Frank Makes A CNC Table

November 11, 2015 by Brian Benchoff 13 Comments

[Frank Howarth] is one of the big guns when it comes to woodworking on YouTube, and now he’s doing something completely unlike his other builds. He’s building a gigantic CNC machine. Yes, we’ve seen dozens of CNC router builds, but this one adds a few nifty features we’ve never seen before.

The plans for [Frank]’s CNC machine call for a 4 foot by 8 foot table, over which a router on a gantry gnaws away at wood. This is the standard size for shop-sized CNC router, but [Frank] is adding in his own twist: he’s building a 12 foot long table, by way of a four foot extension. This one small addition allows [Frank] to put tenons in tree trunks, engravings on the side of furniture, or just to make one part of a very large piece flat.

Right now, the build is just about the base, constructed out of 2″ square steel tube. While the welding is by all accounts an amateur job, everything is square, straight, and true. Now, with a metal base scooting around on hockey puck feet, [Frank] is ready to start on the robotic part of the build, something we’re all interested to see.

It’s going to be really big, but still not the biggest.

Development Tools Of The Prop-Making World

November 9, 2015 by Sonya Vasquez 13 Comments

We’ve seen them before. The pixel-perfect Portal 2 replica, the Iron Man Arc Reactor, the Jedi Lightsaber. With the rise of shared knowledge via the internet, we can finally take a peek into a world hidden behind garage doors, basements, and commandeered coffee tables strewn with nuts, bolts, and other scraps. That world is prop-making. As fab equipment like 3D printers and laser cutters start to spill into the hands of more people, fellow DIY enthusiasts have developed effective workflows and corresponding software tools to lighten their loads. I figured I’d take a brief look at a few software tools that can open the possibilities for folks at home to don the respirator and goggles and start churning out props.

Continue reading “Development Tools Of The Prop-Making World” →

Breaking Out A Game Boy Link Cable

November 7, 2015 by Brian Benchoff 17 Comments

[Samuel] is working on one of the most important electronics projects of our generation. He’s building a device for the Game Boy that will allow Pokemon trades between generation II and III. Yes, This means bringing your Charmander from Pokemon Red to your team in Pokemon Ruby, Sapphire, or Emerald. and finally completing the National Dex you’ve been working on for 20 years. Before he gets to designing this system, he first needs to listen in on the Game Boy Link Cable, and that means creating a breakout board.

The Game Boy Link Cable – sometimes inaccurately referred to as the Zelda cable – is a special proprietary connector. The design is well documented, but unlike the Wii Nunchuck controller, there’s no readily available breakout board available for this piece of obsolete technology.

Together with a his friend [David], [Samuel] loaded up a copy of Eagle and designed a board that will fit on a small piece of copper clad FR4. This design was then sent over to a small CNC mill, The traces were machined away, and a sextet of pins were soldered into the holes.

With a breakout board for the Game Boy Link Cable, [Samuel] now has a great platform for peering into the strange and magical world of Pokemon. He’ll be using a Teensy microcontroller for his trading device, and with several similar projects already completed by others around the Internet, the potential for a Gen II to Gen III Pokemon trader is palpable.

Spark Plug Lights The Darkness

November 5, 2015 by Bryan Cockfield 14 Comments

When you have an idea, just go build it. That’s the approach that [GordsGarage] takes with most of his projects, and he’s back in the machine shop again. This time it’s with a rather unique oil candle that uses a spark plug as inspiration. We have to say, the results are on fire.

The spark plug candle was fashioned out of a single piece of 6061 aluminum. To create the scale model, first the stock metal hit the lathe to create the “insulator” section of the plug. From there, he milled in the hex bolt section, then it hit the lathe again to create the threaded section. The inside was bored out to create space for the wick and oil, and then the electrode was installed just above the flame.

This is a pretty impressive scale model and has a great finished look. The only thing that isn’t to scale is the gap for the electrode which is completely necessary to keep the candle from getting smothered. It’s an interesting, unique idea too, which is something that [GordsGarage] excels at. And, if you want to scale his model up a little bit, perhaps you can find some inspiration from this other candle.

3D Scanned, CNC-Milled, Pumpkin Selfie

October 31, 2015 by Elliot Williams 11 Comments

When you have a CNC mill sitting around, it almost seems anachronistic to pull out a kitchen knife to carve a pumpkin. You can hardly blame [Nathan Bentall] for choosing an endmill instead. If you’re feeling the same, check out his blog post where [Nathan] works through all the steps involved in going from a raw pumpkin to a 3D RGB LED bust of himself. To put his head on the pumpkin’s shoulders he captured a depth map using a Kinect and then got down to some unorthodox milling.

Continue reading “3D Scanned, CNC-Milled, Pumpkin Selfie” →

A Wooden Based, CD Stepper Scribbler

October 27, 2015 by Rud Merriam 7 Comments

[Rohit Gupta] is back with a plotter made from scrap CD drives and an old RC servo. [Rohit] is working on hacks to create CNC machines and sharing his activities with the world. His CNC design calls for salvaged stepper motors so he first built a device for testing them. You’ve got to admire his use of the language. He named his plotter project ‘Sketchy’ and his motor tester is called ‘Easy Peasy’.

After finding some CD drives at the scrap pile he tore them down to test with Easy Peasy. The raw materials for the frame came from a wooden crate for an AC unit but he didn’t just start cutting it up. Nope, first he created plans with CAD; now that’s a hack you have to admire.

With the steppers tested working, and the base build under way he moved onto the control system. Originally the hardware was demonstrated using an MSP430. This worked, but a flaw in the hardware design was found. With the pen attached directly to the servo horn, it would draw a long line when being rotated away from the drawing position.

The fix is a replacement servo setup which lifts the pen up instead of rotating it. But that showed that the drawing surface wasn’t smooth. The pen kept missing places or getting caught and destroyed. The use of a spring loaded pen solved this issue. Success!

One further change migrated away from the MSP430 in favor of an Arduino Pro Mini in order to use a GRBL library instead of the g-code generator which was performing questionably. Since he likes Hackaday so much one of his first attempts with the final version of Sketchy was our logo, shown in the video after the break.

When we last saw [Rohit] he had created a fancy PCB ruler to measure components.

Continue reading “A Wooden Based, CD Stepper Scribbler” →

Turning Your CNC Into A Vinyl Cutter

October 7, 2015 by James Hobson 17 Comments

This may seem like a no-brainer, but it’s actually pretty easy to modify your CNC machine to hold a vinyl cutter blade in order to do stencils or even cut out vinyl logos!

[Jouni] designed a holder for a standard Roland vinyl/sticker cutter blade (replacement with 5 blades is about $10 on eBay). It’s made to fit his specific CNC which uses a 65mm spindle, with a 49mm mounting ring — but the file could be easily modified to suit others.

Simply clamp your plastic or vinyl onto a flat piece of wood, and get stenciling! [Jouni’s] included his .STL file on his site in case anyone wants to try it out. While he’s designed it for 3D printing, you could probably CNC mill it as well — which would kinda make more sense…

Continue reading “Turning Your CNC Into A Vinyl Cutter” →