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Large machine tools are often built to last a very long time, so it is not uncommon to find a lathe made in the 19th century still providing faithful service. The fundamental job of a lathe has not changed significantly in the intervening years, even though a modern lathe will have more features than its hundred-year-old equivalent.

This is not the case for CNC machine tools. When computer numerical control was wedded with old iron machine tools, the control hardware was doomed to quickly become antique or vintage. From the user interfaces to the control circuitry, in the world of electronics new features quickly become obsolete. [Evan] has a ShopBot CNC wood router from the mid 1990s that he describes as an antique, and his tale of its restoration is both a fascinating look at the changes in small-scale CNC control over two decades as well as something of a primer for anyone considering a similar upgrade.

The controller is a pair of beige-box PC cases that scream “I love the 90’s!”. One contains a socket-7 PC running Windows 95, and the other houses the ShopBot controller; an 80c32 dev board with ShopBot firmware, coupled to a set of motor controller boards, which unlike today’s controllers expect raw quadrature inputs. His aim was to replace the vintage hardware with a modern alternative. An Arduino Mega running grbl to talks to the ShopBot controllers by way of a small piece of electronics to condition quadrature data from the step and direction lines it provided. The result may not be as good as a router from 2019, but it did save this aging tool from retirement.

Tags:  cnc hacks  

Whether it’s wood, metal, plastic, or otherwise, when it comes to obtaining materials for your builds, you have two choices: buy new stock, or scrounge what you can. Fresh virgin materials are often easier to work with, but it’s satisfying to get useful stock from unexpected sources.

This CNC router for PVC pipe is a great example of harvesting materials from an unusual source. [Christophe Machet] undertook his “Pipeline Project” specifically to explore what can be made from large-diameter PVC pipe, of the type commonly used for sewers and other drains. It’s basically a standard – albeit large-format – three-axis CNC router with one axis wrapped into a cylinder. The pipe is slipped around a sacrificial mandrel and loaded into the machine, where it rotates under what looks like a piece of truss from an antenna tower. The spindle seems a bit small, but it obviously gets the job done; luckily the truss has the strength and stiffness to carry a much bigger spindle if that becomes necessary in the future.

The video below shows the machine carving up parts for some lovely chairs. [Christophe] tells us that some manual post-forming with a heat gun is required for features like the arms of the chairs, but we could see automating that step too. We like the look of the pieces that come off this machine, and how [Christophe] saw a way to adapt one axis for cylindrical work. He submitted this project for the 2019 Hackaday Prize; have you submitted your entry yet?

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Tags:  cnc hacks  

Let’s say you’ve watched a few episodes of “The Joy of Painting” and you want your inner [Bob Ross] to break free. You get the requisite supplies for oil painting – don’t forget the alizarin crimson! – and start to apply paint to canvas, only to find your happy little trees are not so happy, and this whole painting thing is harder than it looks.

[Saint Bob] would certainly encourage you to stick with it, but if you have not the patience, a CNC painting robot might be a thing to build. The idea behind [John Opsahl]’s “If Then Paint” is not so much to be creative, but to replicate digital images in paint. Currently in the proof-of-concept phase, If Then Paint appears to have two main components: the paint management system, with syringe pumps to squeeze out different paints to achieve just the right color, and the applicator itself, a formidable six-axis device that supports tool changes by using different brushes chucked up into separate hand drill chucks. The extra axes at the head will allow control of how the brush is presented to the canvas, and also allow for cleaning the brush between colors. The videos below show two of the many ways [John] is exploring to clean the brushes, but sadly neither is as exciting as the correct [Bob Ross] method.

It looks like If Then Paint has a ways to go yet, but we’re impressed by some of the painting it has produced already. This is just the kind of project we like to see in the 2019 Hackaday Prize – thought out, great documentation, and a lot of fun.

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Tags:  cnc hacks  

Pen plotters, those mechanical X-Y drawing machines that have in many cases been superseded by inkjet and other printer technologies, exert a fascination from a section of our community. Both analogue and digital machines are brought out of retirement for some impressive graphical effects, and we suspect that more than one of you wishes you had the space for one in your lives.

The good news is that you now no longer need room for a hefty piece of 1970s instrumentation, because the ever-inventive [Bart Dring] has produced a tiny 3D-printed plotter with an ESP32 at its heart. The ESP runs his ESP32 port of the Grbl firmware, and can handle a G-code file placed wirelessly upon the controller’s SD card.

The mechanism is particularly clever, using a single belt for both X and Y axes. The pen lift Z axis is a hinged design rather than a linear one, with a hobby servo doing the lifting. The hinge bearings are placed as close as possible to the paper surface to achieve an approximation to a vertical lift. You can see the machine in action in the video below the break, drawing its own self-portrait.

If you are a long-time reader you will recognise [Bart]’s work, he has appeared here quite a few times. His coaster-cutting machine and his CNC plotter badge are particularly memorable.

Tags:  cnc hacks  

Usually when one thinks of using a CNC machine for producing PCBs, one thinks of those big, bulky CNC machines that pretty much fill an entire desk. But what if a CNC machine could be small enough to fit on a desk without getting in the way, yet still be useful enough to make single- and double-sided PCBs? This was the idea behind The Ant, the compact PCB manufacturing machine which [Mattia] and [Angelo] designed and open sourced.

In addition to the above linked Bitbucket repository for the project, the ‘Ant Team’ has a YouTube channel on which they have a range of rather professionally edited videos on the project, ranging from constructing the little machine, to various updates and more  Also see the video that is attached after the link for a visual introduction to the project.

Support and community interaction is mostly performed via the Reddit group for the project, where the diminutive machine finds a welcoming community as it continues to evolve. The machine itself is specified at this point as being able to built from commercially available and 3D printed parts, requiring no further tools for cutting or shaping. The precision is about 0.2 mm trace spacing.

Optical alignment for double-sided boards is achieved using a USB micro camera and the bCNC software, while the cost for materials is said to be quite inexpensive when compared with commercial solutions

Honestly, after seeing the machine in action, wouldn’t you want to have a CNC machine that’s so small and good-looking on your desk? If there’s one thing one might want to add, it’s probably a way to deal with the copper dust that’s produced while creating PCBs. Having to clean that off the desk after each PCB manufacturing session would get a bit cumbersome, we imagine.

Tags:  cnc hacks  

CNC machine tools are highly useful for when you want to take a CAD design and make real parts as quickly and as easily as possible. Typically, they’re employed in large-scale industrial settings, but CNC machines come in all shapes and sizes. It’s possible to build a useful machine that’s just right to sit on your desk, as [More Than User] demonstrates.

The holes pictured were made with a 0.5mm tool, showing off the precision and accuracy of the machine.

The build consists of an aluminium-framed CNC engraver, designed primarily for the production of PCBs. However, it can also handle plastic jobs, and aluminium if run slowly enough. Like most garage CNC projects, it runs with a combination of stepper motors and an Arduino. The cutting area is 16 cm x 16cm – more than enough for most hobby PCBs.

There are plenty of interesting details, such as the T-slot bed made from U-section steel bolted together, and the simple probe made from a microswitch. Perhaps most impressive though is the tight precision of the cuts. This is particularly important for PCB work, where otherwise minor issues could cause short or open circuits and make the resulting parts useless.

It’s a project that we’re sure will come in handy for [More Than User]’s future projects, and there’s nothing quite like making your own tools. If you’re new to CNC as a whole, consider picking up some design tips before you get started.

Tags:  cnc hacks  

The Googie style was a major architectural trend of the post-war period in the United States. It remains popular to throwback to this style, and [Wesley Treat] got the job to create a sign in this vein for a local trailer motel (Youtube link, embedded below).

CNC tools make just about any job easier, and this one is no exception. The smooth curves of the sign were carved out of several sections of PVC sheet, and stacked up to form the body of the sign. These were then sanded, coated in putty, and given a lick of  paint. Steps like these could likely be skipped in the interest of saving time, especially given that few will see those parts once the sign is installed. However, [Wesley] takes pride in his work, and the final piece is all the better for it. It’s also important for the piece to impress the client, not just the public.

The front of the sign is also produced in PVC sheet, and given a coat of paint with brush techniques used to create a faux-wood finish. Vinyl is then applied to the textual and graphical elements in order to create a colored backlit effect. The sign is lit with off-the-shelf LED strips, and the whole assembly is weather sealed to protect it from the elements.

The final product is a beautiful piece, harking back to the classic Googie aesthetic and serving as a testament to [Wesley]’s skills. It’s a great example of how easy it is to create great work with the right tools and the proper attention to detail. It also goes to show how great LEDs are for signage, whether you’re at the beach or the lab. Video after the break.

Tags:  cnc hacks  

It doesn’t seem as though bending wire would be much of a chore, but when you’re making art from your circuits, it can be everything. Just the right angle in just the right place can make the difference between a circuit sculpture that draws gasps and one that’s only “Meh.”

[Jiří Praus] creates circuit sculptures that are about as far away from the “Meh” end of the spectrum as possible. And to help him make them even more spectacular, he has started prototyping a wire-bending machine to add precision to his bends. There’s no build log at the moment, but the video below shows progress to date. All the parts are 3D-printed, with two NEMA 17 steppers taking care of both wire feed and moving the bending head. It appears that the head has multiple slots for tools of different shapes. For now, the wire is rotated around its long axis manually, but another stepper could be added to take care of that job.

[Jiří] tells us that while he loves making circuit sculptures like his amazing mechanical tulip, he hates repeating himself. He hopes this bender will make repeat jobs a little less tedious and a lot more precise, and we hope he goes forward with the build so we get to see both it and more of his wonderful works of circuit art.

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Tags:  cnc hacks  

“Amazing how with only the power of 3D-printing, two different computers, hundreds of dollars in CNC machinery, a lathe, and modern microcontroller magic, I can almost decorate a cupcake as well as a hyperactive ten-year-old.”  We can think of no better way to sum up [Justin]’s experiment in CNC frosting application, which turns out to only be a gateway to more interesting use cases down the road.

Granted, it didn’t have to be this hard. [Justin] freely admits that he took the hard road and made parts where off-the-shelf components would have been fine. The design for the syringe pump was downloaded from Thingiverse and does just about what you’d expect – it uses a stepper motor to press down on the plunger of a 20-ml syringe full of frosting. Temporarily attached in place of the spindle on a CNC router, the pump dispenses onto the baked goods of your choice, although with an irregular surface like a muffin top the results are a bit rough. The extruded frosting tends to tear off and drop to the surface of the cake, distorting the design. We’d suggest mapping the Z-height of the cupcake first so the frosting can dispense from a consistent height.

Quality of the results is not really the point, though. As [Justin] teases, this hardware is in support of bioprinting of hydrogels, along with making synthetic opals. We’re looking forward to those projects, but in the meantime, maybe we can all just enjoy a spider silk beer with [Justin].

Tags:  cnc hacks  

Rub two pieces of metal against each other hard enough, and it won’t be long before they heat up sufficiently to cause problems. That’s especially true when one is a workpiece and one is a tool edge, and the problems that arise from failing to manage the heat produced by friction can cost you dearly.

The traditional way of dealing with this is by pumping heavy streams of liquid coolant at the workpiece, but while that works, it creates problems of its own. That’s where minimum quantity lubrication comes in. MQL uses a fine mist of lubricant atomized in a stream of compressed air, which saves on lube and keeps swarf cleaner for easier recycling. The gear needed for MQL can be pricey though, so [brockard] decided to add homebrew MQL to his CNC router, with great results.

The video below shows the whole process, from raw metal to finished system – skip ahead to about 12 minutes if you just want to see final testing, but be warned that you’ll be missing some high-quality machining. The finished pump is a double-piston design, with each side driven by a cam rotated by a servo. An Arduino controls the speed of the motor based on the current settings; the pump is turned on and off through G-code control of a relay.

The lubricant stream is barely visible in the video, as opposed to the sloshing mess of traditional flood coolants, and seems much more suitable for a hobbyist-grade CNC setup. Need to build a CNC router before you build this? You can do much worse than this one.

Thanks for the tip, [Jasper Jans].

Tags:  cnc hacks  

By now you will all have heard so much about the grille on Apple’s new “Cheese grater” Mac Pro that you might think there was nothing more to say. Before we move on though there’s one final piece of work to bring to your attention, and it comes from [Andy Pugh]. He’s replicated the design in Fusion 360, and used it to produce rather an attractive Raspberry Pi case.

It seems that for Fusion 360 users the problem lies in that package’s method of placing spheres which differs from that of some other CAD software. Using the page linked in our previous coverage of the grille he’s taken its geometry information and produced a video detailing every step in recreating it for Fusion 360. This is where following someone who really knows your CAD package pays dividends, because we suspect it would take us days to figure out some of the tricks he shows us.

The result is the Raspberry Pi case, which is for the Pi 3 and others like it. Sadly we couldn’t break our embargo and tell him about the Pi 4 and its different connector layout, but we’re guessing a halfway competent CAD operator could put together a Pi 4 case. Andy’s files can be found on Thingiverse, so you can all make one for yourselves.

Andy’s appeared here before a few times, not least for his Ner-A-Car motorcycle, and for designing a Robot Wars robot.

Tags:  cnc hacks  

Apple’s newest Mac Pro with its distinctive machined grille continues to excite interest, but until now there has been one question on the lips of nobody. It’s acquired the moniker “Cheese grater”, but can it grate cheese? [Winston Moy] set out to test its effectiveness in the kitchen with a piece of Pecorino Romano, a great cheese.

Of course, the video is not really about cheese grating, but about the machining process to create that distinctive pattern of intersecting spherical holes. He doesn’t have a real Mac Pro because nobody does as yet, so like others his approach was to reverse engineer the manufacturing process. He takes us through the entire thing and the rationale behind his decisions as he makes a 13-hole piece of Mac Pro-like grill from a billet of aluminium. It’s first roughly cut with a pair of decreasing-size end mills, then finished with a ball mill. He’s added an extra cut to round off the sharp edge of the hole that isn’t there on the Mac.

An unexpected problem came when he machined the bottom and the holes began to intersect, it was clear that they were doing so wrongly. Turning the piece over must be done in the correct orientation, one to note for any other would-be cheese-grater manufacturers. Finally the piece is blasted for a satin finish, and then anodised for scratch-resistance.

So, the important question must be answered: does it grate? The answer’s no, the best it can manage is something close to a crumble. He doesn’t seem bothered though, we get the impression he likes eating cheese whatever its form. The whole process is in the video below the break.

For more Apple grille examination, take a look at this mathematical analysis.

Tags:  cnc hacks  

Apple released a monitor stand not so long ago with an eye-watering price tag, and in the resulting fuss you might almost be forgiven for missing the news that they also released a new computer. The distinctive grille on the new Mac Pro caused some interest among Hackaday editors, with speculation rife as to how it had been machined. It seems we’re not alone in this, because [J. Peterson] sent us a link to his own detailed analysis.

The key to the pattern lies in hemispherical holes milled part-way-through a piece of metal on a triangular tessellation, and intersecting with an identical set of holes milled at an offset from the other side. The analysis was done purely from online information as he doesn’t have a real Mac Pro, but using some clever trigonometry he is able to calculate the required offset as well as the hole depth. There are some STL files on Thingiverse, for the curious.

