I cut a lot of parts on my home built machines. These machines were never designed for production work, so I have developed strategies to get the most productivity out of my work. My goals are to get the best yield out of my material, have the shortest run times, spend the least time babysitting the machine, […]
This is a plugin for Google Sketchup that generates G-Code from 2D drawings from the folks at Phlatboyz.com. It is very limited in what it can do, but many people will like the familiar interface of Sketchup. Below is a video of what it can do. The code is open source and can be obtained […]
Tim at Outguessing the machine has started an open source SMD pick and place project. So far he has a head design, some scripts for EMC2 and some preliminary optical testing done. He has uploaded the head to Thingiverse. It features a stepper driven head for aligning the parts and an aquarium vacuum pump for […]
I stumble across this when reading a Machine Design magazine. This is a 2D scanner based on a camera that mounts on CNC mill. It can be used to reverse engineer parts. It uses a Mach3 plugin to control the position. Knowing the exact position of the camera allows the software to create a very […]
I have some projects coming up that will need a fourth axis, so I needed to buy a 4 axis motor controller. I tried a cheap Chinese Toshiba TB6560 based drive a while back and had a bad experience. A good controller is not all about current, voltage or step size. What you really want […]
I saw this on the Mach3 forum. CNC-Steuerung has a new Industrial version of the Smoothstepper. It adds a lot of I/O filtering and safety circuits. The Smoothstepper is a USB motion controller that runs as a Mach3 plug-in. I use one on my router. In general, it works quite well, but beware that their […]
Everywhere I look these days I see a blog article about someone laser cutting old vinyl LPs. I think the first place I saw it was on the Make Magazine Blog. It seems like a great idea, especially if you choose an image that fits the record you are cutting. It also fits the recycle/upcycle trends. I […]
I decided to give the MachStdMill Mach3 screen set a try. This is the new look and feel that the yet to be released Mach4 will have. They decided to make a version available for Mach3 to get some early feedback and to lower the learning curve when Mach4 is released. You need to upgrade […]
Update. Peter is still working on his SLS project. He is experimenting with a new fully laser-cuttable x/y stage. He is catching some flack for the ideas in some blog comment sections like hackaday. Obviously there is some refinement needed for accuracy, backlash, etc, but I applaud his efforts. I am sure some of his ideas will find […]
There is a great Selective Laser Sintering (SLS) project being blogged at ReRap Builders by Peter Jansen. Sintering is basically fusing powder by heating it just under the melting point. SLS is 3D printing using a laser to selectivly heat the material. It is done like most 3d printing, a thin layer at a time. The nice […]
