CNC-Telescope With Semi-Nasmyth Mount

January 13, 2017 by Steven Dufresne 9 Comments

[GregO29] had a 10″ GoTo telescope but at 70lbs, it wasn’t really portable. And so he did what any self-respecting CNC enthusiast would do, he put his CNC skills to work to make an 8″ Newtonian reflector, semi-Nasmyth mount telescope of his own design. It also gave him a chance to try out his new Chinese 6040 router/engraver with 800W water-cooled spindle.

What’s all that fancy terminology, you say? “Newtonian reflector” simply means that there’s a large concave mirror at one end that reflects a correspondingly large amount of light from the sky to a smaller mirror which then reflects it toward your eye, preferably along with some means of focusing that light. “Semi-Nasmyth mount” means that the whole thing pivots around the eyepiece so that you can keep your head relatively still (the “semi” is because the eyepiece can also be pivoted, in which case you would have to move your head a bit).

We really like the mechanism he came up with for rotating the telescope in the vertical plane. Look closely at the photo and you’ll see that the telescope is mounted to a pie-shaped piece of wood. The curved outer circumference of that pie-shape has gear teeth on it which he routed out. The mechanism that moves these teeth is a worm screw made from a 1″ spring found at the hardware store that’s on a 3/4″ dowel. Turn the worm screw’s crank and the telescope rotates.

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Convert That Cheap Laser Engraver To 100% Open-Source Toolchain

December 23, 2016 by Donald Papp 18 Comments

LaserWeb is open-source laser cutter and engraver software, and [JordsWoodShop] made a video tutorial (embedded below) on how to convert a cheap laser engraver to use it. The laser engraver used in the video is one of those economical acrylic-and-extruded-rail setups with a solid state laser emitter available from a variety of Chinese sellers (protective eyewear and any sort of ventilation or shielding conspicuously not included) but LaserWeb can work with just about any hardware, larger CO2 lasers included.

LaserWeb is important because most laser engravers and cutters have proprietary software. The smaller engravers like the one pictured above use a variety of things, and people experienced with larger CO2 laser cutters may be familiar with a piece of software called LaserCut — a combination CAD program and laser control that is serviceable, but closed (my copy even requires a USB security dongle, eww.)

LaserWeb allows laser engravers and cutters to be more like what most of us expect from our tools: a fully open-source toolchain. For example, to start using LaserWeb on one of those affordable 40 W blue-box Chinese laser cutters the only real hardware change needed is to replace the motion controller with an open source controller like a SmoothieBoard. The rest is just setting up the software and enjoying the added features.

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Clear The Air Around Your CNC Router With A Custom Dust Shroud

December 18, 2016 by Dan Maloney 11 Comments

Using a CNC router is a dusty business if your material of choice is wood. Sure, you can keep things tidy by chasing the cutter around the table with a shop vac, but that sort of takes the fun out of having a machine that can make cuts without you. The big boy machines all have integrated dust collection, and now you can too with this 3D-printed CNC router dust shoe.

Designed specifically for the X-Carve with a DeWalt 611 router, [Mark Edstrom]’s brush is a simple design that’s almost entirely 3D printed. The shroud encloses the router body and clamps to the mounting bracket, totally surrounding the business end of the machine. The cup is trimmed with a flexible fringe to trap the dust and guide it to the port that fits a small (1-1/4″ diameter) shop vac hose. The hose is neatly routed along the wiring harness, and the suction is provided by a standard shop vac.

Files for the cup are up on Thingiverse; we suspect it’d be easy to modify the design to work with other routers and dust collectors. You might even find a way to shroud a laser cutter and capture the exhaust with a DIY filter.

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Zeroing CNC Mills With OpenCV

December 15, 2016 by Brian Benchoff 45 Comments

For [Jay] and [Ricardo]’s final project for [Dr. Bruce Land]’s ECE4760 course at Cornell, they tackled a problem that is the bane of all machinists. Their project finds the XY zero of a part in a CNC machine using computer vision, vastly reducing the time it take to set up a workpiece and giving us yet another reason to water down the phrase ‘Internet of Things’ by calling this the Internet of CNC Machines.

