CNC routers and 3D printers are cool, but the last time I checked, cars and heavy machinery aren’t made out of wood and plastic. If you want a machine that will build other machines, you want a CNC plasma cutter. That’s [willbaden]’s entry for the Hackaday prize. It’s big, massive, and it’s already cutting.
A plasma CNC machine isn’t that much different from a simple CNC router. [will]’s table controller is just a GRBL shield attached to an Arduino, the bearings were stolen from many copy machines, and your motors and drivers are fairly standard, barring the fact they’re excessively huge for a simple 3D printer.
The real trick up [will]’s sleeve is the controller interface. For this, he’s mounted a Raspberry Pi display, a big, shiny, red button, and all the associated electronics behind a beautifully rusty welded enclosure. This part of the build just sends gcode over to the GRBL shield, and is doing so reliably. Right now [will] is looking for some way to save, arrange, and queue jobs on the Pi, a problem that is almost – but not quite – the same job Octoprint does. A software for big, mean CNCs that spew exotic states of matter is an interesting project, and we can’t wait to see where [will] goes with this one.
I would use Mach3 or LinuxCNC for this, they support height controls for the torch. Not sure if there are any standalone ones yet.
Torch Height Control is one thing that isn’t supported with GRBL. LinuxCNC has crossed my mind. Would require rehashing the hardware, but is an option.
Yea, as much as I hate Mach3, it actually makes a lot of sense for a DIY plasma cutter. I’d definitely recommend something like the UC100, which is an ARM-based USB motion controller that interfaces Mach3 via a plugin. This gets around the hacky parallel port bit-banging (on a commercial non-real-time OS no less) that Mach3 is infamous for. So by the time that you’ve purchased a Mach3 license, a UC100, a decent breakout board with charge pump and e-stop, and some stepper drivers, and an enclosure to put it all in, you’re looking at $400 or so above and beyond whatever [willbaden] has already spent.
LinuxCNC and a BBB would be considerably cheaper, but I’ve no idea what sort of plasma support is there, and how reliable it is.
The last option, for the software-inclined, would be to just fork the github GRBL project, and add the torch-height control functionality into the code.
As much as Mach3 annoys me, I use it on several machine, I hate it far less than I hate linux in general.
I have a kflop from Dynomotion that I still need to integrate into my cnc mill. I got it with the optional optically isolated 24v I/O board. It uses a DSP to handle the pulse generation and it ties into the PC via USB. You can either use their own CNC interface software or drive it though a plugin with Mach3.
Laserweb3 (https://github.com/openhardwarecoza/LaserWeb3) is a good option for managing jobs and controlling the machine. It is open source and under active development.
Plan on looking into how the managing of jobs is implemented.
A BBB running machinekit, a decent cape, and network cable would solve most/all the current problems. In my opinion
+1
This is interesting. It looks like the beagle bone supports the real time component?
+2, yes. Using the PRUs. Look into “machinekit”.
Thanks for the article Hackaday! Although, the current design uses GRBL firmware on an UNO with the input/outputs using homebrewed 24V opto cards.
This exists… Shopbot released and opensource framework called fabmo.
http://gofabmo.org/
Are there some project pages beyond handibot?