A home-made CNC machine for milling circuit boards and other such things.
Dan's Technology Chronicles
Nascent
The Setup
Nearly there
The machine in my room shortly after being fully assembled for the first time.
Preliminary
Nascent was initially setup on a spare table in our garage. The control electronics had not yet been finalized (and still haven't), so they existed in primarily bread-board form.
Results
Smiley
This was the first 'thing' the machine ever milled.
Circuit boards - top
A batch of circuit boards milled for Nimiety.
Circuit boards - bottom
Same boards, viewed from the bottom.
Cutting acrylic
Cutting an acrylic disk for use on a secondary coil.
Resulting disks
The finished acrylic disk on the secondary coil-form. The HDPE end-cap was also milled by Nascent.
Mechanics
Taking shape
The z-axis prior to carriage and motor installation.
Down the track
View showing the basic structure of the axis.
The carriage
Z-axis with the sliding HDPE carriage installed. There is significant friction between the carriage and the rails (necessary to minimize slop), but it is no problem for the stepper motors.
Inner workings
View of what holds and moves the carriage along the track. Note that the tapped HDPE block has been replaced by a steel nut of sorts, since the HDPE wore too quickly.