Should you wish to make your own copy of a Mac Pro grille you should therefore be able to use this information in programming a CNC mill to carve it from a piece of alloy plate. The interesting side of it from a manufacturing perspective though is that this is a complex shape that would be difficult to produce in numbers without either CNC or a very specialist one-off machine tool for this single purpose, and neither is a normal expenditure for a mere grille. Perhaps you might come close by rolling alloy plate between rollers whose profile matched the hole pattern, but in that event you would not equal the finish that they have achieved. Apple’s choice to use a relatively time-intensive CNC process in mass-production of a cosmetic part is probably in a large part a quality statement for their particular brand of consumer, but also sets a high bar to any would-be imitators. We applaud it for its engineering, even if we won’t be shelling out for that monitor stand.

Tags:  cnc hacks  

People making videos about machining have a problem: the coolant gets everywhere. When you take a video to show the process of creating a device, the milky gunk that keeps everything cool gets all over your camera lens. AvE is experimenting with an interesting fix for this problem, with a self-cleaning camera lens. (Video embedded below, some salty language.) His prototype uses a spinning piece of clear PVC mounted on BB gun pellets, driven by compressed air. The camera can see through this spinning piece, but when the coolant hits the spinning piece, it is thrown off.

That’s not a new idea: most ships use a thing called a clear view screen or clearsight to help the crew see out of the window in bad weather. These are usually driven by an electric motor at the center, though, and AvE’s version is instead driven by the compressed air. That means that the camera can see right through the rotating part without obstruction. The next step, AvE says, is to make it thinner and mount it on a filter mount so it can be attached to a GoPro or other small camera.

This is definitely a project to watch. Anyone who has used a GoPro in the rain faces similar problems, so this might find a use outside of the machine shop as well.

Tags:  cnc hacks  

If you want a big CNC machine you need a strong, vibration-resistant base. They build bells out of metal, so that might not be the best if you want something that doesn’t shake. Epoxy granite is your best bet, but what epoxy granite is the best? That’s the question [Adam Bender] answered in a series of experiments that resulted in a great-looking CNC machine.

While this is a project that resulted in a completed base for a CNC machine, this is also an experiment to determine the best formula for creating your own epoxy granite. The purpose of the experiment is effectively to determine the best-looking epoxy granite and uses four variables in the composition of this composite. Play sand, gravel, dye (in the form of iron oxide and liquid epoxy dye), and two-part epoxy were used to create seven different samples. Samples using rock didn’t turn out that great and still had trapped air. This was true even if the epoxy was put in a vacuum chamber for degassing. The winning combination turned out to be a mix of 80% sand and 20% epoxy with a bit of black dye, vibrated for 30 minutes on a DIY shaker table.

With the correct formula for epoxy granite, [Adam] set up his mold and waxed everything liberally. The internal skeleton, or what the CNC machine will be bolted to, is assembled inside the mold and the epoxy is poured in. The result is fantastic, and an excellent base for a machine that turns metal into chips. You can check out the video below.

Tags:  cnc hacks  

Here at Hackaday, we thought we’d seen every method of making PCBs: CNC machining, masking and etching with a variety of chemicals, laser engraving, or even the crude but effective method of scratching away the copper with a utility knife. Whatever works is fine with us, really, but there still does seem to be room for improvement in the DIY PCB field. To whit, we present rapid PCB prototyping with electrical discharge machining.

Using an electric arc to selectively ablate the copper cladding on a PCB seems like a great idea. At least that’s how it seemed to [Jake Wachlin] when he realized that the old trick of cutting a sheet of aluminum foil using a nine-volt battery and a pencil lead is really just a form of EDM, and that the layer of copper on a PCB is not a million miles different from foil. A few experiments with a bench power supply and a mechanical pencil lead showed that it’s relatively easy to blast the copper from a blank board, so [Jake] took the next logical step and rigged up an old 3D-printer to move the tool. The video below shows the setup and some early tests; it’s not perfect by a long shot, but it has a lot of promise. If he can control the arc better, this homebrew EDM looks like it could very rapidly produce prototype boards.

[Jake] posted this project in its current state in the hopes of stimulating a discussion and further experimentation. That’s commendable, and we’d really love to see this one move along rapidly. You might start your brainstorming by looking at this somewhat sketchy mains-powered EDM, or look into the whole field in a little more detail.

Tags:  cnc hacks  

Building your own CNC machine can present a series of varied challenges. There are the software considerations, but also the mechanical side of things – motors, shafts, screws and slides all need to be addressed in a working design. Of course, you can always outsource some of the work – and that’s precisely what [Daniele Tartaglia] did  with this pen plotter build (Youtube link, embedded below).

It’s a capable plotter, able to nicely reproduce both graphics and text.

The build gains X and Y axes by virtue of two salvaged DVD drives. The tray mechanisms come ready to go with stepper motors and lead screws already assembled, and make a great basis for a compact plotter. A wooden frame is constructed to hold everything together. The pen is held against the paper with a rubber band which helps the ballpoint to draw a nice dark line, with a servo used as a pen retract mechanism. An Arduino Uno with a stepper driver shield is then employed to run the show.

It’s a tidy build, with neat cable management and smart design choices giving it a pleasing aesthetic. The CNC fundamentals are good, too – with minimal backlash and slop, the plotter is able to draw quite effectively. Old optical drives are a popular choice for plotter builds, as it turns out. Video after the break.

Tags:  cnc hacks  

As a little experiment in desktop printing, because you can make a desk out of wood, [BlueFlower] modified a standard inkjet printer to print on wood. This is not an electronics mod by any means; this is still a printer that’s plugged into a USB port, does all the fancy printer firmware stuff, tells you to refill the yellow ink cartridge when you only want to print black, and all the other things that inkjet printer firmware will do. This is a mechanical mod. By taking apart the belts and rails and mounting them to a new frame, [BlueFlower] was able to open up the printer so a moving bed holding a board could be moved through the mechanics.

While the printer itself looks a little janky, you can’t argue with results. The prints look good, and should hold up well with a bit of finish. There’s a height adjustment for different thicknesses of stock, and if you’re exceptionally clever, you might be able to put a six-foot-long board through this thing. You can check out a video of this direct to wood printer in action below.

Tags:  cnc hacks  

An eggbot is probably the easiest introduction to CNC machines that you could possibly hope for, at least in terms of the physical build. But at the same time, an eggbot can let you get your hands dirty with all of the concepts, firmware, and the toolchain that you’d need to take your CNC game to the next level, whatever that’s going to be. So if you’ve been wanting to make any kind of machine where stepper motors move, cut, trace, display, or simply whirl around, you can get a gentle introduction on the cheap with an eggbot.

Did we mention Easter? It’s apparently this weekend. Seasonal projects are the worst for the procrastinator. If you wait until the 31st to start working on your mega-awesome New Year’s Dropping Laser Ball-o-tron 3000, it’s not going to get done by midnight. Or so I’ve heard. And we’re certainly not helping by posting this tutorial so late in the season. Sorry about that. On the other hand, if you start now, you’ll have the world’s most fine-tuned eggbot for 2020. Procrastinate tomorrow!

I had two main goals with this project: getting it done quickly and getting it done easily. That was my best shot at getting it done at all. Secondary goals included making awesome designs, learning some new software toolchains, and doing the whole thing on the cheap. I succeeded on all counts, and that’s why I’m here encouraging you to build one for yourself.

What is an Eggbot?

Eggbots first entered my consciousness through Evil Mad Scientist’s EggBot kit. It’s the most refined that we’ve seen, and if you’re making your own machine it’s worth looking at where EMSL include adjustability in their design. But as promised, even a fancy one like this doesn’t have too much going on with the hardware side of things. Your bare-bones version only needs two stepper motors, a micro servo motor to lift the pen, maybe a skateboard bearing and some threaded rod here and there to make it adjustable and smooth. And of course, you’re going to need the electronic bits to drive it all.

Conceptually, one stepper rotates the egg around its axis of symmetry, the other rotates the pen’s axis so that it can travel north-south, and the servo lifts up the pen between strokes.

For motors, I used what I had on hand, and you probably can too. I bought a big handful of these discount NEMA 17 steppers from a local German supplier, and although they were cheap, they’re probably over-spec for an Eggbot with 0.34 Nm worth of torque. I’ve seen machines that use the ridiculously cheap 28-BYJ48-type gear motors as well, so even those could be made to work. The number of steps is key, and more is better, so you probably don’t want to use any old pancake stepper you find, for fear that you’ll get a low-step variant. For the pen, a servo is a servo, but you want a small one.

The particular frame I ended up with was a variant of this 3D model but redesigned to print without supports. It’s maybe not as flexible as the original, but tossing someone else’s design at a 3D printer is definitely the low-hassle way to go: download, slice, print, and come back in ten hours. If you’ve got a lot of threaded rod lying around, and want the extra flexibility, I’d consider this battle-tested frame or one of its derivatives.

But even if you don’t have a 3D printer, the mechanics of an eggbot make very light demands on the home builder. All motors are driven directly, so there’s no gearing to worry about. Eggs are light, so you don’t need to sweat about torque. And there’s almost no side-load on the pen tool, so you don’t have to worry particularly about frame rigidity. Have a look at [Zaggo]’s SphereBot made of MDF scraps, or [derwassi]’s CNC Eggbot made of thin plywood for inspiration.

The electronics include two stepper motor drivers and a microcontroller to run the show. I went online to look for Pololu-style A4988 stepper drivers, because I’d used them ages ago in building a 3D printer. I remembered them to cost around $10 each, so I was looking at $20 and a bunch of DIY work. Instead, I found a complete kit with “Arduino”, shield, four (4!) stepper drivers, and even a USB cable thrown in for €15, delivered. Search “arduino grbl cnc shield”, do not collect $200, do not pass Go, and head directly to checkout. Maybe pick up two, because they’re an incredible bargain, and you can’t beat it for development time spent on the electronics side of things. Without the “Arduino” you can get one for €7 and use whatever micro dev board you’ve got sitting around, but you’ll have to do the wiring yourself.

I splurged. After all, minimizing my time and effort spent on the project was the prime directive. Other than soldering compatible headers to my servo motors, everything was plug-and-play. If you haven’t bought oddball servos, you might not even need to warm up the iron. Splurging unfortunately meant waiting, though, and I sat around for a week and a half with a printed and assembled eggbot on my shelf, waiting for electronics, cursing my laziness. Total human time spent on the project, under two hours, and most of that was browsing 3D printed frames online and re-designing some 3D-printed parts to work around my oddball servos. So I guess the waiting pays off.

Wares: Firm- and Soft-

“And the rest is a simple matter of software.” While sourcing all the parts and building the bot took two hours, I spent at least that long looking for the right combination of software and firmware to drive this thing. Learning to use what would become a toolchain took four or five more. I’ll spare you as much of that learning curve as possible.

The plan was to have the eggbot deal in plain-jane G-code because it’s the lingua franca of CNC machines. This is where we part ways with Evil Mad Scientists, because they use a proprietary protocol, even if it is open, well-documented, and frankly pretty well thought out. If you just want eggs pronto, that’s a good way to go. But if you want to apply what you learn here to any other CNC machines, from DIY 3D printers to the fanciest of multi-axis industrial milling machines, you’re going to want to deal in G-code. I needed an ATmega328 G-code interpreter.

Since the dirt-cheap motor-driver board I’d bought was designed to run with GRBL, that was an easy choice. As a bonus, all of my 3D printers use Marlin, so I got to learn something new. The only catch is that GRBL wants to exclusively drive stepper motors, and we have a servo in the mix. There have actually been a number of hacks to GRBL to enable the CNC spindle-speed command to control the servo position, which would be useful if I needed accurate position control, but for the eggbot, simple up-down control will suffice, and it’s nicer conceptually to tie that to the Z-axis height. Hackaday friend, buildlog.net founder, and all around good guy for things CNC [Bart Dring] had just such a firmware hacked together already.

To build up Bart’s firmware yourself, you can download the latest GRBL, then download Bart’s modifications and copy them over the original files. Or just download this repository where I already did that for you. You will want to change the PEN_SERVO_DOWN and PEN_SERVO_UP lines in spindle_control.c to tweak how far the servo moves for pen up and pen down commands. It’s on a scale of 0-255, and 127 is halfway. After this setting, you’re just a make flash away from installation. Arduino folks, you can also compile it in the Arduino IDE.

With firmware on the machine, it was time to play. Plugged into a computer, the eggbot shows up as a serial port (8N1, 115200 baud) and you can open up any terminal and type G-code at it. It echoes “ok” when it’s ready for a new command, and it appears to queue up a few commands on the “Arduino”. You’re going to need to tweak the firmware configuration in a minute or two, so you might as well get used to talking to the machine. G0 X 3.14 Y 0.50 Z 5 will move all axes in sync, lifting up the pen.

The final step is getting arbitrary artwork converted into G-code. Perhaps the easiest way is using Inkscape, which comes bundled with a “Gcodetools” extension that will do what you want. It’s what I’m using at the moment just to get things done.

But if you’re going to play around with fancier CNC machines later, you might want to investigate something like PyCAM or dxf2gcode. I enjoyed the former, but it’s way overkill for simple stuff like this. Although our own [Josh Vasquez] swears by dxf2gcode, I couldn’t get it running. Something about GUI library versions. Yuck.

Frankly, this last step in the toolchain is where I’m weakest, so if you’ve got any good CAM solutions that are aimed at simple engraving, let me know in the comments. Ideally, I want something scriptable that I can just pass an SVG file and a scaling, so that graphics to plotting is a one-liner.

You may also want a simple script to send G-code to the eggbot. Here’s the one I’ve been using. Note that controlling the eggbot is as straightforward as writing a line to the serial port and waiting for an “ok” in return to send the next.

Tweaks, Optimizations, and Where the Bodies are Buried

And you’re done! At least on paper. Working with all of the sub-parts of the project is fun, and I learned a lot even though I’ve already had tons of CNC-esque experience through DIY 3D printers. Here’s “everything else”.

Machine configuration and GRBL calibration is probably the first step. GRBL has settings ($100-$130) that define how many steps per millimeter the machine is set up to take in the physical world. Printing on eggs is strange at best. As you move north to south, the radius around the egg changes, so “x-steps per millimeter” changes as you move from top to bottom of the egg. What is constant is that with 200 steps per rotation and 16 microsteps, you have 3,200 steps per rotation. A simple choice here is to set “x-steps/mm” to 1, so that an egg is exactly 3,200 steps wide, which is easy for working with graphics — just set the image width to 3,200 pixels or millimeters.

The y-axis is another story. Eggs aren’t perfect spheres, so an angular step near the top is slightly different from that in the middle or the bottom. I printed out a bunch of squares and tweaked the “y-steps/mm” until it was about right around the equator. It’s pinched at the top and the bottom, but that’s life. Cartographers haven’t solved this problem with centuries of effort, and the earth is less egg-shaped than what comes out of a chicken anyway. I ended up with 0.7 y-steps/mm.

