cnc hacks

936 Articles

Three Axis Position Indicator With Digital Calipers

January 19, 2014 by 22 Comments

[Malte] just finished a little project for his Wabeco F1200 milling machine: a compact external display for three digital sliding calipers (Translated from German). As you may have already guessed, [Malte] was lucky enough to be able to fit disassembled calipers onto the machine and use them for positioning. Before embarking on this adventure, he noticed that there were similar projects present on the internet, but all of the calipers used had different data interfaces and protocols. The calipers that [Malte] bought have a mini USB connector, even though the interface itself isn’t USB. As he couldn’t find any information on that interface, he turned to his oscilloscope to decode the protocol.

[Malte] then built an AVR-based platform that reads out the three calipers and shows the position data on the dot matrix LCD shown above. The AVR firmware is written in a mixture of Basic and assembler language. The source code, schematics, and other resources can be downloaded from the project’s web page. We are impressed on the professional aspect of the final result.

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Hydro: The Low Cost Waterjet Cutter

January 14, 2014 by 103 Comments

Waterjet cutters are generally huge machines, with equally large price tags. But what if there was a hobbyist level waterjet cutter that was actually affordable? Well, for their Senior Design Project at the University of Pennsylvania, [Adam Libert] and his team made one that could retail for less than $5000.

[Adam] was the lead mechanical designer on this amazing project, and he designed the fully waterproof XY gantry, capable of withstanding the water and abrasive from the cutter. The entire machine is only 2′ x 2′ by about 5′ tall, making it extremely portable and easy to move through doorways — and it runs off of plain old 120VAC and shop air. It is capable of cutting through up to 1/4″ aluminum and 1/8″ steel with a working area of 12″ x 14″ at a tolerance of 0.005″.

Not surprising, the project won the Mechanical Engineering Senior Design competition in 2012 with accolades for outstanding creativity. We weren’t able to find any information on the future plans for this project, but we hope they make it open-source, or even run a crowd-funding campaign for it.

The goal was to create the first ever low-cost, small scale, and easy to use waterjet cutter, and judging by the video, it looks like they did it — stick around after the break to see for yourself.   

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Printer Up-cycled CNC Machine Uses More Than Just The Stepper Motors

January 11, 2014 by 15 Comments

Sometimes you just know from the photo that this is going to be a really cool project. When most people salvage parts from an old printer, they usually chuck the rest. In this case [Shane] made use of the entire printer to build his CNC machine.

He started with an old HP 2500C A3 printer, which he had planned to salvage for parts only. While he was taking it apart he realized the chassis would make a great frame for his actual CNC machine! With that in mind he quickly changed his game plan to making each axis inside of the printer.

He’s using regular ball bearing drawer runners for both the X and Z axes, covered with a clever design of aluminum angle to keep any possible chips from jamming them. The Y axis on the other hand makes use of the original shaft runners from the print head carriage. Each axis is driven by threaded rod using recycled stepper motors from the printer.

An Arduino UNO sits at the heart of the project with a Protoneer CNC shield to control the stepper drivers. He’s also included an emergency stop, hold, resume, and cancel buttons for manual control.

It’s a great project, and an amazing example of using what is on hand for a project. Stick around after the break to see a demonstration of it printing!

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The Art Of Box Making

December 31, 2013 by 35 Comments

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[Darcy] has a bit of a love affair with cardboard. What started out as a simple way to mail things cheaper by making custom sized boxes has turned into the full-blown art of box making.

He originally started by making the boxes by hand, but after he got suitably adept at it, he quickly refined his craft by adding in some technology. He now designs the boxes in SketchUp and then uses a home-made CNC router to cut and score the cardboard into even fancier styles. His blog has a whole slew of his cardboard box designs and it’s actually pretty cool to see what he’s come up with. He also has a bunch of tips for making your own, so if you’re one of those lucky hackers who can sell the things they make, it’s definitely worth a look! If you’re not selling anything perhaps a cardboard lamp shade is more for you?

To see a video example of one of his CNC cut boxes, stick around after the break. Now all he needs to do is design an automatic box folding machine!

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Spherebot: Decorating Xmas Baubles

December 25, 2013 by 5 Comments

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The Spherebot is an open source machine capable of printing designs onto spherical objects, such as Xmas baubles!

The design is based on the ever-popular Egg-Bot, which we have seen derived into many other useful printers such as the Mug Plotter, and the Ping Pong Printer.

The Spherebot features two stepper motors, one servo motor for marker actuation, some cheap mounting hardware, and a whole bunch of 3D printed parts—all of which are available on Thingiverse. In this design they used a 3D printer controller board called the 3Drag by Open-Electronics, which is based on the ATmega2560 (the same microcontroller as the Arduino MEGA). The Spherebot doesn’t require all three axes or an extruder, so they only installed 2 out of the 4 stepper drivers on the board to save cost.

Once you have it all built, it’s a simple matter of uploading your design into the free Spherebot-Host-GUI provided on GitHub. Stick around after the break to see just what it is capable of!

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Software Advice For Anyone Thinking About A CNC Router

December 23, 2013 by 128 Comments

Excellent results can come from a small CNC router, but don’t forget the software!

CNC tools, whatever their flavor, can greatly enhance your “making” or DIY ability. My current tool of choice is a CNC router. Being familiar with a manual milling machine, the concept seemed similar, and the price of these is quite reasonable when compared to some other tools. As described in this post, my machine is a Zen Toolworks model, but there are certainly other options to visit like this Probotix V90 model noted recently in this post.

Although any number of CNC router models look great in videos and pictures, rest assured that even the best machines require some patience to get one running satisfactorily. Setting up the machine can be a challenge, as well as figuring out what your machine is capable of, but one thing that might slip peoples’ minds is the software involved. Read on to find out all you need to know the basics of what goes on behind the scenes to “magically” produce interesting parts. Continue reading “Software Advice For Anyone Thinking About A CNC Router” →

Aluminum Bitcoin Keychain

December 16, 2013 by 55 Comments

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Here’s a cool way to bring a physical presence to your Bitcoins: a custom CNC milled QR code Bitcoin address!

[ch00f], one of our occasional writers here at Hack a Day, has just finished this slick aluminum Bitcoin QR code keychain. He started by creating a vanity Bitcoin address using a program called OCLVanitygen, consisting of his dad’s first initial and last name at the beginning, followed by a random string of numbers. It only took his Radeon HD6790 6 hours to solve, which amounted to approximately half a trillion guesses in order to find the address! 

He then took his shiny new Bitcoin address and created a QR code from it using an web-based generator. [ch00f] then increased the resolution of the image in Photoshop and imported it into a CNC program called CamBam. A converted CNC Taig mill got to work tracing out the code with a 0.049″ carbide end. The total milling time was just over 2 hours. A bit of black spray paint, some sanding, and a few layers of clear coat later and the keychain is done!

[via Reddit]