I decided to on the project I'm working on, start a blog for once. The reason being that, in other situations, I've lost documentation on projects. For example, in high school, I was working on an ebook reader for the TI-83 in Z80 assembly, and recently found just the code which was nearly done, but not the documentation that was on paper, so unless I wanted to have the fun of figuring out what I did, and why I did it 10 years later, I figured I would write a blog, theoretically which should be around for a long time, which will also allow others to benefit from my knowledge.
This project is to build a CnC milling machine (and possibly a laser cutter), hopefully improving it to the point where it is suitable for *very* precise work. If you haven't guessed, the electronic interface to this will be via Arduino & Arduino-compatible boards controlling stepper motors, and interfaced via the Arduino's onboard USB-serial connector. The non-electronic physical hardware will for at least the first version, be done by hand, with hopefully good results.
As it exists now, one axis control is built, but the motor is not permanently attached. A motorshield from Adafruit Industries has been assembled, which is not that hard, even though it'd been a long time since I'd soldered most anything. (and I did make a mistake, when de-soldering in the terminals I'd put in backward. Ooops. It's functional though.)
Hardware wise, In addition to the Arduino Duemilanove (with an Atmega 328 chips) I will be using one or two Crickets from SOC-Robotics (with Atmega 644 chips), which were purchased on ebay. This required me to figure out how to program the Cricket via the Duemilanove, and connect them to the Duemilanove, which while a less powerful chip, will be the primary controller (due to it's USB connectivity.)
Someday I'll be able to spell Duemilanove without reference. The next post will describe how to program the Cricket, with pictures.
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