Compared to the defaults, I have just knocked the steps down by a factor of about 1,000. I needed to scale up the maximum speed and acceleration parameters accordingly to get the motors to move at all. Here are my configs. 20,000 steps/minute is about 6.25 RPM. How fast you want to push it depends on how grippy your egg holders are and how runny your pen is.

Now you can figure out what the total y-axis travel for your eggs are. Mine are around 1,000 pixels with this scaling. The Evil Mad Scientist standard egg seems to be 3,200 x 800 pixels. Now you know what to look for in artwork.

Speaking of egg holders… My steppers don’t have normal 6 mm flatted shafts, so I had to design egg cups myself. The standard solution for holding eggs is to use a little spring tension and the suction cups from kids’ toys. This is not optional — eggs will slip when you change directions if they’re not held in with something sticky. I couldn’t take my son’s toys apart, so I super-glued some old bike inner tube, and the rubber surface seems to grip just fine.

Getting the machine aligned right is important. The egg needs to sit in the cups so that it rotates true. Spin the axis a couple times by hand and adjust until it doesn’t wobble. Because an egg is not a sphere, you will want to lower the center of the y-axis below the center of the egg so that it traces out chords rather than circles relative to the egg, in order to minimize the difference in pen-drop from equator to top or bottom of the egg. Getting the optimal pen height here is also a matter of trial and error (but see orange Sharpie collar above) as is centering the egg north-south. A sample from our fridge suggests that you may want to tweak settings for particularly funny-shaped eggs. I know I’ll never look at a dozen the same way again!

Finally, if you’re going the Inkscape route, there are a couple things to know about Gcodetools that are hard to find out, even if you follow online tutorials. First, you (obviously?) want to be starting with “paths”. If you have an image, use “Path…Trace Bitmap” to get to paths. If you have typed letters or any other native Inkscape objects, “Path…Object to Path”. From there, using Gcodetools is a three-step operation:

1. Select “Extensions…Gcodetools…Orientation points” and hit apply and close. This sets up the G-code origin and scale of your output by superimposing two arrows on the picture. You can move these around to locate the images. I like to put the (0,0) origin in the center of the image. Note that the default width is 1 mm / pixel. It’s not a coincidence that I chose these values for GRBL.
2. Select “Extensions…Gcodetools…Tools library”, choose cylinder, hit apply and close. This adds a green box to the drawing, which controls some aspects of the machine speed. We’re pretending to engrave here, and a pen tip is close enough to a cylinder of 10 pixels or steps, so those defaults are OK. You will want to change the feed speed, though. This is how fast it’s going to draw. 10,000 steps / min is about right, but it’ll depend on your pen and your egg. The default of 400 is painfully slow. Edit this value with the text tool (F8).
3. Now you’re ready for “Extensions…Gcodetools…Path to Gcode”. In the preferences tab, make sure that there’s a positive value for the “Z safe height”: 1.0 is plenty. Also note where it’s going to output the file. Then click back to the “Path to Gcode” tab (mandatory! counterintuitive!) and click apply.

Build Today, Procrastinate Tomorrow!

An eggbot is a great introduction to the world of CNC. Harder than a pure “hello world”, it’s also a ton more rewarding. You’ve got this.

Building the machine set me back maybe €25, of which only the €15 eBay order wasn’t in my well stocked closet, and took only a couple hours of human time plus ten hours of printer time and two weeks (!) of waiting. I spent much longer selecting the right firmware and looking for the right software toolchain. But much of this time was learning which is never time lost when it’s useful to other projects. Heck, that was part of the point! In the end, Project Eggbot has an exceptionally low drudgery / learning ratio, certainly when scaled by how much my family appreciates funny eggs.

With Easter 2019 just around the corner, however, the eggbot’s days are numbered. I’m still not 100% satisfied with the software side of things, but I can pull down images, convert them to paths and G-code and get them running on an egg in minutes, so good enough. I’ll take any help you’ve got in the comments. I might also swap out the servo for a third small stepper, incidentally un-doing the need for a branch of GRBL. It’s no big deal, really, but I hate the way the pen tip slams down onto the egg when it drops. A controlled landing would be much more elegant.

When Easter is over, the eggbot will fulfill its true destiny as a generic 2.5-degree-of-freedom machine. Once I’ve printed my fill of eggs, I’m unscrewing the motors and the electronics, and I’m stashing the frame in the closet until next year. Then I’m going to have to build another amusing CNC machine. I’m comfortable with the firmware, the toolchain, and the hardware after all. The rest is creativity.

So what’s next? Maybe a wall plotter bot? I love the idea of making the thing wireless, so I’m going to look into Bart Dring’s ESP32 GRBL port. Or maybe I’ll play around with the STM32 GRBL port just for fun. What’s really lacking in any of these machines is a cool, interactive, real-time controller. Maybe I need an etch-a-sketch interface to a wall plotter. Maybe with a balance board and accelerometer. What would you build?

If you think it’s too late for Easter this year, you’re probably right. But an eggbot is awesome on its own, and it’s the quickest first step into generic CNC mayhem. And that’s always in season!

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First off, we’ll admit that there no real practical reason for wanting a wooden mouse – unless of course the cellulose rodent in question is the one that kicked it all off in “The Mother of All Demos” fifty years ago. Simply putting a shell around the guts of a standard wireless optical mouse is just flexing, but we’re OK with that.

That said, [Jim Krum]’s design shows some impressive skills, both in the design of the mouse and the build quality of his machine. Starting with what looks like a block of white oak, [Jim] hogs out the rough shape of the upper shell and then refines it with a small ball-end mill before flipping it over to carve the other side. His registration seems spot on, because everything matches up well and the shell comes out to be only a few millimeters thick. The bottom plate gets the same treatment to create the complex shape needed to support the mouse guts and a battery holder. He even milled a little battery compartment cover. He used a contrasting dark wood for the scroll wheel and a decorative band to hold the top and bottom together and finished it with a light coat of sealer.

It’s a great look, and functional too as the video below reveals. We’ve seen a few other fancy mice before, like this wood and aluminum model or even one that would look at home on [Charles Babbage]’s desk.

Thanks to [Itay Ramot] for the tip.

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If you’ve worked with a laser cutter before, you might not find much new in [Maker Design Lab’s] recent post about getting started. But if you haven’t, you’ll find a lot of practical advice and clean clear figures. The write up focuses on a tube-style laser cutter that uses a …read more

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Some tools are so common, so basic, that we take them for granted. A perfect example is the lowly tape measure. We’ve probably all got a few of these kicking around the lab, and they aren’t exactly the kind of thing you give a lot of thought to when you’re …read more

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The typical machine tool you’ll find in a workshop has a base and frame made of cast iron or steel. These materials are chosen for their strength, robustness and their weight, which helps damp vibrations. However, it’s not the only way to make a machine tool. [John McNamara] has been …read more

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If you’re reading Hackaday, you’ve probably heard of OpenBuilds. Even if the name doesn’t sound familiar, you’ve absolutely seen something on these pages that was built with their components. Not only is OpenBuilds a fantastic place to get steppers, linear rails, lead screws, pulleys, wheels, and whatever else you need …read more

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[Adam Haile] has been spending some time improving his CNC router and his latest change is a custom wasteboard with improved bed support. Not only does the MDF wasteboard have plenty of threaded inserts to make for easy clamping solutions, but [Adam] replaced the frame underneath the board with a …read more

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[Ignacio]’s VIRK I is a robot arm of SCARA design with a very memorable wooden body, and its new gripper allows it to do a simple pick and place demo. Designing a robot arm is a daunting task, and the fundamental mechanical design is only part of the whole. Even …read more

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Drilling holes is easy; humans have been doing it in one form or another for almost 40,000 years. Drilling really tiny holes in hard materials is more challenging, but still doable. Drilling deep, straight holes in hard materials is another thing altogether.

Luckily, these days we have electric discharge machining …read more

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We’ve always had a soft spot for omni wheels and the bots that move around somewhat bumpily on them. Likewise, CNC pen plotters are always a welcome sight in our tip line. But a CNC plotter using omni wheels is new, and the results are surprisingly good.

Built from the …read more

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Most photographs are made in the fraction of a second that the camera’s shutter is gathering reflected light from the scene. But there’s fun to be had by leaving the shutter open and directing light into the camera. Called light painting, it can be as simple as a camera on …read more

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There are a lot of CNC machines sitting around in basements and garages, but we haven’t seen anything like this. It’s making lenses using a standard CNC machine and a lot of elbow grease.

The process of making a lens with a CNC machine begins by surfacing a waste board …read more

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It is getting so easy to order a finished printed circuit board that it is tough to justify building your own. But sometimes you really need a board right now. Or maybe you need a lot of fast iterations so you can’t wait for the postal service. [Thomas Sanladerer] shows …read more

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Kids – they’re such a treasure. One minute you’re having a nice chat, the next minutes they’re testing your knowledge of the natural world with a question like, “Why can we see the Moon during the day?” And before you know it, you’re building a CNC Earth-Moon orbital model.

We’ve got to applaud [sniderj]’s commitment to answering his grandson’s innocent question. What could perhaps have been demonstrated adequately with a couple of balls and a flashlight instead became an intricate tellurion that can be easily driven to show the relative position of the Earth and Moon at any date; kudos …read more

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CNC milling a copper-clad board is an effective way to create a PCB by cutting away copper to form traces instead of etching it away chemically, and [loska] has improved that process further with his DIY PCB vacuum table. The small unit will accommodate a 100 x 80 mm board size, which was not chosen by accident. That’s the maximum board size that the free version of Eagle CAD will process.

When it comes to milling PCBs, double-sided tape or toe clamps are easy solutions to holding down a board, but [loska]’s unit has purpose behind its added features. The …read more

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The modern overhead-cam internal combustion engine is a mechanical masterpiece of hundreds of parts in perfect synchronisation. In many cases it depends for that synchronisation upon a flexible toothed belt, and those of you who have replaced one of these belts will know the exacting requirements for keeping the various pulleys in perfect alignment during the process.

[Greolt] had this problem with a dual overhead-cam engine, particularly that the shafts would spring out of alignment on removal of the belt. The solution was one of those beautifully simple hacks that use high-tech methods to make something that is not high-tech …read more

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If you’re anything like us, your success with the opposite sex at the bar wasn’t much to brag about. But imagine if you had only had this compact CNC polar plotter and could have whipped up a few custom coasters for your intended’s drink. Yeah, that definitely would have helped.

Or not, but at least it would have been fun to play with. This is actually an improved version of [bdring]’s original “Polar Coaster”. Version 2 is really just a more compact and robust version of the original. The new one has a custom controller for the steppers and pen-lift …read more

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The purpose of a Zen garden, those stylized landscapes created by painstakingly placing rocks and raking gravel into perfect patterns, is the doing of the thing. Making sure every line is perfectly formed is no mean feat, and the concentration required to master it is the point of the whole thing. But who has time for that? Why not just build a robot to create the perfect Zen garden in miniature?

That was what [Tim Callinan] and his classmates did for a semester project, and the “ZenXY” sand plotter was the result. There isn’t a build log for the device …read more

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CNC machines are powerful tools when used correctly, but it’s often necessary to test a new machine before getting into serious production work. This advent calendar is a great festive project that was designed to put a CNC through its paces.

The calendar is made primarily from wood. This is an excellent choice for test machining projects, as it is softer and less likely to cause tool or machine damage when compared to steel or aluminum. The calendar base was first milled out using end mills, while a 30-degree V-bit was used to engrave the days of the week. Brass …read more

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Despite appearances, [This Old Tony]’s latest series has little to do with CNC-ifying an Etch A Sketch. Although he certainly achieves that, more or less, automating the classic toy is just the hook for a thorough lesson in CNC machine building starting with the basics.

Fair warning: we said basics, and we mean it. [Old Tony]’s intended audience is those who haven’t made the leap into a CNC build yet and need the big picture. Part one concentrates on the hardware involved – the steppers, drivers, and controller. He starts with one of those all-in-one eBay packages, although he did …read more

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There are lots of laser cutters and other CNC machines available for a decent price online, but the major hurdle to getting these machines running won’t be the price or the parts. It’s usually the controller PC, which might be running Windows XP or NT if you’re lucky, but some of them are still using IBM XT computers from the ’80s. Even if the hardware in these machines is working, it might be impossible to get the software, and even then it will be dated and lacking features of modern computers. Enter the Super Gerbil.

[Paul] was able to find …read more

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We know that by this point in the development of CNC technology, nothing should amaze us. We’ve seen CNC machines perform feats of precision that shouldn’t be possible, whether it be milling a complex jet engine turbine blade or just squirting out hot plastic. But you’ve just got to watch this PCB milling CNC machine go through its paces!

The machine is from an outfit called WEGSTR, based in the Czech Republic. While it appears to be optimized for PCB milling and drilling, the company also shows it milling metals, wood, plastic, and even glass. The first video below shows …read more

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The type of CNC machine within the financial reach of most DIYers is generally a three-axis affair, with a modest work envelope and a spindle that never quite seems powerful enough. That’s not to say that we don’t covet such a machine for our own shop of course, but comparing small machines with the “big boy” five-axis tools might leave the home-gamer feeling a tad inadequate.

Luckily, there’s a fix that won’t necessarily break the bank: adding a fourth axis to your CNC router. [This Old Tony] tore into his CNC router – a build we’ve featured before and greatly …read more

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Now that 3D printers have more or less hit the mass market, hackers need a new “elite” tool to spend their time designing and fiddling with. Judging by the last couple of years, it looks like laser cutters will be taking over as the hacker tool du jour; as we’re starting to see more and more custom builds and modifications of entry-level commercial models. Usually these are limited to relatively small and low powered diode lasers, but as the following project shows, that’s not always the case.

This large format laser cutter designed and built by [Rob Chesney] is meticulously …read more

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It’s doubtful that the early pioneers of CNC would have been able to imagine the range of the applications the technology would be used for. Once limited to cutting metal, CNC machines can now lance through materials using lasers and high-pressure jets of water, squirt molten plastic to build up 3D objects, and apparently even use needle and thread to create embroidered designs.

It may not seem like a typical CNC application, but [James Kolme]’s CNC embroidery machine sure looks familiar. Sitting in front of one of the prettiest sewing machines we’ve ever seen is a fairly typical X-Y gantry …read more

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[Kevin] owns a benchtop CNC mill that has proven itself to be a capable tool, but after becoming familiar with some of its shortcomings, he has made a few modifications. In order to more efficiently hold and access workpieces on his custom fixturing table, he designed and made his own toe clamps and they look beautiful.

The usual way to secure a piece of stock to a fixturing table is to use top-down clamps, which hold the workpiece from the top and screw down into the table. However, this method limits how much of the stock can be accessed by …read more

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Most CNC workflows start with a 3D model, which is then passed to CAM software to be converted into the G-code language that CNC machines love and understand. G-code, however, is simple enough that rudimentary coding skills are all you need to start writing your very own programmatic CNC tool paths. Any language that can output plain text is fully capable of enabling you to directly control powerful motors and rapidly spinning blades.