For the hardware, [Jay] and [Ricardo] used a PIC32 to interface with an Arducam module, a WiFi module, and an inductive sensor for measuring the distance to the workpiece. All of this was brought together on a PCB specifically designed to be single-sided (smart!), and tucked away in an enclosure that can be easily attached to the spindle of a CNC mill. This contraption looks down on a workpiece and uses OpenCV to find the center of a hole in a fixture. When the center is found, the mill is zeroed on its XY axis.

The software is a bit simpler than a device that has OpenCV processing running on a microcontroller. Detecting the center of the bore, for instance, happens on a laptop running a few Python scripts. The mill attachment communicates with the laptop over WiFi, and sends a few images of the downward-facing camera over to the laptop. From there, the laptop detects the center of the bore in the fixture plate and generates some G-code to send over to the mill.

While the device works remarkably well, and is able to center the mill fairly quickly and without a lot of user intervention, there were a few problems. The camera is not perfectly aligned with the axis of the spindle, making the math harder than it should be. Also, the enclosure isn’t rated for being an environment where coolant is sprayed everywhere. Those are small quibbles, and these problems could be fixed simply by designing and printing another enclosure. The device works, though, and really cuts down on the time it takes to zero out a mill.

You can check out the video description of the build below.

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DIY Mini Printer Is 95% Wood, Prints Tiny Cute Images

December 12, 2016 by Donald Papp 6 Comments

This little DIY 64×64 graphical printer by [Egor] is part pen plotter in design, somewhat dot matrix-ish in operation, and cleverly designed to use unmodified 9G servos. The project page is all in Russian (translation to English here) but has plenty of photos that make the operation and design clear. Although nearly the entire thing is made from laser-cut wood, [Egor] says that a laser cutter is optional equipment. The first version was entirely cut with hand tools.

Small DIY CNC machines driven over a serial line commonly use Arduinos and CD-ROM drive guts (like this Foam Cutter or this Laser Paper Cutter) but this build uses its own custom rack-and-pinion system, and has some great little added details like the spring-loaded clip to hold paper onto the print pad.

The frame and parts (including all gears) are laser-cut from 4 mm plywood and the unit is driven by three small servos. A simple Java program processes images and an Arduino UNO handles the low-level control. A video of everything in action is embedded below.
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Breathe Easy With A Laser Cutter Air Filter

December 5, 2016 by Dan Maloney 24 Comments

A laser cutter is a great tool to have in the shop, but like other CNC machines it can make a lousy neighbor. Vaporizing your stock means you end up breathing stuff you might rather not. If you’re going to be around these fumes all day, you’ll want good fume extraction, and you might just consider a DIY fume and particulate filter to polish the exhausted air.

While there’s no build log per se, [ZbLab]’s Facebook page has a gallery of photos that show the design and build in enough detail to get the gist. The main element of the filter is 25 kg of activated charcoal to trap the volatile organic compounds in the laser exhaust. The charcoal is packed into an IKEA garbage can around a prefilter made from a canister-style automotive air cleaner – [ZbLab] uses a Filtron filter that crosses to the more commonly available Fram CA3281. Another air cleaner element (Fram CA3333) makes sure no loose charcoal dust is expelled from the filter. The frame is built of birch ply and the plumbing is simple PVC. With a 125mm inlet it looks like this filter can really breathe, and it would easily scale up or down in size according to your needs.

No laser cutter in your shop to justify this filter, you say? Why not build one? Or, if you do any soldering, this downdraft fume extractor is a good way to clear the air.

CNC Dummies For Routers

November 27, 2016 by Al Williams 12 Comments

[This Old Tony] has a few videos that have made appearances on Hackaday. His latest one is CNC Dummies for Routers (see below). The subtitle, CNC Basics, is an honest one. If you’re already well versed in GCode and Mach 3, you probably won’t make it through the 14 minute video (although Tony is pretty entertaining even if you know what he’s talking about).

By his own admission, this is really CNC basics for hobby-grade CNC routers and mills. He starts off talking about his custom-built machine along with some common machines in the $500-$5000 range. He then gives a simple sketch of what GCode looks like.

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