ARM-based CNC Mill Needs No Computer

March 24, 2010 by Mike Szczys 27 Comments

[Fedeortiz12] and his team are nearing completion of their CNC mill (english translation). They set out to build a standalone machine that takes G-code in the RS274/NGC format from an SD card and machines parts accordingly. At the heart of the system is an ARM LPC2148 controller with a character LCD and control pad for operation. The guys have made a teaser video showing the project being tested with a felt-tipped pen. Take a look after the break.

We’d like to see the final product milling PCBs. We’ve always been a little jealous of the PCB milling setup that [imsolidstate] has in his shop.

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Laser Cutter Plays Super Mario Bros. Theme

April 18, 2009 by Eliot 21 Comments

[vimeo http://vimeo.com/3983501%5D

[Jed] from Toronto’s hackerspace HackLab.TO coded the theme from Super Mario Bros. for their laser cutter. He’s posted the ruby code that generates the g-code from a simple tablature.

Related: CNC music factory Still Alive

[via Waxy]

Generating G-code With Common Lisp

February 1, 2009 by Eliot 10 Comments

gcode

Ruin & Wesen are a two person shop creating specialized music gear. As part of their recent MIDI Command development, they got into case manufacturing. They purchased a mini CNC mill to cut the aluminum cases. Unhappy with the software options provide [Wesen] decided to write his own G-code generator. G-code is part of the numerical control used to command CNC machines. He implemented his interpreter using the language he’s most familiar with: Common Lisp (not surprising if you notice the website’s backend). The post covers the design philosophy used and some of the problems that came up. We look forward to future releases since the interpreter can generate milling code using processing.org sketches and cut PCBs directly from Eagle.

You may remember Ruin & Wesen from when they shared their Eagle layout videos.

[Thanks fbz]