disc. The bed slides under the feed tube and a disk drops into the pocket.
- The next position is the clamping position. This holds the disc still while engraving.
- The final position retracts the shelf so the disc drops through.
Electronics
The goal is to use a low cost controller like an Arduino Nano.
- (2) Stepper motors for the X,Y motion
- (1) Hobby servo for the disc feed system (PWM)
- (1) Laser power control (PWM)
- (2) homing switches
- (1) interlock switch loop if there is a door and/or cover
Status
The major new feature of this design is the disc feed system, so I am primarily working on that right now.
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