I've wanted some kind of small CNC and/or 3D printer for a long time. They both have a lot in common mechanically so I figured first step is to get some kind of X/Y positioning table working.
I decided to go with the classic "DVD Drive CNC" as a first step since I have piles of old CD/DVD drives laying around.
First night I took apart 3 drives...none of them had stepper motors, they all used DC motors with optical encoders for positioning
Second night I took apart 3 DVD drives and 3 of them had steppers...though one of them was a rather funky setup. But with 2 steppers from DVD's I had the basic mechanics to build an X/Y table at least!
A few weeks ago when I first decided to tackle this for real I ordered up a couple of "easydriver" stepper motor drivers off ebay. They were only $2 each with free shipping so I got 5 even though I should only need 3 for this project.
I also dug a few larger steppers out of an old copier/printer collator a friend had given me and tested with them first.
Wouldn't you know it...first test I hooked power up backwards to the easy driver and let out the magic smoke. Good thing I ordered extras! Second try I was able to get the motor to respond, so I knew I was on the right track!
Last night I wired up 2 easydrivers, found a version of GRBL that was modified to work on the arduino mega (GRBL normally runs on '328 based arduinos but I don't have any UNO's and didn't feel like using one of my pro-minis since I have 3 mega's in various states of usability here from my experiments with multiwii.) Got GRBL flashed and responding...but it was 1AM and I didn't have a power harness for the motors still.
This morning I quickly whipped up a power harness, hooked a lipo to it and....it worked. Running off a 3S it worked quite well...but the steppers got quite a bit hotter than I would like. Ran it off 2S instead and the motors still seem to respond fine and now they stay nice and cool:
(note under my monitor the collection of vibration dampers I scavenged from the DVD drives. One drive actually had some just like you see on mobius/gopro mounts - making me suspect that's what they were originally designed for. The ones in the photo are a bit different of a design but are really nice soft material so I'm probably going to try and make a mobius damper out of some of them.)
And proof that it's working:
Next step is to dig up some hardware and make some kind of fixture to mount these to and I should have a fully functional X/Y table! Then tear apart a few more drives to get myself an X axis and I should be able to mount up a pen and have something that works.
It's only about a 38mm x 38mm working area. So I won't be doing anything super useful with this. But it's a good almost free first step and all the electronics will work to drive larger more powerful steppers on a larger frame when I'm ready to make something a bit more useful.
The big question is what kind of tool to put on here. I'll use a pen first since it's simplest. I'm tempted to pull the laser diode out of one of the DVD burners and make a small engraver...but my laser goggles aren't safe for that wavelength and I don't feel safe working with unprotected lasers. And new laser goggles aren't cheap.
The little DVD steppers aren't nearly strong enough to do something like lift a Dremel or much else of a spindle, and a drag knife is totally out of the question. But I could pickup a cheap hotend and use one of the larger steppers from the collator to make an extruder and turn this into a micro 3D printer...not sure how many useful things I could print in a 38mm cube sized working area....
But hey, like I said it's mainly a proof of concept before I put money into motion control hardware for something a bit bigger. Eventually I'd like it big enough to draw on full sheets of foamboard and maybe even cut foam. And someday I'd really like to add a nice spindle and start cutting my own multirotor frames.....baby steps...baby steps....
I decided to go with the classic "DVD Drive CNC" as a first step since I have piles of old CD/DVD drives laying around.
First night I took apart 3 drives...none of them had stepper motors, they all used DC motors with optical encoders for positioning
Second night I took apart 3 DVD drives and 3 of them had steppers...though one of them was a rather funky setup. But with 2 steppers from DVD's I had the basic mechanics to build an X/Y table at least!
A few weeks ago when I first decided to tackle this for real I ordered up a couple of "easydriver" stepper motor drivers off ebay. They were only $2 each with free shipping so I got 5 even though I should only need 3 for this project.
I also dug a few larger steppers out of an old copier/printer collator a friend had given me and tested with them first.
Wouldn't you know it...first test I hooked power up backwards to the easy driver and let out the magic smoke. Good thing I ordered extras! Second try I was able to get the motor to respond, so I knew I was on the right track!
Last night I wired up 2 easydrivers, found a version of GRBL that was modified to work on the arduino mega (GRBL normally runs on '328 based arduinos but I don't have any UNO's and didn't feel like using one of my pro-minis since I have 3 mega's in various states of usability here from my experiments with multiwii.) Got GRBL flashed and responding...but it was 1AM and I didn't have a power harness for the motors still.
This morning I quickly whipped up a power harness, hooked a lipo to it and....it worked. Running off a 3S it worked quite well...but the steppers got quite a bit hotter than I would like. Ran it off 2S instead and the motors still seem to respond fine and now they stay nice and cool:
(note under my monitor the collection of vibration dampers I scavenged from the DVD drives. One drive actually had some just like you see on mobius/gopro mounts - making me suspect that's what they were originally designed for. The ones in the photo are a bit different of a design but are really nice soft material so I'm probably going to try and make a mobius damper out of some of them.)
And proof that it's working:
Next step is to dig up some hardware and make some kind of fixture to mount these to and I should have a fully functional X/Y table! Then tear apart a few more drives to get myself an X axis and I should be able to mount up a pen and have something that works.
It's only about a 38mm x 38mm working area. So I won't be doing anything super useful with this. But it's a good almost free first step and all the electronics will work to drive larger more powerful steppers on a larger frame when I'm ready to make something a bit more useful.
The big question is what kind of tool to put on here. I'll use a pen first since it's simplest. I'm tempted to pull the laser diode out of one of the DVD burners and make a small engraver...but my laser goggles aren't safe for that wavelength and I don't feel safe working with unprotected lasers. And new laser goggles aren't cheap.
The little DVD steppers aren't nearly strong enough to do something like lift a Dremel or much else of a spindle, and a drag knife is totally out of the question. But I could pickup a cheap hotend and use one of the larger steppers from the collator to make an extruder and turn this into a micro 3D printer...not sure how many useful things I could print in a 38mm cube sized working area....
But hey, like I said it's mainly a proof of concept before I put money into motion control hardware for something a bit bigger. Eventually I'd like it big enough to draw on full sheets of foamboard and maybe even cut foam. And someday I'd really like to add a nice spindle and start cutting my own multirotor frames.....baby steps...baby steps....