20 July 2010

And now for the ritual plotter dance...

IT IS ALIVE!   ;-)




  • x axis: epson scanner carriage and bipolar stepper, driven by A4983
  • y axis: star micronics matrix printer carriage, bipolar stepper, driven by A4983
  • z axis: sony cd-rom mechanism, cable and stepper motor, driven by L293D and an Arduino duemilanove.
  • Home made breakouts,
  • Computer: salvaged P4 Compaq with 1 gig RAM that was being thrown out to the garbage

Software: (No stinkin' windoze!) Ubuntu 8.04 RTAI from http://linuxcnc.org/
EMC2/axis runs as silk.

Issues and lessons learned:
The y/z carriage is a bit too heavy (iron construction angle), too much for its plastic sliders.
The y stepper is too weak, lacks resolution and does not take up microstepping.
Epson definitely made better quality stuff in those bygone times.

Built to learn about CNC and to explain geometry to da kid.

To do: connect the limit opto-switches (will probably need inverted logic or pulldowns for the parallel port).

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