PACCAM: Interactive 2D Part Packing

October 14, 2013 by James Hobson 12 Comments

capture

Do you have a laser cutter or CNC router? How much material do you waste from project to project due to inefficient part packing? Enter PACCAM, a software interface designed by [Daniel Saakes] to aid in efficient 2D part packing.

Using a cheap webcam, it is possible to capture the outline of used material, exactly where it is located in the CNC machine. The software then can limit your workspace to the material available in the machine. New parts can then be dragged into place, automatically avoiding interferences — certain algorithms also exist to utilize the remaining material most efficiently.

Looking to engrave custom items? The software can do that too by showing you the material (or in this case, object), you can simply drag your design onto the material available, without having to worry about aligning your object inside the CNC machine!

In the video after the break, [Daniel] shows just how powerful and useful the software is by putting a crooked, cookie-cutter riddled piece of material in the machine, and then using the software to cut new parts out of what would be scrap material in any other shop.

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CNC Software Toolchain Using Only Open Source Software

October 12, 2013 by Mathieu Stephan 53 Comments

For hobbyists, there are two types of machines that can make parts at home. The first type is matter-adding machines (3D printers) and the other is matter-subtracting machines (like CNC milling machines). [Mario] recently tipped us about an article he made detailing which free software can be used to design and produce parts on CNC machines.

The first step of the process is obviously designing the part you want to make using a Computer-Aided Design (CAD) application. [Mario] suggests Heeks or Freecad for which you can find plenty of tutorials on YouTube. The next step consists in converting the part you just designed to machine tool paths using a Computer-Aided Manufacturing (CAM) application. Fortunately, Heeks can do both so it may be the best option for beginners. [Mario] also mentions the pcb2gcode application, which allows you to manufacture printed circuit boards at home for the prototypes you may want to produce. Finally, the well known LinuxCNC (previously Linux EMC2) software is used to control the CNC machine using the GCode that the CAM software produced.

At Hackaday, we’d really like knowing what our readers currently use for their CNCs so don’t hesitate to leave us a comment below.

Home Made CNC Reuses Printer Parts

October 4, 2013 by Adam Fabio 13 Comments

Do it yourself CNC machines can be never ending projects. Once you get one machine done, you want another. [Mario] found this out when he started work on his second CNC machine, TheMaker2. As its name implies, TheMaker2 is the successor to TheMaker1. It seems that [Mario] was trying to walk the fine line of precision at minimal cost. He wanted a rigid frame, so he chose to go with a moving table, rather than the moving gantry of TheMaker1. The frame is made up of galvanized steel stock, which makes it much stronger than many DIY CNCs out there. [Mario] had a friend weld the steel up for him, we hope he took the proper precautions when welding galvanized material.

Standard threaded rod was used as lead screws, with some very well made anti backlash nuts. Acme thread would have been a better choice here, however [Mario] doesn’t say if acme stock was available to him. Most of the mounts and small parts are made from easily worked PVC sheet stock. Precision rails were scavenged from old Ricoh copiers. Epson printers provided the tubing which became motor couplers.

One negative in this build are the stepper motors. [Mario] used NMB PM55L-048 motors he had pulled from HP printers. These motors have both a wide step angle (7.5 degrees) and a rather anemic torque. Thankfully [Mario] mentions upgrading NEMA 23 motors in the comments of TheMaker2’s instructables page.

Smoothieboard, The Be-all, End-all CNC Controller

September 30, 2013 by Brian Benchoff 74 Comments

A while back we took a look at electronics boards for 3D printers, going over the cost and benefits of the most common electronics boards for printers, laser cutters, and mills. One of the most impressive boards was the Smoothieboard, but finding a supplier back then was a little difficult. Now, the Smoothieboard is up on Kickstarter, giving everyone the opportunity to get their hands on this very cool CNC control board.

