$300 cnc in a day

[Dawai]

I bought two gecko drives to go onto my shaper for a gear cutter.

OKAY.. I got one more drive to buy now and motor.

I got bored slapped this together, done tested and calibrated it. It has some bad end play as most the chinese cross slide tables, but seems to work fine.

http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v85/ibewgypsie/XYSlideDrive.jpg
http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v85/ibewgypsie/xySlide.jpg

What's it good for? well I got a arm cut out for the plasma torch, it has a 4x6" cross slide.. meaning it can be moved around a sheet of metal to cut out parts. TORCH holder, then well the indexer I got a pulley on needs a drive and motor.. then, a end mill sharpener, spins as rotates as feeds.. need a cup wheel to go onto my grinder.

Side projects off this portable slide..

1: end mill sharpener
2: small flame-plasma cutter
3: gear cutter for shaper
4: mini pcb drill (using the drill spindle I salvaged off another project)

If I get bored with it, I can always pull the parts for the next project.

Here's my first cnc project, ran with transistors and logic inverter chips. BRUTE, resistor current limit. SLOW as christmas and not as much fun. A good learning project thou.
http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v85/ibewgypsie/MILL3.jpg

[macona]

Please tell me you are not using a drill press to hold endmills...

[Swarf&Sparks]

dunno about mills and drills, but that's a hell of a box you put the electonics in Dave!
Is that MILspec?
MIL-tfd?
WFD?

[jkilroy]

David I just dig your head down, brute force, full throttle style on these projects. Great work as usual. One of the big things that separates you from 90% of the rest of the people on the planet is that you are not afraid to try anything.

[Dawai]

Macona? (floyd or steve?)

Here's my first cnc project, ran with transistors and logic inverter chips. BRUTE, resistor current limit. SLOW as christmas and not as much fun. A good learning project thou.
http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v85/ibewgypsie/MILL3.jpg
This was a cnc'ed drill press for making circuit boards. More cnc circuit boards.

[camdigger]

Truly inspirational... CNC plasma table! Do you have plans to convert to plasma table? I am curious as to how plain screws might perform...

Keep up the good work!
Cam

[BobWarfield]

Git 'er done!

I like the idea of a CNC shaper. In fact, if you have a mill, it seems like one could make an attachment for the head to hold the tool and then the table motion is all you'd need to cutting keyways and such. Done right, you need not subject the spindle itself to any stress at all, just the head, and not much there either.

Surprised we don't see more of this!

Cheers,

BW

[lazlo]

I like the idea of a CNC shaper.

I don't think he's talking about a CNC shaper. He mentioned gear hobbing, so I'm assuming he's talking about the rack-formed shaper approach that was published by a guy named "Base Circle" in Model Engineer, where you increment the gear blank in an arbor everytime the shaper ram completes a cycle.

Base Circle's implementation used a wire wrapped around a drive wheel holding the gear blank, and then he had problems that the rotation would change as the amount of wire on the spool was reduced. It would be infinitely simpler to put a stepper motor on the gear blank arbor, and step each time the ram stroked.

Dave, is that what you're thinking?