[siemenc] shows us how to use Grasshopper – a visual node-based programming system for Rhino 3D – to output G-code that makes some interesting patterns and shapes …read more

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It’s been a while since we’ve shown a DIY wire bending machine, and [How To Mechatronics] has come up with an elegant design with easy construction through the use of 3D-printed parts which handle most of the inherent complexity. This one also has a Z-axis so that you can produce 3D wire shapes. And as with all wire bending machines, it’s fun to watch it in action, which you can do in the video below along with seeing the step-by-step construction.

One nice feature is that he’s included a limit switch for automatically positioning the Z-axis when you first turn …read more

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If you’ve been hanging around Hackaday for any length of time, you’ve undoubtedly seen the work of [Niklas Roy]. A prolific maker of…everything, we’ve covered his projects for over a decade now. He’s one of an elite group of hackers who can say they’ve been around since Hackaday was still using black & white pictures. Yet sometimes projects fall through the cracks.

Thanks to a tip sent in from one of our beloved readers, we’re just now seeing this incredible cardboard plotter [Niklas] made for a workshop he ran at the University of Art and Design Offenbach several years ago. …read more

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2D design and part fabrication doesn’t limit one to a 2D finished product, and that’s well-demonstrated in these Faux Aircon Units [Martin Raynsford] created to help flesh out the cyberpunk-themed Null Sector at the recent 2018 Electromagnetic Field hacker camp in the UK. Null Sector is composed primarily of shipping containers and creative lighting and props, and these fake air conditioner units helped add to the utilitarian ambiance while also having the pleasant side effect of covering up the occasional shipping container logo. Adding to the effect was that the fan blades can spin freely in stray air currents; that …read more

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There’s a certain class of parts that just can’t be made on a standard 3-axis mill, nor with a 3D printer or a lathe. These parts — weird screws, camshafts, strange gears, or simply a shaft with a keyway (or two) — can really only be made with a rotary axis on a CNC machine. Sure, you could buy a rotary axis for a Haas or Tormach for thousands of dollars, or you could build your own. That’s exactly what [Adam Zeloof] and [Matt Martone] did with their project at this year’s World Maker Faire in New York. …read more

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[igarrido] has shared a project that’s been in the works for a long time now; a wooden desktop robotic arm, named Virk I. The wood is Australian Blackwood and looks gorgeous. [igarrido] is clear that it is a side project, but has decided to try producing a small run of eight units to try to gauge interest in the design. He has been busy cutting the parts and assembling in his spare time.

Besides the beautifully finished wood, some of the interesting elements include hollow rotary joints, which mean less cable clutter and a much tidier assembly. 3D printer drivers …read more

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Everyone loves firing up that CNC router for the first time. But if the first thing you cut is wood, chances are good that the second thing you cut will be parts for some kind of dust shroud. Babysitting the machine and chasing the spindle around with a shop vac hose probably isn’t why you got it in the first place, right?

Trouble is, most dust-management designs just don’t get the job done, or if they do, they obstruct your view of the tool with a brush or other flexible shroud. [Jeremy Cook] figured he could do better with this …read more

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Drawn along in the wake of the 3d printing/home shop revolution has been the accessibility of traditional subtractive CNC equipment, especially routers and mills. Speaking of, want a desktop mill? Try a Bantam Tools (née Othermachine) Desktop Milling Machine or a Carvey or a Carbide 3D Nomad. Tiny but many-axis general purpose mill? Maybe a Pocket NC. Router for the shop? Perhaps a Shapeoko, or an X-Carve, or a ShopBot, or a… you get the picture. The MatchSticks device is a CNC tool for the shop and it might be classified as a milling machine, but it doesn’t quite work …read more

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CNC really is a game changer when it comes to machining. If your motor skills or ability to focus aren’t all there, you don’t need to worry – the computer will handle the manual task of machining for you! These builds are popular for DIYers to undertake, as they enable the production of all manner of interesting and advanced parts at home once they’re up and running. However, parts to build a CNC machine can get spendy; [Brenda] decided to take a recycling-based approach to her build instead (Youtube link).

The build uses motion parts from an old silicon wafer …read more

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The Raspberry Pi platform has become popular in the maker community for various CNC projects. The single board computers are readily suited to acting as a server for a small CNC setup or 3D printer, though it’s fair to say that for heavy work they probably aren’t quite up to the task of driving the steppers in a serious rig directly. [Danny] set out to try to build a CNC plotter of his own, using a Pi Zero, and learned a few things along the way.

The plotter uses 3D printed parts combined with brushed DC motors which are geared …read more

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Mainstream productivity software from the big companies is usually pretty tight, these days. Large open source projects are also to a similar standard when it comes to look and feel, as well as functionality. It’s when you dive into more niche applications that you start finding ugly, buggy software, and CNC machining can be one of those niches. MillDroid is a CNC software platform designed by someone who had simply had enough, and decided to strike out on their own.

The build began with the developer sourcing some KFLOP motion control boards from Dynomotion. These boards aren’t cheap, but pack …read more

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If you’re building a CNC or laser, there’s an excellent chance you’ll be using Grbl to get moving. It’s also a pretty safe bet you’d end up running it on some variation of the Arduino sitting in a motor controller breakout board. It’s cheap, easy to setup and use, and effectively the “industry” standard for DIY machines so there’s no shortage of information out there. What’s not to love?

Well, quite a few things in fact. As [bdring] explains, Grbl pushes the capability of the Arduino to the very limit; making it something of a dead-end for future development. Plus …read more

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It might not be enough to make you the Hero of Time, but this piece of Hylian interactive art would still be a worthy addition to your game room. [Jeremy Cook] writes in to tell us about how he put together this 8-bit style heart display, and goes into enough detail on the hardware and software sides of things that you shouldn’t have any problem adapting his design for your own purposes.

The build is pretty simple overall but it does assume you have a CNC to cut the basic shape out of MDF. You could cut the shape by …read more

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CNC machines of all types are a staple here at Hackaday, in that we have featured many CNC builds over the years. But the vast majority of those that we see are of relatively modest size and assembled in a home workshop, using small and readily available components such as small stepper motors. These drives are a world away from those used in industrial CNC machines, where you will find high-voltage servos packing a much greater punch. With good reason: driving a small low-voltage motor is easy while doing the same with a high-voltage servo requires electronics that have hitherto …read more

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Getting a good measurement is a matter of using the right tool for the job. A tape measure and a caliper are both useful tools, but they’re hardly interchangeable for every task. Some jobs call for a hands-off, indirect way to measure small distances, which is where this image analysis measuring technique can come in handy.

Although it appears [Saulius Lukse] purpose-built this rig, which consists of a microscopic lens on a digital camera mounted to the Z-axis of a small CNC machine, we suspect that anything capable of accurately and smoothly transitioning a camera vertically could be used. The …read more

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Giant lines in the sand are incredibly useful for pleasing the gods and hailing overpassing extraterrestrials. Beautiful, unwarranted spray-painted sidewalks might land you in detention with local law enforcement. Of course, why not have both? With the Sand-and-Spraychalk machine, you can!

The Sand-and-Spraychalk machine Is a moving two-axis CNC machine that can anoint its path with a spray of either sand bits or spray paint.  As with any self-respecting power tool these days, the Spraychalk is driven by a rechargeable Bosch 18 V battery pack. As far as safety goes, leveraging an already-product-proven solution instead of cooking our lawns with …read more

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It’s a Holy Grail among hackerspaces, the possession of a pick-and-place machine. These robotic helpers for placing surface-mount components on PCBs are something of a gateway to electronic production, but they can carry a fearsome cost. Happily for the cash-strapped would-be electronic manufacturer, it is possible to build a pick-and-place for yourself. [Mcuoneclipse] has demonstrated this with a rather impressive build that works with the freely available OpenPnP software.

Superficially it shares much with what you might expect from a small CNC mill, in that it has a frame made from extruded aluminium that carries rails that trace an X …read more

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Makerbot 3D printers were among the first to hit the market, so it makes sense that old and broken ones now litter the shelves of hackerspaces and home workshops alike. Rather than throw his one out, [Foaly] saw an opportunity to convert it to some sort of CNC machine. Given its lack of inherent rigidity and relatively weak motors, he opted to make a low-impact circuit board engraver which he appropriately calls the MakerbotCNC. We like the thought he put into this project, and it was clearly backed by plenty of experience.

Fortunately, his Makerbot Replicator 2 stemmed from a …read more

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It is probable that many of us have noticed a variety of very cheap CNC mills in the pages of Chinese tech websites and been sorely tempted. On paper or as pixels on your screen they look great, but certainly with the more inexpensive models there soon emerges a gap between the promise and the reality.

[Brandon Piner] hopes to address this problem, with his CNC Mod Pack, a series of upgrades to a cheap mill designed to make it into a much more useful tool. In particular he’s created a revised 3D-printed tool holder and a set of end …read more

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Some projects are simple, some focus on precision and craftsmanship, and some are more of the quick-and-dirty variety. This home-built CNC plasma cutter table seems to follow a “go big or go home” philosophy, and we have to say we’re mighty impressed by the finished product.

For those who follow [Bob]’s “Making Stuff” YouTube channel, this build has been a long time coming. The playlist below has eight videos that cover the entire process from cutting the first tubes of the welded frame to the initial test cuts with the finished machine. [Bob] took great pains to make the frame …read more

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If you’re building a CNC router, laser cutter, or even 3D printer, you’ll usually be looking at a dedicated controller. This board takes commands from a computer, often in the form of G-Code, and interprets that into movement commands to the connected stepper motors. Historically this has been something of a necessary evil, as there was really no way to directly control stepper motors with a computer fast enough to be useful. That may not be the case anymore.

Thanks to the Raspberry Pi (and similar boards), we now have Linux computers with plenty of GPIO pins. The only thing …read more

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Before the invention of the high-powered LED, and even really before the widespread adoption of electric lights in general, lighthouses still had the obligation of warning ships of dangers while guiding them into various safe harbors. They did this with gas lights and impressive glass lenses known as Fresnel lenses which helped point all available light in the correct direction while reducing weight and material that would otherwise be used in a conventional lens.

Now, a company in Florida is using acrylic in reproductions of antique Fresnel lenses. At first glance, it seems like acrylic might not be the best …read more

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The Proxxon MF70 is a nice desktop sized milling machine with a lot of useful add-on accessories available for it, making it very desirable for a hacker to have one in his or her home workshop. But its 20000 rpm spindle can cause quite the racket and invite red-faced neighbors. Also, how do you use a milling machine in your home-workshop without covering the whole area in metal chips and sawdust? To solve these issues, [Tim Lebacq] is working on Soundproofing his CNC mill conversion.

To meet his soundproof goal, he obviously had to first convert the manual MF70 to …read more

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[bdring] just recently completed his absolutely fantastic NickelBot, which is a beautifully made unit that engraves small wooden discs with a laser like some kind of on demand vending machine, and it’s wonderful. NickelBot is small, but a lot is going on inside. For example, there’s a custom-designed combination engraving platform and hopper that takes care of loading a wooden nickel from a stack, holding it firm while it gets engraved by a laser, then ejects it out a slot once it’s done.

NickelBot is portable and can crank out an engraved nickel within a couple of minutes, nicely fulfilling …read more

Tags:  cnc hacks  

[Reiner Schmidt] was tired of renting an expensive 5-axis CNC head for projects, so he decided to build his own. It’s still a work in progress, but he’s made remarkable progress so far. The project is called Bridge Boy, and it is designed to use a cheap DC rotary mill to cut soft materials like plastic, wood and the like. Most of it is 3D printed, and he has released the Autodesk 360 plans that would allow you to start building your own. His initial version uses an Arduino with stepper drivers, and is designed to fit onto the end …read more

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Take apart a few old DVD drives, stitch them together with cable ties, add a pen and paper, and you’ve got a simple CNC plotter. They’re quick and easy projects that are fun, but they do tend to be a little on the “plug and chug” side. But a CNC plotter that uses polar coordinates? That takes a little more effort.

The vast majority of CNC projects, from simple two-axis plotters to big CNC routers, all tend to use Cartesian coordinate systems, where points on a plane are described by their distances from an origin point on two perpendicular axes. …read more

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It’s been a few years since we first started hearing about “tools of the future changing the way we work” but this astounding whole-room floor inlay might be the best argument for them yet.

A couple of years ago we wrote a hands-on preview of a unique tool called the Shaper Origin. If a milling machine is classically defined as having a stationary tool head with moving stock, the Origin is the reverse. To use an Origin the user adheres specially marked tape to the stock material, then holds the origin down and moves it much like a hand router. …read more

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Simple clamps are great if you need to keep the pressure on two parallel surfaces, but if you have an irregular plane, or you need to cut through it, clamps are not the correct tool. The folks at [NYC CNC] feature a video with a clever hack borrowing from other disciplines. Painters tape is applied to the top of a level mounting surface in the machine and then burnished. The same is done to the bottom of the workpiece. Superglue is drizzled between the tape layers and pressed together so now the stock is held firmly below the toolhead.

Some …read more

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If you want to form a piece of sheet metal into a shape, you’ll probably think about using a die. That’s certainly a great way to do it, but it presupposes you can create or purchase the die, which may be a showstopper for small projects. [Dardy-7] has worked out how to use a lesser-used technique — incremental sheet forming — to get similar results with a CNC machine. The idea is to trace out the form on the sheet metal with a round blunt tool.

He got good results using an inexpensive dapping tool, although he’s seen other use …read more

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Second only to a lathe, a mill is one of the most useful tools to have in a shop. For [juppiter], though, a proper multi-ton mill would take up too much space and be a considerable investment. His solution to his space problem is actually very clever: he converted a small, inexpensive benchtop mill to [...]

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EMC2 CNC keyboard labels If you’ve got a dedicated computer running EMC2 for CNC control you may be interested in these keyboard labels. [Rich] mentions that they use the labels for their engraver at the Connecticut Hackerspace. Just print them out and glue them in the face of the keys. Dev board seminars and freebies [...]

Tags:  emc keyboard cnc rich connecticut keyboard-labels hackaday emc2 hackaday links  

Here’s a PCB fabrication process that makes us envious. It’s pretty darn close to fab-house quality at home. [Cpirius] is using a CNC mill and through hole plating technique to produce his double-sided circuit boards. The video embedded after the break shows one board from start to finish. It begins with the mill drilling holes [...]

Tags:  hole mill home pcb-fabrication-process drilling-holes cnc-mill cnc hacks  

This art installation makes a video game from the 1970′s popular again. It can be found at the Dublin Science Gallery’s GAME exhibition. Museum goers step up to the coin-op style game cabinet and the onlookers will see how they’re doing as the landing is plotted on this board. Hardware details are a bit hard [...]

Tags:  game lunar installation art dublin museum-goers game-exhibition lunar-lander cnc hacks  

This sexy piece of CNC can really fly. It’s a pick and place machine which [Danh Trinh] has been working on. The thing is, so far it lacks the ability to move components at all. But the good news is the rest of the system seems to be there. He posted a demo video of [...]

Tags:  piece pick cnc trinh pick-and-place-machine sexy-piece demo hacks  

One of the most popular ways of turning an object trapped inside the world of a computer into a real, metal object is the art of lost wax, or lost foam casting. In this process, a full-scale model of the object to be made in metal is crafted in either foam or wax, placed in [...]

