cnc hacks

917 Articles

Cheap XY Table Using Hobby Servos

September 30, 2008 by 6 Comments

[CarlS] wanted to build a low cost x y table for display on teletoyland.com. He realized that to keep cost low, he could use hobby servos instead of stepper motors. Exact precision wasn’t a big issue here, so the hobby servos would be perfectly acceptable.

Though Linear hobby servos are available, he decided that the cost was prohibitive.  He used normal hobby servos, but had to modify their internals to get the exact amount of travel necessary. Many people modify the hobby servos for continuous rotation, but this would cause a loss in the ability for exact positioning. Instead, he replaced the potentiometer that measures the position of the servo with a 10 turn potentiometer. This allowed him 10x the travel.

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CNC Wood Router

August 3, 2008 by 16 Comments


[GlacialWanderer] has published the first pictures from his CNC machine build. It’s a three axis gantry style machine that he intends to route and engrave wood with. He’s posted a detailed cost breakdown: $1800. He estimates spending 30 hours researching on sites like CNCzone. The build time for the mechanical side was around 50 hours. The electrical system hasn’t been hoooked up yet, so look for that in a future post. It looks like an incredible machine already, so we can’t wait to see what’s next.

FABR: Another 3d Printing Project

July 13, 2008 by 7 Comments


[Lou]’s been working on his own 3d printer: fabr. We find it appealing because the entry cost is quit a bit lower than something like the reprap. 80/20 isn’t that cheap, but you don’t need a large commercial laser cutter to build the chassis. The steppers he used appear to be inexpensive ones that can be salvaged from dot matrix printer. To drive it, he’s working on a custom microstepping board and hopes to eventually develop an Arduino shield to control the stepper drivers. That’s right, it’ll get an Arudino to act as the CNC control interface.

BiPed Robot Version 3

July 11, 2008 by 4 Comments

Instructables user [alex.v] posted version 3 of his BiPed Robot. This robot is designed to mimic the control and movements of a human’s lower body. It has 12 degrees of freedom and a nice custom framework CNC’d from acryl sheets. The electronics consist of servos controlled by a custom board built around an ATmega8 and 3 ATtiny26s all programmed in assembly. He also has custom desktop software written in VB which allows direct control of the robot and graphs sensor data. His site contains pictures, videos, and design materials.

How-To: Make An RGB Combination Door Lock (Part 2)

June 20, 2008 by 19 Comments


In part 1 we showed you how to build your own prototype RGB keypad. Today we’ll show off some new ideas we worked on to create the project and turn it from prototype to fully functional battle station er door lock.

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Electric Recumbent Bicycles

June 16, 2008 by 6 Comments


If you liked our post about bikes and skates with weed whacker engines but want more power and more challenge, we have good news. We’ve found some great instructions on adding motors to recumbent bicycles, which we’ll take you through after the break.

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