While most RepRap and 3D printer controller boards use an ATMega or other 8-bit microcontroller, the Smoothie uses a 32-bit ARM chip in the form of an NXP LPC Cortex-M3 chip. Not only does this allow the Smoothie to do some very cool things with your machine – native arcs and circles, for example, but this better hardware also allows for Ethernet, drag-and-drop firmware, and exposing the USB port as both a serial port or mass storage device.

The Smoothie comes in three flavors, with either 3, 4, or 5 stepper motor drivers. These Allegro A4982 drivers are good enough for any 3D printer, laser cutter, or small mill, but the broken out pins allow for stepper drivers supplying more than 2A of current.

Everything on the Smoothieboard is modular, meaning this board is equally capable of powering a RepRap, mill, laser cutter, or plotter. There’s even a planned control panel called the Smoothiepanel, making this a great choice for your next CNC build.

Turn A Decommissioned Robot Into A CNC Machine

September 26, 2013 by Adam Fabio 42 Comments

adeptRobot

Some of us may have been accused of living in Mom’s basement – [Benjamin] kicks it up a notch by keeping an industrial robot in his parent’s ~~attic~~ shed loft.
[Benjamin] was tasked with stripping down some retired equipment at work. It turns out the “retired equipment” was three Cartesian robots from Adept Robotics. These are large industrial XYZ platforms capable of high speed movements (3000 IPM rapids!).

Getting from a decommissioned machine to a working CNC is never a simple path. In this case [Ben] was able to make the transition relatively easily. Each axis of the robot has a 400 Watt Yaskawa servo with a 65k encoder and brake. The original Adept servo amps and control system was still working, so he kept it. The controllers were new enough that they communicate over a daisy chained IEEE1394 (Firewire) link. That is relatively modern compared to some of the conversions we’ve seen in the past. The final piece of the puzzle was ~~G-code creation~~ Translating common G-code to a format his machine could recognize. Ben chose MeshCAM for the task.

One problem [Ben] ran into was stuttering on the X-axis. The original machines only had a single sided drive system on the X-axis. Single side is fine for an assembly machine that doesn’t see any tool load. However for a CNC machine that will see spindle loads, a single side drive creates a twisting force which threatens to rack the entire frame. He used one of the drive systems from his spare robot to convert his main machine to a double-sided drive, eliminating the issue.

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LIB3 Plans To Bring Contract Manufacturing To The Masses

September 24, 2013 by Adam Fabio 20 Comments

LIB3's paste system — LIB3’s paste system

LIB3 is an open source hardware start-up from upstate New York. Thus far, the team has made some interesting products such as the piLED kit. However, they have big dreams for the future. LIB3 plans to become a contract assembly house specifically targeting low volume makers. To do this they have to build their own tools. LIB3’s latest project is a solder paste dispenser for surface mount components. Traditionally solder paste is applied with stencils made of stainless steel. In more recent years laser cut kapton has become a favorite for low volume production.

Both of these systems require a stencil to be made up. LIB3 took a different approach, and modified an old CNC glue dispenser for paste. The team got their hands on an 1991 vintage X/Y glue dispensing system. X/Y systems in this era were big, heavy affairs with powerful motors. LIB3 removed all the control electronics and built their own system from scratch. New features include direct computer control, and a vision system.

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PocketNC P5 Takes Desktop CNC To The 5th Dimension

September 23, 2013 by Adam Fabio 68 Comments

What do you get when you put together a husband/wife team of a machinist and mechanical engineer? If you’re [Matt and Michelle Hertel], you get a 5 axis CNC, which we think was one of the hidden gems at Maker Faire NY.

Hobby CNC machines have grown by leaps and bounds over the last few years. Nearly all these machines have been 3 axis (X,Y,Z). 5 (and more) axis machines have been around for years in the industrial world. These higher level machines never have made the jump to the hobby/home shop world.

The P5’s two extra axis allow for extremely complex parts to be created in one setup. A good example of this would be a turbine wheel. Compound curves on (and behind) each blade would make this an impossible job for a 3 axis CNC. The P5 was machining these parts all weekend at Maker Faire NY. Even more impressive is the fact that it was cutting Delrin, not wax.

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