Tags:  foam wax metal cnc-machine scale-model styrofoam cnc hacks  

This desktop mill would be impressive coming from anyone, but we’re really excited that it was made as a high school project. [Praneet Narayan] built it during his design and technology class. As his build log shows, he worked with a range of different tools to make sure he had a rock-solid platform on which [...]

Tags:  desktop school mill technology-class design-and-technology high-school-project cnc hacks  

The Jacquard loom, invented in the early 1800s, used punched cards to manufacture relatively complex textiles such as damask and brocade. These punched cards were eventually used by census workers, mechanical calculators, early analog computers, the earliest digital computers, and even the humble Arduino. That doesn’t mean the Jacquard loom was left in the 17th [...]

Tags:  weave jacquard cnc jacquard-loom census-workers mechanical-calculators hacks  

The DIWire bender we saw last summer made its way to Maker Faire this year with a new and improved version that is now able to bend steel even more accurately than the previous aluminum-bending version. I chatted up [Marco Perry] (above, obviously), and he explained a new feature of the DIWire bender that makes [...]

Tags:  version bender diwire marco-perry new-feature aluminum cnc hacks  

[Jeshua] needed a laser head attachment for a 5×10 foot CNC machine he’s working on. Because he has a 3D printer, [Jeshua] could easily print a laser mount and attach it to his CNC gantry, but that wouldn’t look very professional. Instead of decorating his gigantic machine with brightly colored plastic, he decided for a [...]

Tags:  laser cnc jeshua aluminum-castings 3d-prints 3d-printer printer hacks  

In the quest to add a digital readout to his mill, [Yuriy] has done a lot of homework. He’s sourced a trio of very capable scales, researched what kind of hardware his DRO should be based on, and even built a very cool display using seven-segment LEDs. After nearly a year of work, [Yuriy] finally [...]

Tags:  NON readout mill yuriy segment-leds cnc-mill cnc hacks  

Anyone who has played Minecraftfor a good amount of time should have a good grasp on making 3D objects by placing voxels block by block. A giant voxel art dragon behind your base is cool, but what about the math behind your block based artwork? [mikolalysenko] put together a tutorial for making 3D objects out of video [...]

Tags:  video block turning video-game-sprites art-dragon 3d-objects cnc hacks  

The scale of this project is daunting. Each of the three white walls seen in the image above is made up of thousands of oblong square blocks. The blocks move independently and turn the room into an undulating 3D display. If it had only been the demonstration video we might have run this as a [...]

Tags:  display project scale square-blocks white-walls demonstration cnc hacks  

This center pivot pen plotter is an interesting take on the idea, and manages to somewhat simplify the fabrication when compared to a gantry-style built. Normally we’d see a gantry that travels on two rails, with a print head that moves along its length. Here the gantry is anchored on just one side, with a chain driven [...]

Tags:  center plotter pen pen-plotter gantry cnc hacks  

Hackaday alumni [Will O'Brien] sent in a few projects he’s been working on lately while he’s in the process of upgrading his workspace. He’s building a 1200 x 1200 mm CNC router based on the Shapeoko router, and it sure looks like he’s having fun doing it. The Shapeoko router is based on the Makerslide open source [...]

Tags:  shapeoko hackaday router o-brien workspace having-fun cnc hacks  

Hackaday alumni [Will O'Brien] sent in a few projects he’s been working on lately while he’s in the process of upgrading his workspace. He’s building a 1200 x 1200 mm CNC router based on the Shapeoko router, and it sure looks like he’s having fun doing it. The Shapeoko router is based on the Makerslide open source [...]

Tags:  shapeoko hackaday router o-brien workspace having-fun cnc hacks  

There’s one problem with the popularity of plastic-extruding 3D printers such as the RepRap and Makerbot; since they’ve become so popular, the price of plastic filament has skyrocketed over the past few years. Without a way to produce filament at a hackerspace or home lab, the price of 3D printed objects will remain fairly high. [...]

Tags:  filament plastic home reprap printers cnc hacks  

Instead of dedicating his laptop to control his RepRap all night, [Walter] is using a Raspberry Pi as an Internet-enabled front end for his 3D printer. Before [Walter] got his hands on a Raspberry Pi, he set up his laptop next to his RepRap and let the machine do its work for hours on end. [...]

Tags:  printer laptop reprap walter printer-control raspberry cnc hacks  

Tired of 3D printers that use t-slot construction? The Eventorbot is yet another open source 3D printer,  but it’s built out of steel and 3D printable parts. The design also aims to minimize the effect of vibrations by using a single solid frame. All of the wiring runs through the steel frame, which gives the [...]

Tags:  steel frame eventorbot d-printer 3d-printer steel-frame vibrations cnc hacks  

With laser cutters popping up in hackerspaces and maker’s tool sheds like weeds, it’s no surprise we’re seeing an explosion in manufacturing techniques that would be nearly impossible without a laser cutter. One of these techniques is kerf bending, a method of bending plywood simply by burning patterns along the desired bend. [Martin] just put up a [...]

Tags:  laser maker kerf martin bending-plywood laser-cutters laser-cutter cnc hacks  

[Jerry] missed the laser cutters he had been using at the local TechShop. It closed down and after seeing some hardware in a surplus store he decided to build a laser cutter to call his own. You won’t be disappointed by his build log. It’s got a ton of hi-res images and plenty of explanation. [...]

Tags:  laser cutter diy jerry hi-res-images laser-cutters laser-cutter cnc hacks  

[Martin] put together a simple portable radio unit to take some MP3s with him while he’s out and around. The build was simple; just a no-name Chinese MP3 player, a battery, and an FM radio transmitter. To give his project a little more pizzazz, he came up with a very handsome laser cut wooden case to turn [...]

Tags:  case radio portable martin fm-radio-transmitter radio-unit chinese-mp3 cnc hacks  

The robotic bartender, lovingly named the Inebriator, is a work of mastery. We think you’ll be surprised by the simplicity and grace of its beverage dispensing system. The most obvious part is the lineup of nine liquor bottles across the top with LED backlight for style. Each has a valve on it that is meant to [...]

Tags:  bartender inebriator work beverage-dispensing-system liquor-bottles backlight cnc hacks  

Multicolor 3D printers have been around for a while, but most of these machines – like the Makerbot Replicator – suffer from alignment problems and the inability to mix colors on the fly. [RichRap] came up with an interesting solution to this problem by having three filament extruders feed into a single hot end, allowing [...]

Tags:  print head multicolor alignment-problems replicator filament cnc hacks  

Take a minute to think about what your dream job might be. Done imagining you are a ridiculously wealthy bachelor?  Good. Back here in the real world, [Caleb Cover] has come into what might be one of the coolest hacking-related jobs we’ve seen in awhile. He recently snagged a gig working for Aleph Objects as [...]

Tags:  array reprap fleet caleb-cover dream-job caleb gig cnc hacks  

If you haven’t heard of it, OpenSCAD is a really wonderful tool for 3D modeling.  While it doesn’t have the traditional graphical interface of AutoCAD – it’s basically a programming language for 3D models – OpenSCAD is able to create very complex parts with only a few lines of code. That’s all well and good, [...]

Tags:  openscad browser rendering graphical-interface 3d-models programming-language cnc hacks  

September is coming, and soon college freshmen the world over will be decorating their dorm room walls with Dark Side of the Moon posters and [M.C. Escher] prints. Anyone can go out and simply buy a prism, but what if you wanted a real-life version of objects and buildings from [Escher]‘s universe? Professor [Gershon Elber] at the Technion at [...]

Tags:  september college turning m.c.-escher m.-c.-escher m-c-escher moon-posters college-freshmen cnc hacks  

[Smells of Bikes] wanted to add laser etching to the list of tricks his home CNC setup is capable of. He has a diode which will work for the task, but he needed a driver that could be interfaced with the CNC system. He ended up designing a driver board based around the LM3402 chip. [...]

Tags:  diode laser cnc laser-diode-controller cnc-system laser-etching hacks  

This 2-year-old girl has a condition called arthrogryposis which causes her not to be able to move her arms. But with a little help, her muscles can be strengthened to achieve more normal use of her limbs. This is not the first time that an exoskeleton has been used, but the advent of 3D printed parts [...]

Tags:  exoskeleton girl body arthrogryposis old-girl cnc hacks  

Fresh from this year’s SIGGRAPH is a very interesting take on the traditional X Y-table based CNC machine from [Alec], [Ilan] and [Frédo] at MIT. They created a computer-controlled CNC router that is theoretically unlimited in size. Instead of a gantry, this router uses a human to move the tool over the work piece and only makes [...]

Tags:  largest router cnc alec x-y- ilan cnc-router gantry siggraph hacks  

Even though the Roland MDX-20 CNC mill fetched a pretty penny when it was first made available 12 years ago, there were a few features that made any builder lucky enough to own one scratch their head. The only way for a computer to communicate with this mill was through an RS-232 connection, and instead of a normal [...]

Tags:  year turning mill roland-mdx- rs-232-connection pretty-penny workhorse cnc hacks  

Meet pwdr, the open source 3D printer that is a complete departure from the RepRaps and Makerbots we’ve come to love. Instead of squirting plastic onto a build surface, pwdr operates just like the very, very expensive powder printers used in industrial settings. Pwdr uses gypsum, ceramics, and concrete for its raw stock and binds these [...]

Tags:  pwdr powder source raw-stock industrial-settings gypsum cnc hacks  

A while back, we saw [Euphy]‘s polar pen plotter project. The mechanics of the build are very simple – just a pair of motors attached to a pen by a beaded cord. Even though the build is very simple, it’s possible to create awesome works of art albeit very slowly. Since we featured [Euphy]‘s polar pen [...]

Tags:  plotter euphy pen works-of-art mechanics cnc hacks  

With the Olympics on there are a lot of really great camera shots shown during the events. One of the best is the overhead view, which is provided by a camera suspended between cables. It’s not new for the Olympics, SkyCam has been around for over twenty years. What is new is [Dan Royer's] attempts [...]

Tags:  skycam-like lot camera dan-royer mount with skycam camera-shots overhead-view cnc hacks  

Here’s an interesting development in the world of 3D printers: A rapid prototyping machine that melts plastic powder together to create objects with extremely good resolution The Blueprinter works by drawing a 0.1 mm thick layer of plastic powder over the build platform. After that, a very hot needle-shaped probe melts the plastic together. This process [...]

Tags:  layer powder plastic rapid-prototyping-machine thick-layer printers cnc hacks  

If you use Inkscape to lay out your laser cutter designs you might want to look into this box maker extension. Inscape is [Elliot's] drawing software of choice since it’s easy to use, and it’s open source. After having to lay out the tabs for a box he decided it was worth his effort to [...]

Tags:  maker box extension elliot laser-cutter inkscape drawing-software cnc hacks  

If you use Inkscape to lay out your laser cutter designs you might want to look into this box maker extension. Inscape is [Elliot's] drawing software of choice since it’s easy to use, and it’s open source. After having to lay out the tabs for a box he decided it was worth his effort to [...]

Tags:  maker box extension elliot laser-cutter inkscape drawing-software cnc hacks  

[Toby Cole] likes to mix tunes whenever he gets a chance. But the size of his DJ equipment made it a real bother to lug around with him. He does own a Behringer portable mixer but without cross faders it’s not really all that usable, and most of the other offerings don’t get good reviews. [...]

Tags:  size chance mixer toby-cole portable-mixer dj-equipment cnc hacks  

Joining the pantheon of other RepRap host software packages such as ReplicatorG, RepSnapper, and Skeinforge is Yet Another RepRap Host, a project by [Arkadiusz] that combines a lot of neat features into a very cool package. One thing we’ve really got to give [Arkadiusz] credit for is a virtual table that allows you to import several .STL files, place [...]

Tags:  arkadiusz host reprap stl-files virtual-table neat-features cnc hacks  

The Dark Knight Rises is out now, and [Christian] over at MakeIt Labs decided to show up everyone at this year’s Halloween party with these custom made Batarangs. After the Batarangs were plasma cut out of 11-gauge steel, [Rob] beveled the trailing edges of the wing, powder coated them, and sharpened them with a grinder and [...]

Tags:  dark knight batarangs christian rob gauge-steel halloween-party dark-knight cnc hacks  

This piece of software called OmNomNom works with OpenSCAD to turn 2D images into 3D models. It’s literally a drag-and-drop process that renders almost instantly. Here the example is a QR code, which is perfect for the software since it’s a well-defined black and white outline in the source image. But the video after the [...]

Tags:  drag drop Software drop-images qr-code 2d-images cnc hacks  

Today, groups from all over the Pacific Northwest will take up their oars and head over to Green Lake for the 42nd annual Seafair Milk Carton derby. The team who builds the fastest boat made out of milk cartons wins the regatta (and $10,000). This year, we’d put our money on the 3D printer group [...]

Tags:  boat milk printing pacific milk-carton-derby milk-jugs milk-cartons cnc hacks  

This 3d printing delta robot really seems to solve a lot of the hurdles faced by previous offerings. With other delta printers we’ve looked at the motor control of the three arms is usually a it complicated. On this build the motors can just be seen in this image at each corner under the build [...]

Tags:  robot printing delta hurdles cnc hacks  

3D printers are getting far, far more complicated than a 4-axis, plastic-squirting CNC machine. These days, you really haven’t earned your geek cred unless you’ve hacked an LCD and SD card interface into your 3D printer, or at least experimented with multiple extruders. There’s a problem with the controller boards everyone is using, though: most [...]

Tags:  sd-card-interface disco-lights 3d-printer cnc hacks  

If you’re building model rockets you want to make sure they fly straight, and most of that is dependent on the stabilizer fins. It has long been a problem come assembly time. How can you make sure that they’re being aligned without any variation? [Rrix] mentioned that one technique is to use a square to [...]

Tags:  solution rocket simple stabilizer-fins model-rockets assembly-time cnc hacks  

The Harford Hackerspace in Baltimore, Maryland just went public with the zen garden they built for the Red Bull Creation contest. It’s a CNC creation that will help ease your frustration with that DIY 3d printer that you just can’t seem to get calibrated correctly. On the hardware side the base of the machine serves [...]

Tags:  zen creation cnc maryland baltimore zen-gardening zen-garden 3d-printer contests  

This micro-sized TARDIS is the latest print from [Ron Light]‘s Sedgwick 3D DLP printer. Yes, it’s orange, but the print quality for such a small object is pretty astounding. The Sedgwick 3D printer is currently available as a kit on Kickstarter. For five hundred bones, the Sedgwick provides all the parts – minus a DLP [...]

Tags:  printer sedgwick orange ron-light d-dlp 3d-printer kickstarter cnc hacks  

This parts tumbler was easy to build but it still does a great job of rounding rough edges and polishing the surfaces of parts cut with a CNC machine. You can see that it mounts in a bench vise, and the cooling fans have a magnet which holds the tray in place on the anvil [...]

Tags:  tumbler easy shop bench-vise parts-tumbler cnc-machine cnc hacks  

[Woodgears.ca] seems to be a wealth of clever hacks, and this CNC box joint jig is no exception.  Although one has to manually move the jig to make the actual cut, it still gives the user a lot of extra functionality. One only has to click the mouse button to advance the workpiece.  One drawback [...]

