DICKEYBIRD
Well-Known Member
- Joined
- Sep 27, 2007
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Chuck & Steve mentioned their interest in a simple CNC router over in the "Curved Spoke Flywheel" thread so I thhought I should post some pics of mine.
I built this machine from Dan Mauch's circuit board driller article in Nut's & Volts mag back in '95 or so. His plan was modified quite a bit to strengthen it up for router cutting of balsa & ply parts for my r/c airplane designs. The electronics came from MaxNC and being old, makes for a slow & weak machine but that's all that was available cheap at the time. There's a plethora of stuff available on the web now. It's pretty darn accurate as well.
I only do 2D stuff since I haven't learned 3D CAD yet. I use TurboCAD to draw the parts and convert the .dxf's to G-Code using Yeager Automation's ACEConverter....a free program that works great.
Since jumping into metalwork in 2004, I have done very little CNC routing but have found a few ways to use it. I've drawn up hole locations and used the CNC process to spot some accurate holes. I have a hankering to mount my spin indexer on the table, put a little diamond wheel in the router, write some simple code and have a go at sharpening a few endmills. We'll see what happens.
I use an OLD 386 laptop in the DOS mode to run it since the MAXNC software only runs in DOS. If you have any questions, I'll do my best to answer them.
I built this machine from Dan Mauch's circuit board driller article in Nut's & Volts mag back in '95 or so. His plan was modified quite a bit to strengthen it up for router cutting of balsa & ply parts for my r/c airplane designs. The electronics came from MaxNC and being old, makes for a slow & weak machine but that's all that was available cheap at the time. There's a plethora of stuff available on the web now. It's pretty darn accurate as well.
I only do 2D stuff since I haven't learned 3D CAD yet. I use TurboCAD to draw the parts and convert the .dxf's to G-Code using Yeager Automation's ACEConverter....a free program that works great.
Since jumping into metalwork in 2004, I have done very little CNC routing but have found a few ways to use it. I've drawn up hole locations and used the CNC process to spot some accurate holes. I have a hankering to mount my spin indexer on the table, put a little diamond wheel in the router, write some simple code and have a go at sharpening a few endmills. We'll see what happens.
I use an OLD 386 laptop in the DOS mode to run it since the MAXNC software only runs in DOS. If you have any questions, I'll do my best to answer them.