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Finished the new control head. It's built in an aluminum die cast hammond box and has a real estop switch. Good riddance to the old POS switch. At the moment, the pot directly controls the motor...

Very slow progress, work has a way of interfering with hobby stuff. I spent a month of sundays making a tooling plate for it. First of several. This one has a 105 holes tapped 10-32 on a 1" grid. ...

High-airflow base - that's good. :) I really wish they wouldn't have made that change.

I'm using a 1300W oven. More is better. Just make sure that it comes up to temp quickly. I use the...

Yes, your assessment is pretty much dead on. I'll use python or bourne shell for the scripting, right now I'm just using kermit to control it. I have no idea if Mach3 could be used. If it has some...

Here's a shot of another processor board and an h-bridge board under construction. All of the SMT devices have been soldered on. The solder paste is applied with a toothpick and the parts placed...

Yes. It's already in place. The beam that the counterweight runs on provides a great deal of strengthening to the column. The base of the beam will be secured initially to the benchtop and later...

A quick update. I received some boards from batchpcb. They were kind enough to double the quantity for no extra cost so I have 8x microcontroller boards, 4x each of the h-bridge and kludge boards. ...

After completing a few minor edits, I've ordered 4x of the processor board and 2x each of the others. They'll take a few weeks to fabricate at Batchpcb as it's done overseas.

Next, I'll work on...

Me too! :)

Almost ready. I've made a few edits. 1) I've added a 3.3V regulator to the processor board to accommodate experimentation with lower voltage devices, replaced the humongous 5V regulator with an...

Add a kludge board to the family.

I've completed the schematics and board layouts for a general purpose PIC 18f4550 microprocessor board and a shield or daughter board for the motor control circuitry. They're both at batchpcb...

I've been scratching my head for a few days trying to figure out how to utilize the existing motor control board with EMC. The speed is controlled with a potentiometer. I've seen that many people...

Thanks! I'm using Gecko G201 drives.

The step rate is limited by the rtai latency. In my case it takes 10,000 steps to move 1". I'm using .200" per rev ballscrews, 10x microstepping drives and...

It's Alive!

The initial assembly is complete. I ran all three axis from limit to limit for awhile. I'm getting 9" on the x, 6" on the y and 8" on the z axis. Before the rebuild I was barely...

I'm done messing with computers for now. I've built an RTAI Gentoo system with EMC 2.4.6, cvs RTAI, optimized Linux 2.6.32.20 kernel. Rather than Gnome or KDE, I'm using the Enlightenment E16...

Very very true. Latency and jitter are much more important. I'm working to get that to a reasonable value now. It starts out around 8.9us but then jumps to around 25us under load. That's within...

I decided to use the larger rack mount case and cannibalize the other motherboard.

The motherboard is an ABit IC7-G with a 3GHz P4, 2GB ram, 200GB disk. Nothing spectacular by today's standards...

Well shoot. The rack mount case will take a mini-atx but the board I had in mind is a standard atx.

I have another rack mount case but it was intended for another cnc router build that's on the...

Negative. I got my initial X2 CNC kit from KDN Tools. That was before I knew anything at all about CNC, was somewhat intimidated by the whole conversion process and was looking for an easy way to...

I've bolted the z-axis together sans the spindle for testing. I plan to run all three axis from limit to limit for a few hours before final reassembly. I'm also replacing my steppers with some...

I've finished the wiring for the z-axis limits. I also included wiring for a spindle lamp. I used a 3 pin connector from a dead computer cooling fan for that. As the spindle no longer uses gears,...

Thanks again guys :)

Yes, engine turning, damascening and a few other terms are used. The Fabergé eggs and the engine cowl on the Spirit of Saint Louis are well known examples. I think the old...

Bling :)

Thanks guys.

I can't claim I was the first to do the hidden X2 limit switches. There's another thread around cnczone somewhere where I first got the idea.

Regarding jeweling. I first learned...

McMaster has something similar to what Qayok mentioned:

McMaster-Carr

And you don't have to buy $1k worth :)

These are the final two images for tonight - the x axis ballscrew and the table back where they belong :)

I have a little more wiring to do on the z axis and then I can begin reassembly of the...

On to the xy limit switch wiring.

All of the xy limit switch wiring is completely hidden in the base casting.

I machined a small bracket to hold two db9 connectors, one each for x and y. The...

And finally, the upper bearing is pulled/pushed onto the spindle.

This process is surprisingly easy if you have the proper tools. They can be made for about $30 in materials. The swarfrat video...

Next, the spindle and lower bearing are pulled into the housing.

The first image shows the tooling stack used. The spindle casting would be just to the right of the large diameter tube.

The...