Tags:  table cnc jig box-joint-jig mouse-button drawback hacks  

That’s a great base board for these Gadgeteer components. [Rob Miles] has been designing and printing mounting boards and enclosures for several of his projects. He just got into printing parts with the Ultimaker last week, and we’d say he’s found his stride. The board pictured here features nubs that act as stand-offs, and on [...]

Tags:  board hobby printing rob-miles hobby-projects stand-offs gadgeteer cnc hacks  

Whether or not you’re actually going to build this CNC wire bender, we think you’ll love getting a closer look at how it’s put together. The team over at PENSA got such a strong response from a look at the original machine that they decided to film a video (embedded after the break) showing how [...]

Tags:  wire-bender cnc-wire closer-look cnc hacks  

Real motorcycle enthusiasts design and mill their own engines. Well, perhaps that’s an overstatement. Certainly it takes to more obsession than enthusiasm to go to these lengths. But this gentleman’s modifications started out simple enough, and managed to make it to the most extreme of hardware fabrications. The used bike came with a modified camshaft [...]

Tags:  motorcycle engine milling motorcycle-enthusiasts motorcycle-engine overstatement cnc hacks  

Wow, building a precision 3d printer is amazingly easy if you can get your hands on an industrial-quality robot arm. [Dane] wrote in to tell us about this huge extruder printer made from an ’80s-era SCARA robot arm. It is capable of printing objects as large as 25″x12″x6.5″. This 190 pound beast was acquired during a [...]

Tags:  printer ARM robot dane robot-arm 3d-printer industrial-quality cnc hacks  

If you’re making your own boards with SMD parts, you might want to get a solder paste stencil. Usually made of laser-cut mylar or extremely thin steel, these stencils allow you to squeegee solder paste onto your board’s pads and make assembly a whole lot easier. [Rochey] needed a stencil for a board he was [...]

Tags:  stencil solder paste solder-paste-stencils thin-steel mylar cnc hacks  

[Marko] created a robot that prints burritos. Truly, we’ve reached new heights as a species. The Burritob0t is based on the ORD Hadron 3d printer with a pair of air compressor/syringe-based extruders based on the Makerbot Frostruder. All the ingredients – rice, meat, salsa, and molten cheese – will be printed onto the surface of a tortilla heated by a [...]

Tags:  printer marko robot 3d-printer air-compressor cnc hacks  

This is the Mantis9 PCB mill. It’s the first time we’ve featured the project, but it’s already well known by some as it keeps popping up in the comments for other CNC mill projects. Yes, it’s made out of wood — which some frown upon — but we’re happy with the build instructions and the [...]

Tags:  pcb mantis mill cnc-mill cnc hacks  

Hackaday readers familiar with the with the CNC and automated machinery scene will be familiar with MakerSlide, the open-source linear bearing system. This linear movement system composed of special aluminum extrusions and mounting plates riding on v-wheels has been used in a lot of awesome builds including the Quantum ORD Bot 3D printer and the Shapeoko CNC [...]

Tags:  open system cnc aluminum-extrusions 3d-printer linear-movement hacks  

[Matt] is the proud owner of a JGRO-based CNC router and he’s been working on a way to control it without a computer. What he came up with is a way to drive the CNC machine using this Android tablet. A big part of the hack is the CNC controller that he’s using. The TinyG is [...]

Tags:  controller android cnc matt cnc-controller cnc-machine hacks  

Everyone in the world suffers from some degree of functional fixedness, a proclivity to use tools only how they were meant to be use. A laser cutter, for example, is usually used to make flat, two-dimensional parts. [Seeker] broke out of this cognitive lock when he decided to create an illuminated 3D object with a [...]

Tags:  functional-fixedness laser-cutter 3d-object cnc hacks  

[Nav] got the bug for a tiny little laser cutter. He pulled off the build, and has just finished the second rendition which makes some nice improvements. He’s was hoping for a laser cutter, but we think this really shines when it comes to branding objects like the scrap wood seen above. This joins a [...]

Tags:  laser blu-ray cutter nav laser-cutter scrap-wood engraving cnc hacks  

If you’re building a 3D printer, the most complicated part is the extruder. This part uses a series of gears to pull plastic filament off of a spool, heats it up, and squirts it out in a manner precise enough to build objects one layer at a time. [Chris] made his own extruder out of [...]

Tags:  extruder printer part chris hot-glue-gun 3d-printer time-chris cnc hacks  

We’ve all heard the countless arguments about piracy in digital media. However, it appears that 3d printing or other rapid prototyping systems are bringing legal issues to a more physical world. The story goes like this: [Thomas]  bought a 3d printer. He’s a big fan of warhammer figurines. He spends tons of time creating some [...]

Tags:  piracy printing frontier thomas rapid-prototyping-systems 3d-printer new-frontier cnc hacks  

If it’s true that those with the biggest toys win, a few lucky engineers over at EEW Maschinenbau in Germany just earned a gold medal; they have access to a gigantic CNC machine that is large enough to machine a house. This machine was originally built to manufacture molds for fiberglass wind turbines that are over [...]

Tags:  cnc-machine wind-turbines maschinenbau cnc hacks  

Over on Stack Exchange, there’s a proposal for a new CNC/3D printer site. It’s a personal manufacturing stack exchange, and hopefully we’ll see some awesome discussion when it’s eventually created. Stack Exchange is already well-known for hosting the most useful programming site as well as awesome sites/forums covering everything from LaTeX to grammar. The proposed Personal Manufacturing site [...]

Tags:  exchange manufacturing stack awesome-sites cnc hacks  

[Jared Kotoff] asked an interesting question on Facebook. He asked if we had ever seen 3d printing in ice before. Though we couldn’t find anything in our archives, he managed to find a project that makes 3d printed ice sculptures. To do this, they actually print two materials inside a chamber that is -8 degrees [...]

Tags:  facebook ice-sculptures cnc hacks  

The thought of using a 3D printer to fabricate PCBs is tantalizing and the good news is that it’s a reality. This project shows that it’s possible to use a special printer head to apply traces to an extruded substrate. This is similar to the point-to-point 3D printer circuits with one big upgrade. Now the traces [...]

Tags:  ink printer circuit printed-circuit-boards 3d-printer printer-head cnc hacks  

3D printers such as the RepRap and Makerbot turn spools of plastic filament into just about any object imaginable. There’s a problem though: this filament costs about $40 a kilogram, and raw plastic pellets cost about 1/10th of that. Obviously, there’s a lot of room for improvement. The folks at Inventables are throwing $40,000 at [...]

Tags:  plastic-pellets filament inventables cnc hacks  

[taulman] over on Instructables has been working on his own version of a 3D printer. Unlike the usual PLA or ABS filament all the RepRaps and Makerbots use, this printer uses nylon to make parts with very interesting properties. Most extrusion printers are designed to print with ABS (a very hard plastic that melts around 220-230° [...]

Tags:  printer abs nylon 3d-printer interesting-properties filament cnc hacks  

While browsing on one of our regularly visited sites, RobotsDreams, we found this interesting little video. Here, [Sublime] is showing off his 3d printed mini lathe. In the video he mentions that all the files are available for download so you could make one for yourself, but there were unfortunately no links. A quick bit [...]

Tags:  video mini lathe mini-lathe cnc hacks  

Over on the RepRap blog, [Rhys] has been experimenting with molten metal to build circuits with the RepRap. Last June, [Rhys] found a neat alloy made of Tin, Bismuth, and a little bit of Indium that melts at around 130° C, and has just the right properties to be extruded with a standard RepRap setup. [...]

Tags:  circuitry reprap printing rhys molten-metal indium bismuth cnc hacks  

3D printers are very popular right now. We’ve seen them go from an interesting project to multiple commercial entities. Makerbot seems to be the poster child for the commercial side of things, at least they were. Their former COO [Samuel Cervantes] is now in charge of a new company called Solidoodle. Their main product is [...]

Tags:  printer solidoodle project samuel-cervantes commercial-entities 3d-printer poster-child cnc hacks  

Writing for Hackaday isn’t all fun and games; occasionally I need to actually write posts and reply to emails from builders around the globe. Usually, though, I’m knee-deep in a personal project, or just hanging out playing a few video games. Recently I’ve gone off the deep end with Kerbal Space Program, an awesome little [...]

Tags:  video mapping surface personal-project space-program fun-and-games cnc hacks  

[Roy] is getting to the end of his second CNC mill project and finally seeing some results. Here you can see a bear he milled in some floural foam. The project started out as an Arduino-based pen plotter. It move the pen along one axis, and the drawing surface along another, with the third axis [...]

Tags:  mill project cnc roy pen-plotter pleasing-results cnc-mill hacks  

It looks like 2012 is shaping up to be the year of the resin-based 3D printer. The latest comes from [Michael Joyce] and is called the B9Creator.  Like other resin printers, [Michael] used a DLP projector to cure the print one layer at a time. The layer height is on the order of 100 microns [...]

Tags:  dlp-projector michael-joyce microns cnc hacks  

Homecut – CNC Cutting Directory So you have a CNC machine that you use as a hobby, but would like to do some actual work on the side? Or maybe you have an idea you’d like made. Homecut is a map directory where you can maybe hook up with the right person. The Curta Mechanical [...]

Tags:  directory cnc homecut cnc-machine map classic hacks  

Chocolate has got to be one of the worst choices as a printing medium. It’s extremely fussy when it comes to melting point, and even in the right state the flow of the material is not going to play nicely with high-resolution designs. With this in mind, we applaud the progress the student team from [...]

Tags:  printer extrusion chocolate printing-medium melting-point mores cnc hacks  

The people over at Pensa posted an awesome CNC wire bender on their blog. Robotic wire benders are common industrial machine that are very fun to watch. These machines can turn out custom wire-bent parts or sculptures in a matter of seconds. The Pensa team’s “DIWire Bender” might not be as fast as the big boys, [...]

Tags:  pensa bender diwire wire-benders wire-bender cnc-wire cnc hacks  

[CarryTheWhat] put up an Instructable on his endeavours in printing circuit boards for solder free electronics. He managed to print a flashlight where the only non-printed parts are a pair of batteries and a couple of LEDs. The circuit is a weird mix of point to point and Manhattan style circuit construction; after modeling a printed plastic plate, [CarryTheWhat] added [...]

Tags:  carrythewhat circuit printing manhattan instructable manhattan-style circuit-construction cnc hacks  

[Nick] is working on a prototype of a coffee table sand plotter that draws patterns in sand a lot like a zen rock garden. [Nick]‘s zen rock garden uses a magnet to draw a ball bearing across the sand in interesting patterns. The build uses 3D printed gears and laser cut parts to rotate the table around [...]

Tags:  rock zen sand nick zen-rock-garden coffee-table laser-cut cnc hacks  

On the heels of a small stirling engine we featured, an astute Hackaday reader sent in a few awesome builds from HMEM, the home model engine machinist forum. First up is a fantastic looking stirling engine made entirely from scratch. The build is modeled on a Moriya Hot Air Fan, but instead of making a fan [...]

Tags:  engine incredible home fan moriya-hot engine-machinist miniature-engines hackaday cnc hacks  

Some of the very largest – and coolest – CNC machines use supported linear rail for their movement axes. For any home tinkerer trying to reproduce these supported rails, the problem of cost comes up very quick; these rails can run over $100 for just a few feet. [Michael] came up with a great way [...]

Tags:  rail coolest cnc michael linear-rail cnc-machines axes hacks  

It’s hard to be an expert at everything, but this collection of wood joinery techniques will make your next project look like you’ve just finished your degree in mechanical engineering. They’re targeted for use in projects where thin sheets of plywood are CNC cut to make enclosures and parts. [Sean Ragan] mentions that these are [...]

Tags:  sheet joinery enclosure sean-ragan degree-in-mechanical-engineering joinery-techniques wood-joinery cnc hacks  

Former Hackaday contributor [mikeysklar] has been trying to etch a QR code into a sheet of copper. Although his phone can’t read the CuR codes he’s made so far, he’s still made an impressive piece of milled copper. The biggest problem [mikey] ran into is getting Inkscape to generate proper cnc tool paths instead of [...]

Tags:  former hackaday copper cnc-tool qr-code tool-paths cnc hacks  

Hackaday doesn’t always get the entire back story of a build. The usual assumption is that someone decided to build something, and with just a little bit of effort the project makes it into the Hackaday tip line. This doesn’t do justice to the builder, with skills honed after years of practice and experience. A 200-word summary is deceiving, and [...]

Tags:  hackaday adventure doesn word-summary tip-line assumption cnc hacks  

[Gary] sent a few pictures of his latest project our way via Flickr, which we thought a few of you CNC owners might be interested in. He has been working with his CNC machine a lot lately and decided it was about time he built a touch probe for his rig. His initial goal was [...]

Tags:  probe touch cnc gary touch-probe flickr cnc-machine hacks  

The guys over at North Street Labs were bored, so they figured why not go ahead and built a CNC machine just for kicks. While they haven’t put up build details on the CNC just yet, they do have some newly milled business cards to show off just how well the machine works. Part ruler, [...]

Tags:  business machine cnc north-street cnc-machine business-cards ruler Hackerspaces  

[Bob Berg] emailed in to request that we take a look at his website. We did, and we liked what we saw! [Bob] has done a couple CNC mill conversions and documented the process quite thoroughly. The first one listed on his site is a Sieg x-3, seen above. [Bob] explains that the first thing [...]

Tags:  website look cnc bob bob-berg bob-bob conversions hacks  

After years of work, [Junior Veloso] is finally getting his 3D printer project out to the public. Unlike the Makerbots and repraps we usually see, [Junior]‘s printer uses light-curing resin and a DLP projector to build objects with incredibly fine detail. One highlight of [Junior]‘s project is the development of low-cost resins. Normally, light curing resins are [...]

Tags:  junior printer dlp dlp-projector fine-detail resins cnc hacks  

Skills are all that’s needed to solve a problem. Take this four-wheeled robot as an example. [Michal Zalewski] wanted it to be omnidirectional but wasn’t very satisfied with the concept of mecanum wheels and the like. So he designed a chassis with wheels at each corner that can pivot as one to change orientation. The [...]

Tags:  mecanum robot problem wheeled-robot mecanum-wheels omnidirectional cnc hacks  

Long ago, before servo motors and linear actuators were common, clever mechanical devices were what engineers used to produce the needed motion for their processes. The CNC-cut Geneva Drive may not be fit for industrial use, but this type of device has been used in everything from film projectors to rotating assembly tables. The constant [...]

Tags:  geneva-drive linear-actuators little-geneva cnc hacks  

[Joshendy] wanted to get a better look at the cutting head on his CNC mill when it was running. The problem is that the rotating blades throw up a lot of junk which you don’t want flying around the shop so they’re usually surrounded with a shroud connected to a shopvac. He just milled is [...]

Tags:  dust mill cnc cnc-mill shopvac shroud hacks  

This 3D-printed model of the Tower Bridge is only 200 micrometers long. To put that into perspective, the distance between the towers is the width of a human hair. This model is the product of research at the additive manufacturing department of the Vienna University of Technology The models were fabricated much like normal stereolithography – a [...]

