Rather ambitious...

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martyb

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Aug 21, 2006
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Des Moines, IA, USA.
I've broke down and started probably my most ambitious project to date. I'm building a CNC router based of David Steele's large dual-leadscrew table plans.
For those who'd like to look him up. http://solsylva.com/

I'm about 3 nights into construction, and I'm suprised how easy it's going so far. David's plans are simple and fairly straight forward. But I do realize the real work is in the fine-tuning, and learning the controller software.

Pictures of the construction coming soon.

Wish me luck!
 
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I've got a Xylotec 3-axis package with steppers in the shop waiting for the rest to come together. And I'm leaning towards Mach3 to drive it.
My turning has slowed considerably with everything else I've got going on. But I've got hooked on the wood gear clock building and have done lots of research in designing my own.
The CNC will help out that construction as well as some other projects.

And funny you were the first to post a reply, I was thinking I needed to check out your site for my upcoming anniversary. My wife is in school to be a dental hygenist and they just learned about the miracle metal titanium. Which she did remember is what my wedding ring is made out of, and yes, I did get it from you in 2005!
 
I've got some of the new stone inlays on there now Marty. [:)]

I have the Mach3 control on my new machine. It's not bad. There's a couple things I wish it would do differently, but it's probably one of the more powerful ones for use in home built machines.
 
I love to do parametric programming, so I wish it had GOTO's and IF-THEN boolean logic. The graphics are tough to see what's going on, and it seems that you can either simulate all toolpath at once or in real time, where it takes minutes to run through. I'd like control of that speed, so I can more effectively watch the code run and detect errors.
 
Finally getting some pictures out. I wish I would think of taking photo's more during construction. I get to a good stopping point on a sub-assembly and think "DANG, I should have taken some pics!".
I've put them out in my web gallery.
http://penworks.bauerglobal.com/gallery2/main.php?g2_itemId=187

Charles, the contruction is still pretty simple and easy. Lately, I've found the instruction manual doesn't flow well. In my mind, it jumps around a lot, but if you REALLY make a point to read through them ahead of time, you'll mentally close those jumps and make a pretty smooth assembly.
 
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