The BeagleBone Black, with an impressive amount of computing power and a whole bunch of I/O, would make an impressive CNC controller, save for two shortcomings: The BBB isn’t in stock anywhere, and CNC capes are a little on the pricey side. [Marc Peltier] can’t do anything about finding a distributor that doesn’t have the BeagleBone on backorder for you, but he did come up with an adapter for the very popular RAMPS-FD 3D printer controller board (Forum, French, Here’s the Google translation matrix).
The RAMPS-FD is an extension of the RAMPS board and a shield for the Arduino Due. Both the Due and BBB work on 3.3 V, meaning controlling the RAMPS-FD is simply a matter of finding the correct wiring diagram and pin assignments on the BeagleBone. [Marc] solved this problem by using the settings from the BeBoPr cape and using the existing BeBoPr LinuxCNC configuration.
The end result of [Marc]’s tinkering is something a lot like [Charles Steinkueler]’s CNC capes for the BeagleBone Black we saw at the Midwest RepRap Fest. [Charles] isn’t selling his capes, but no one else seems to be selling BeagleBone Blacks, either.
Wanting to get a BBB i find it rather sad that the adds for the article lead to companies that don’t have it on stock….. all of them.
As someone who bought a BBB a while ago and has had it sitting around doing not much, has anyone got a guide to doing this with the Ramps 1.4 board and the BBB? I have a seemingly non-functioning Mega 2560 and a printer waiting for brains.
https://groups.google.com/forum/#!forum/machinekit
http://beagleboard.org/blog/2014-04-13-dude-wheres-my-beaglebone-black/
I’m starting to see the Rev C for pre-order at the usual suspects.
@Josh:
check http://www.buildlog.net/blog/2013/09/cnc-translator-for-beaglebone/
Will do, cheers!
I’ve thought about a small breakout to connect a BBB to the pins of the ATMegas DIL socket on a sanguinololu. But the RPi has a better camera (hardware mjpeg and h264 compression) and an RPi talking to the ATMega over serial is the most solid software wise ATM.
I’m not selling the CRAMPS boards, but it’s an open design and hopefully some commercial vendors will start selling it soon. In the meantime, details (including design files) are over on the RepRap Wiki: http://reprap.org/wiki/CRAMPS
Click through to the v1.0 page for assembly instructions with pictures: http://reprap.org/wiki/CRAMPS1.0
The BBB has two onboard PRUs which are real time processors running at 200MHz in addition to the more powerful ARM than in the Pi. That’s why this board is a better fit for printer and CNC control. I backordered one and waited quite a while to get it so I could run my printer remotely using Octoprint and later use Charles’ Machinekit build of LinuxCNC directly. If you want one now I got an extra and have personal knowledge of availability on eBay ;-)
On a related note does anyone know where to find a reasonably priced aluminium/steel cutting service for a frame? I’ve been wanting to build a CNC/3D Print/Laser Cutter for a while but I have had no success googling this.
Misumi allows you to order cut-to-length aluminum extrusions. 80/20 does too, but I’m told they cost a lot more.
I have no idea on steel.
If you’re just cutting things to length like JRDM is suggesting, how about using a hack saw? They’re pretty cheap at any big box home improvement store or any hardware store. If you want to cut some shapes too, pick up a coping saw while you’re there. Most aluminum cuts really easy. Most of the common steel rods and extrusions don’t take much more effort.
Supposedly LinuxCNC for the BBB is stable enough that Probotix, Xylotex, and a host of other companies are now selling them. No HDD incompatibility, questions of latency, stalls, or random plunges into your work? Count me in.
I didn’t realize the BBB was so hard to find these days. What happened? I picked one up towards the end of last year, without any issues.
Sadly it has mostly been gathering dust, inside it’s 3d printed case, after doing a few (blink-esq) quickie projects on it. Maybe it’s time to start that BBB controlled drone…