Tags:  printing nanoscale model width-of-a-human-hair vienna-university 3d-printing cnc hacks  

[Christian] is learning to use the metal milling tools at what we assume is his local Hackerspace. We love this about the communal spaces, they provide so many opportunities to delve into new fields. He embarked on a voyage that included visits to most of the machinery in the shop as he build his own [...]

Tags:  milling metal carabiner christian metal-milling milling-tools cnc hacks  

[Long Haired Hacker] has undertaken a high-resolution 3D printer build. He got his hands on some motors to drive the build platform but it doesn’t have a built-in encoder. He knows that optical encoder wheels can have problems due to dirt and grim as well as ambient light so he set out to find a [...]

Tags:  encoder haired long optical-encoder resolution-3d high-resolution cnc hacks  

If you’ve never felt at home with a piping bag in your hands this chocolate extruder will come to your rescue. It can replace the plastic extruder head on your 3D printer (RepRap, Makerbot, most 3-axis CNC machines, etc.), letting you turn your digital creations into decadent reality. The head uses a progressive cavity pump to feed the [...]

Tags:  extruder head chocolate progressive-cavity-pump plastic-extruder axis-cnc cnc hacks  

[Matt Bell] sends a shout-out to Hackaday by creating a light-painting of our logo with his string plotter. He starts off by setting up a pair of stepper motors which each have a spool to wind and unwind a string. The plotter is made by suspending a stylus between these two strings. In this case, [...]

Tags:  light string plotter matt-bell light-painting stepper-motors cnc hacks  

We haven’t heard much about 3D printing using stainless steel as the medium, but that’s exactly what’s going on with the lugs used to assemble this bicycle frame. They’re manufactured using LaserCusing, which is a brand name for parts produced using Selective Laser Melting. The video after the break gives you an overview of what [...]

Tags:  custom haven bike bicycle-frame selective-laser custom-bike cnc hacks  

[Adrian Bowyer] just posted his progress with multicolored printing to the RepRap blog. The new developments are a continuation of [Adrian]‘s experiments with a mixer extruder that squirts four different colored filaments out of the same nozzle. [Myles Corbett] took this idea and ran with it producing the two-color print seen above. To squirt two different colored [...]

Tags:  multicolor way reprap adrian myles-corbett adrian-bowyer extruder filaments cnc hacks  

This bicycle frame jig is cut from MDF. It’s the latest in a growing trend that we love to see: the increasing availability of manufacturing techniques for the common hacker. This is a Kickstarter project, and alas it appears the designs are not available for you to cut your own. But we love the potential [...]

Tags:  bicycle jig frame frame-jig bicycle-frame mdf cnc hacks  

While loading a 3D model into a CNC program and letting a machine go to town on a piece of stock is awesome, there’s a lot to be said about the artistry, craftsmanship and tactile feedback of carving a project by hand. [Amit Zoran] and [Joe Paradiso] created a nice bridge between these two approaches [...]

Tags:  fabrication handheld cnc joe-paradiso amit-zoran cnc-fabrication cnc-program hacks  

It’s no secret that the 3D printer community is extremely fragmented. With three models of RepRaps, three printer kits from Makerbot, and hundreds of ‘printers of the week,’ it’s extremely frustrating for beginners to wrap their heads around the pros and cons of each machine. The software for these printers is segmented nearly as much [...]

Tags:  printer secret Software printer-software software-tutorials pros-and-cons cnc hacks  

Light painting is a technique where a shape is drawn with a light source while a camera is taking a very long exposure shot of it. To do this well by hand would take a lot of skill, so I naturally decided to make my “light art” with a CNC router. Using this technique, the [...]

Tags:  painting light cnc light-painting light-art cnc-router hacks  

What would you do if you wanted to demonstrate a linear bearing system? If you’re like [Bart] the obvious solution is building a tiny little 3D printer. [Bart]‘s Quantum ORD Bot is constructed out of a previous project of his, the MakerSlide linear bearing system. The idea of a printer made out of MakerSlide materials came from [...]

Tags:  3d-printer bearing-system previous-project cnc hacks  

After a few months of eager waiting, [Brook Drumm] has finally released the files for his paradigm-shifting 3D printer, the Printrbot. If you didn’t order one of these during the Kickstarter, you can now print your own set of parts. [Brook] gave his Printrbot to the world last November with the promise of being extremely cheap, extremely [...]

Tags:  printrbot waiting brook kickstarter drumm last-november cnc hacks  

What does dry ice, ethonal, wax beads, and a blender have in common? It was the first attempts at making media for this wax 3D printer that [Andreas] has been building up. Wanting to produce 3D printed objects out of metal, and finding that direct metal laser sintering machines were still out of reach of [...]

Tags:  ice metal wax andreas d-print direct-metal-laser-sintering metal-laser dry-ice cnc hacks  

For most of the past year, [Joel] has been working on converting a manual mill to a CNC mill with the addition of a computer, brackets and stepper motors. He’s put an amazing amount of effort into his project, and the result is awesome and much less expensive than buying and shipping an old Bridgeport mill. [...]

Tags:  converting mill cnc joel bridgeport old-bridgeport bridgeport-mill stepper-motors hacks  

If you’re like us, you’ve been infatuated with the small RC helicopter you picked up on Amazon up until the point where it careened off a wall and broke its blades. Now that you’re wondering about what to do with that small pile of plastic, metal, and electronics, why not print some helicopter blades on [...]

Tags:  amazon point helicopter helicopter-blades rc-helicopter cnc hacks  

The folks at MakerBot Industries are introducing their new 3D printer at CES this week. It’s called the MakerBot Replicator and features dual heads for 2-color prints and a huge build envelope for huge objects From [Bre Pettis]‘ introduction video (available after the break), the build area is about 9x6x6 inches, compared to the about four-inch cube-sized [...]

Tags:  print makerbot replicator dual-heads color-prints inch-cube cnc hacks  

If you’ve ever wanted to build an awesome tabletop game or model train layout scenery, you probably couldn’t do better than printing Minecraft worlds on a RepRap. This guide comes courtesy of [Nudel] who figured out how to use Mineways with his RepRap. While [Nudel]‘s landscape print doesn’t have the full color of something from Shapeways, he only spent $3 [...]

Tags:  printing reprap minecraft model-train-layout tabletop-game nudel cnc hacks  

Want some fancy ice for your next cocktail party? You can try to find spherical ice-cube trays but you won’t get the kind of results seen here. It turns out the trick to this isn’t how you freeze the water, it’s how you melt the ice. [Brendan O'Connor] started this project after seeing an ice [...]

Tags:  ice craft milling brendan-oconnor cocktail-party o-connor molds cnc hacks  

[Johnie] built himself a CNC woodburner powered by the sun. Like the solar 3D printer we saw last summer, [Johnie]‘s build uses a giant Fresnel lens to focus sunlight onto a piece of wood. To get some control out of his build, a 2-axis bed was made from scrounged and junked parts. The lens in [...]

Tags:  lens woodburner cnc johnie giant-fresnel-lens 3d-printer hacks  

[Ed] is pretty old school. He loves the functionality of old industrial shop tools that have their own dedicated systems. With huge candy-like buttons, who wouldn’t? [Ed] decided to replicate this aesthetic by building a MAME controller for his Mach3 controlled router. [Ed] had a bunch of MAME buttons and joysticks sitting around from a forgotten [...]

Tags:  mameing mame router cnc-router dedicated-systems mach3 cnc hacks  

When Danish musicians Vinyl Terror and Horror visited [Daniel] and his CNC router at EMS in Sweden, things were sure to get interesting. The band uses heavily modified record players and modified vinyl records to produce strange soundscapes. During their time at EMS, Vinyl Terror and Horror were able to produce some strange vinyl that [...]

Tags:  terror vinyl horror daniel sweden danish-musicians music-concrete cnc-router cnc hacks  

If you’ve gone to the trouble of building your own CNC mill we know you’re always on the lookout for things to use it for. [Boris Landoni] wrote in with just the thing for the holiday season; a set of lighted acrylic Christmas ornaments. One of the interesting properties of acrylic is how it reacts [...]

Tags:  lighted christmas trouble boris-landoni interesting-properties cnc-mill holiday-season cnc hacks  

Here’s a laser cutting technique that makes thin plywood bendable. By cutting away elongated diamond shapes from the material, a lattice of strips connected minimally by alternating tabs is left over. The wood is then bendable, and it must be somewhat durable since the idea came from a product that uses the technique as a [...]

Tags:  laser plywood technique diamond-shapes lattice cnc hacks  

[Johan von Konow] wanted to make something special as a wedding gift to his wife. He decided a pair of interlocking miniature rings would be the perfect keepsake. He started his search for a way to mill the wooden rings from a solid piece of wood, and documented his journey for our enjoyment. This project [...]

Tags:  something wedding milling johan-von-konow wooden-rings keepsake wedding-gift cnc hacks  

If you happen to do a lot of SMD work, a pick and place machine is an incredible time saver. The problem is that most automated pick and place solutions are well outside of the “small outfit” price range, let alone the budget of a hobbyist. We have seen some great DIY pick and place [...]

Tags:  machine lot openpnp pick-and-place-machine time-saver hobbyist cnc hacks  

Most of the time, CNC machines are used for very precise and exacting. There is another way that allows for a more “hands on” approach to routers and mills that allows for a lot more creativity and freedom. The touchCNC these guys whipped up allows anyone to finger paint with a friggin router. From the forum [...]

Tags:  finger router extreme finger-painting routers creativity cnc hacks  

[Entropia] is just putting the final touches on his bar-top MAME cabinet (translated). The project started out as a 3D model to get the case dimensions just right. An old laptop is being, so the enclosure was designed to fit the bare LCD assembly and hide the rest of the computer. [Entropia] had access to [...]

Tags:  cabinet mame entropia mame-cabinet old-laptop case-dimensions cnc hacks  

3D printers are awesome, but boy are they frustrating. If you’ve built a RepRap Mendel, Prusa or Huxely, you know there’s nothing quite like trying to get a washer off of a threaded rod without disassembling the entire machine. This frustration in part sourcing, assembling and correctly aligning a printer is where printers like the [...]

Tags:  printer boy reprap 3d-printer prusa cnc hacks  

[Euphy] just posted and Instructable of his Polargraph drawing machine that’s able to draw huge images slower than molasses in November. The plotter only uses two stepper motors to control the position of the pen and can be made nearly entirely from salvaged parts – [Euphy] built his for just about £150. The Polargraph uses [...]

Tags:  plotter euphy pen pen-plotter stepper-motors slower-than-molasses cnc hacks  

[Jamie Mantzel] figured out his own way of 3D printing large objects without fear of warping. First a bit of background information. When using a 3D extrusion printer like the RepRap or Makerbot, prints that span a large area tend to warp. That’s because these printers lay down one thin layer of plastic at a [...]

Tags:  fear way technique jamie-mantzel 3d-extrusion 3d-prints reprap cnc hacks  

[Andy's] 3D printer build uses lasers to create objects from goo. The Stereolithographic process uses resin that is cured by UV light to create the finished product. A single laser mounted to a CNC gantry is able to precisely target a point on the surface of the resin to begin the printing process. As the [...]

Tags:  printer stereolithographic process andy printing-process gantry uv-light cnc hacks  

We think this is an intriguing take on half-tone art. It’s a CNC machine that uses an Arduino and two stepper motors to draw on a paper-covered drum. But you’re not just going to set it and forget it. To simplify the device, the Z-axis is not mechanized, but requires the dexterous opposing digit of a [...]

Tags:  half-tone take cnc cnc-machine arduino stepper-motors hacks  

Like just about everyone else out there, [Adam] thinks that CNC machines are pretty cool – so cool that he decided to build one of his own from scratch. The CNC machine was constructed mostly out of MDF and scrap wood, with drawer slides used for smooth gantry movement. An off-brand rotary tool was used [...]

Tags:  tad mill cnc adam cnc-mill cnc-machines cnc-machine hacks  

Like many makers, [Chris] has a Panavise Jr. on his workbench that he uses for just about everything. The tiny vise is great for all sorts of tasks, and is often considered an indispensable tool. The only problem with the vise is the amount of time it takes to open and close the thing. [Chris] [...]

Tags:  panavise winder vise chris indispensable-tool workbench cnc hacks  

[Jon] has been developing a slick little RC robot in bits and pieces over the last year or so, which can constructed by anyone with access to a 3D printer. Servos and electronics aside, the entire thing can be put together in short order using the plans he posted on Thingiverse. The robot makes use [...]

Tags:  track robot ease jon 3d-printer anyone-with-access servos cnc hacks  

[Paul Rea] decided it was finally time to get rid his CD and DVD library by ripping the data onto a hard drive. He has a rather extensive collection of discs and didn’t relish the thought of ripping them one at a time. So he set to work building his own automatic CD ripper/duplicator. Right [...]

Tags:  automated ripper time paul-rea automatic-cd cd-ripper duplicator cnc hacks  

[Paul] a.k.a. [VoidFraction] put up the source and documentation for his sculptures made with laser cut polygons. For computing his triangles, [Paul] developed LcAgl, an algorithm that transforms a 3D model into the AutoCAD file needed to cut a whole bunch of triangles and connectors. This file was shot over to a laser cutter and [...]

Tags:  playstation file laser paul laser-cutter 3d-model triangles cnc hacks  

Behold, another RepRap springs into existence! Well, springs might not be the best choice of words, it took a while and there were many bumps in the road. But [NBitWonder's] self-built RepRap is now finished and you can read his 14-part build log to see all that went into the process. We checked in on [...]

Tags:  close part reprap saga choice-of-words best-choice cnc hacks  

Do you think it’s not really possible to get amazing resolution from extruder-based 3D printers? You’re wrong, and this post about the attainable quality of prints on the Ultimaker proves it. The Yoda bust seen above was printed with a layer thickness of 0.02mm. This is a hack in itself because this process actually used [...]

Tags:  quality faq ultimaker attainable-quality quality-faq layer-thickness cnc hacks  

[Chris] recently got himself a nice web cam for documenting his Makerbot builds, and much like [Dino], he was looking for a way to get a bird’s-eye view of the action while keeping the camera nice and steady. While [Dino] ventured off to the hardware store, [Chris] tried a few different options that included tape, [...]

Tags:  camera-boom eye-view hardware-store cnc hacks  

[peter] send in a reprappable laser cutter that he’s been working on. Even though he’s still having some problems with the accuracy of the beam over the entire square meter bed, it’s still an amazing build. The build started off with a bunch of t-slot aluminum extrusions. After taking delivery of an absurdly large package [...]

Tags:  laser peter cutter aluminum-extrusions laser-cutter square-meter cnc hacks  

[Mark] wrote in to share a little creation that he is calling the first solar-powered 3D printer in existence. While we can’t say that we totally agree with him on that title, we will give him the benefit of the doubt that this is the first solar-powered RepRap we have seen thus far. You might [...]

Tags:  power reprap creation mark benefit-of-the-doubt 3d-printer cnc hacks  

[Jason] was messing around with CNC machines and came up with his own halftone CNC picture that might be an improvement over previous attempts we’ve seen. [Jason] was inspired by this Hack a Day post that converted a image halftone like the default Photoshop plugin or the rasterbator. The results were very nice, but once [...]

Tags:  halftone picture cnc jason cnc-machines rasterbator hack hacks  

Well, if we ever need something huge built on a RepRap, now we know who to call. [Jim] over at Grass Roots Engineering wrote in to share a large 3D print he just finished, which was extruded by an equally impressive home-built 3D printer. The part he built consists of a bunch of hollow green tubing [...]

Tags:  printer something diy jim grass-roots 3d-print reprap cnc hacks  

[Tom] sent in a gigantic 3-axis router that he pieced together during a 2 week-long work experience placement. Looking at this picture showing a 12-inch ruler on the work area, we realized that this may be the largest CNC router we’ve seen on Hack A Day. [Tom]‘s employer gave him some obsolete axes, so piecing [...]

Tags:  router work cnc tom 12-inch-ruler axis-router work-experience-placement hacks  

Sometimes, not all our builds work out the way we hoped. That’s what happened to [Rob] and his attempt at a Delta robot that does stereo lithography. A Delta robot is capable of very fast and precise movements, so [Rob] slapped a laser module on the end of the arms. After putting some UV curing [...]

Tags:  printer robot delta rob stereo-lithography robot-3d precise-movements cnc hacks  

As with most writers for [HAD], I enjoy doing projects as much as I like writing about them. As a mechanical Engineer that writes for a blog mostly about electronics, a CNC router seemed like something I needed in my garage. Building a router like this requires a bit of expertise in both electronics and [...]

Tags:  router call cnc cnc-router mechanical-engineer doing-projects hacks  

[Ben Krasnow] is working on  a project that uses an extremely expensive specialty mirror. He needed to cut curves into it, taking care not to chip or shatter the material. He’s found a reliable way of doing this with a CNC mill and is sharing his methods. The material he’s working with is a cold [...]

Tags:  material glass milling ben-krasnow krasnow cnc-mill curves cnc hacks  

[Arthur Sacek] has really got something with the 3D Mill he built entirely from LEGO pieces. As you can see, it uses NXT parts to control the cutter head along three axes. The drill bit that acts as the mill’s cutting head is not a LEGO part, but that’s [Arthur's] only transgression. The demo sculpture [...]

Tags:  lego head mill d-mill arthur arthur-sacek lego-pieces cutter-head drill-bit cnc hacks  

[Ben Grosser] built an interactive painting robot that’s pretty far removed from the LED and Arduino builds we usually see. The robot is adapted from one of the many CNC routers we’ve featured over the years. The control system is written in Python and uses genetic algorithms and a microphone to decide what to paint [...]

Tags:  artist robot robotic ben-grosser cnc-routers genetic-algorithms cnc hacks  

We have seen quite a few automated Etch-a-Sketch machines in our time, but when [Jason] wrote in to share his take on the subject, it came with a nice bribe attached. We are vain. It’s not something we are proud of, but when it comes to seeing the Hack a Day logo drawn out by a [...]

Tags:  sketch day hack jason bribe tribute cnc hacks  

Hey everybody, [Nbitwonder] is building his own RepRap 3D printer. What’s special about that? Well, not much and and lot all at the same time. The art of building a self-replicating 3d printer still has a lot to do with luck and forum-crawling to make all of the decisions that go into this complicated project. [...]

Tags:  printer lot reprap decisions cnc hacks  

There’s a new 3d printer on the block, and hot damn is it fast! Hailing from the Netherlands, the Ultimaker 3D Printer has finally hit US shores, and aims to give the MakerBot a run for its money. The Ultimaker was designed by Utrecht Fab Lab manager [Siert Wijnia] along with two frequent lab patrons, [...]

Tags:  incredibly lab ultimaker d-printer the-netherlands utrecht lab-patrons fab-lab 3d-printer cnc hacks  

[Tinkerer] bought a small cupboard from an antique store to fit nicely into his kitchen decor. After getting it home, he realized that some of the cubbyholes had originally housed drawers. The originals were long gone but this provided an opportunity for him to make the replacements seen above. The first design approach that popped [...]

Tags:  script laser parametric laser-cutter cubbyholes tinkerer cnc hacks  

[Metalfusion], built himself a nice looking CNC machine and has been experimenting with some out of the box uses for his new tool. One novel use he is particularly fond of is creating pictures with his machine (Google Translation). While you might imagine that he is simply using the CNC as an engraver, literally drawing images [...]

Tags:  machine creating cnc cnc-machine engraver google hacks  

[Nullset] uses inkjet printer technology for his 3D printing needs. We usually think of hot-plastic printing like the RepRap or Makerbot when we hear about rapid prototyping, but this setup uses a liquid bonding agent to turn powder into a solid structure. Standard inkjet cartridges can be used to precisely place the bonding agent, but [...]

Tags:  bonding printing inkjet rapid-prototyping nullset plastic-printing cnc hacks  

[TBJ] is building what he calls a junkbox 3D printer. You can probably guess that he’s trying to salvage most of the parts for the device, and after pulling a stepper motor from an old printer he was in need of a way to control it. What he came up with is a stepper driver [...]

Tags:  printer driver stepper stepper-driver junkbox tbj cnc hacks  

[Cody Sumter] and [Jason Boggess] are students at the MIT Media Lab, and they just came up with Minecraft.Print(), an attempt to create a bridge between Minecraft and the real world via 3D Printers. The print is first prepared by placing obsidian, diamond, gold, and iron blocks on opposite corners of the model in Minecraft. [...]

Tags:  design print minecraft d-printers jason-boggess gold-and-iron diamond-gold boggess cnc hacks  

We’re always amazed at what people can come up with using Lego parts, but this hack certainly pushes the limits. Originally conceived as a 3D printer, this plotter is still an impressive proof-of-concept. Ironically, this “3D printer” was build with the hope of winning a Makerbot 3D printer, so be sure to vote for it [...]

Tags:  impressive-proof 3d-printer proof-of-concept cnc hacks  

Flapjacks taste infinitely better when they’re machine-made. Well, that’s true for [Mexican Viking] who built an automatic pancake maker to the delight of his family. Obviously, the building material of choice is Lego. The machine consists of a base with two linear gears on either side. A gantry is held high above this base, travelling [...]

Tags:  pancake cnc-pdbu base pancake-batter-dispenser pancake-maker gantry cnc hacks  

The team at Evil Mad Scientist Laboratories needed a footstool. Obviously not content with buying one, they came across the idea of building a 555 footstool. After finding some dimension drawings of the 555 timer IC, the team scaled everything up 30 times. While a normal DIP-8 555 is around 0.4 inches long, the footstool [...]

Tags:  team footstool gigantic timer-ic mad-scientist cnc hacks  

[Markus Kayser] built an amazing solar powered SLS printer, but instead of using lasers and powdered plastics his machine uses the power of the sun to heat sand into complex shapes. [Markus]‘ printer uses the same concept as his earlier solar cutter – burning things with a magnifying glass. Interestingly, the printer isn’t controlled with [...]

Tags:  printer selective sand markus markus-kayser power-of-the-sun sintering kayser cnc hacks  

Pick and place machines are marvels of modern technology. They the can lift, orient, align and drop tiny electronic components onto a circuit board that is headed for the reflow oven. On an industrial scale they move so fast it’s a blur in front of your eyes, and they use imaging to ensure proper placement. [...]

Tags:  machine pick technology pick-and-place-machine reflow-oven marvels cnc hacks  

The plotter featured above was, according to the author, made almost entirely of salvaged parts. In addition to what he had accumulated, only $20 in parts was needed to complete this build. Pretty good considering the thousands of dollars that a new plotter goes for. Control of all axes is accomplished using unipolar stepper motors.  [...]

Tags:  spare plotter axis stepper-motors axes cnc hacks  

The Gado project is part of the Johns Hopkins University Center for African Studies. It has been tasked with archiving documents having to do with the East Baltimore Oral Histories Project. In short, they’ve got a pile of old pictures and documents that they want digitized but are not easily run through a page-fed scanner [...]

Tags:  automated pile project east-baltimore johns-hopkins-university johns-hopkins-university-center oral-histories cnc hacks  

Tripod CNC Machining Setup:   Here’s a strange “tripod” device using the EMC software package generally used for CNC machining.  In this case it looks like something that (when scaled up) might control a sky-cam-like device that one would see at football games. The Off-Grid Container House:   Project to make an off-grid container house.  [...]

Tags:  tripod machining cnc emc-software sky-cam hackaday hackaday links  

Although some may have heard of a machine like this, the CNC tripod remains an unknown machine to many in the engineering word.  This particular machine is set up as a plotter, drawing incredibly straight lines, shapes, and letters. The machine appears to have 6 servo motors, 3 working as pairs.  This would simplify control [...]

Tags:  machine tripod cnc straight-lines plotter pairs hacks  

[Rich] was having quite a bit of fun with his newly-acquired laser cutter, but was not impressed by the stock aiming laser that came with it. The problem with the built-in laser is that it did not actually follow the cutting laser’s path – instead, it has to be calibrated for a fixed focal length. [...]

Tags:  laser crosshair cutter rich laser-cutter fixed-focal-length bit-of-fun cnc hacks  

[Richard Sum] came up with a great looking 3D printer and put his project up as a campaign on IndieGoGo. [Richard]‘s ‘SUMPOD’ is based off the reprap like a lot of other 3D printers, but the SUMPOD has a look of professionalism to it; the printer looks like something that would come from a factory. [...]

Tags:  printer factory sumpod richard richard-sum professionalism printers reprap cnc hacks  

[Dennis] recently invested some money in the Tormach Tooling System for his CNC’d Sieg SX3 mill in order to make his tool changes easier. While the kit allows him to easily account for height offsets while changing tools, he has no quick, reliable means of locating the spindle in relation to his workpiece. Tired of [...]

Tags:  touch diy cnc dennis touch-probe offsets spindle hacks  

Summer has hit, and with it a bunch of crazy people going to crazy festivals and (often) burning crazy sculptures to crazy music! In that vein [Matthew Goodman] recently got involved in the burning flipside community down in Texas for his first big effigy build.  The project called for a gigantic archway flanked by two [...]

Tags:  matthew-goodman crazy-music crazy-people cnc hacks  

Before I decided to build my own CNC machine I had seen a few bolt together machines on the internet, usually constructed using 80/20 aluminum extrusion. My write up describes my attempt at a completely DIY bolt together machine made from 25mm aluminum SHS, 50mm shelving brackets and lots and lots of gutter bolts. Building [...]

Tags:  bolt diy cnc aluminum-extrusion shelving-brackets cnc-machine hacks  

[Jonathan Ward] came up with the MTM Snap, a snap-together pcb mill as part of the Machines That Make group at MIT. We covered [Jonathan]‘s previous work made out of half-inch plywood, but the new iteration of his PCB includes a clever snap-together mechanism instead of screws and bolts. Although the MTM Snap looks a [...]

Tags:  pcb mtm mill jonathan jonathan-ward inch-plywood screws-and-bolts cnc hacks  

[Nirav] found that he rarely printed anything useful with his RepRap, so to shake things up, he decided he needed to work on a project that didn’t involve printing yet more RepRap parts. The goal of his project was to create working replicas of house keys by simply using the code imprinted at the factory. [...]

Tags:  reprap keygen project replicas real-world cnc hacks  

[Darrell Taylor] wanted to add a CNC control pendant to his mill but didn’t want to foot the bill which can often run several hundred dollars. These pendants are basically a physical remote control that operates the CNC software that controls the machine. Since he was already using a Linux box running EMC2, it wasn’t [...]

Tags:  control mill cnc darrell-taylor cnc-control linux-box hacks  

[Patrick McCabe] enjoys the challenge of playing chess against the computer but he wasn’t satisfied with the flat experience of on-screen gaming. No problem, he just built his own gantry-style chess robot that he can play against. Don’t be confused, he still doesn’t have to touch the pieces, but instead uses the dedicated control board [...]

Tags:  robot chess cnc don patrick-mccabe playing-chess-against-the-computer chess-against-the-computer hacks  

Psst…wanna buy a laser cutter, but not ready to sell your internal organs? Nortd Labs’ Lasersaur project aims to create an open source large-format laser cutter/engraver that undercuts (har har!) the cost of commercial models by an order of magnitude. A Lasersaur built strictly using componentry from the globally-available bill of materials will set you back [...]

Tags:  laser lasersaur cutter laser-cutter commercial-models internal-organs cnc hacks  

Looking for more ways to enhance his 3D printer, [JJ] decided to make it wireless. He got his hands on some $10 Bluetooth modules and figured this would be just the thing to make the link with his laptop. They came as surface mount modules, so the first thing he had to do was develop [...]

Tags:  thing printer work 3d-printer printer-work surface-mount cnc hacks  

While we normally don’t make it a habit to feature Kickstarter projects, we couldn’t pass this one up. [Barton Dring] from BuildLog.net is putting together a project called MakerSlide that we’re sure will interest many of you out there. Through his various CNC builds, he has found that one of the more expensive and frustrating [...]

Tags:  bearing linear source barton-dring bearing-system dring cnc news  

It’s honestly sad that Valve has not released any official Portal-related items to the masses, as a market for them clearly exists. As the saying goes, “necessity is the mother of invention”, and [Jamie] needed a Weighted Companion Cube in the worst way. Actually he constructed his Companion Cube in order to test out some [...]

Tags:  companion weighted cube jamie necessity-is-the-mother-of-invention mother-of-invention incinerator cnc hacks  

[Juan Jose Chong] put together a set of videos and a PDF guide to milling printed circuit boards. You’ll find the pair of videos, totaling about twenty-two minutes, embedded after the break. In them, [Jaun] details the techniques used by the IEEE chapter at Texas Tech University to mill PCBs instead of using the traditional method [...]

Tags:  pcb milling tutorial juan-jose-chong printed-circuit-boards texas-tech-university pdf-guide cnc hacks  

Have a bunch of time on your hands, and about $2,500 sitting around? Why not settle in and build yourself a laser cutter? That’s exactly what Buildlog forum member [r691175002] did, and he told us about it in our comments just a few moments ago. Laser cutters can be pretty cost prohibitive depending on what [...]

Tags:  laser cash cutter laser-cutters laser-cutter few-moments cnc hacks  

[Csshop] is setting a new bar for building an inexpensive CNC mill. Not only did he complete his build at a very low cost, but it seems to work quite well too. Check out the video after the break to see the device cut out thin wood parts for a toy plane. The majority of [...]

Tags:  junk mill cnc toy-plane thin-wood hardware-store hacks  

The team at [blablabLAB] have been hard at work on their latest project, which they unleashed on the streets of Barcelona in the La Rambla pedestrian mall. Their art installation allows you to pose in the middle of the mall and receive a plastic statue of yourself as a souvenir. Not unlike the “Fabricate Yourself” [...]

Tags:  mall souvenir installation art barcelona art-installation pedestrian-mall la-rambla cnc hacks  

[Reinventing Science] needed a project that he could use to test out his skills on a new CNC routing machine he recently acquire. He settled on building a PC case using easily obtained materials. What he ended up with is the clean-looking case seen above that was machined from materials you can pick up at [...]

Tags:  case router cnc building-a-pc pc-case hacks