Slow Going on that CNC Router

It’s been a while since I wrote a post, and I don’t really have much to report. I’ve been busy at work and getting injured and dealing with ill family, and other things have taken priority over making stuff. However, I really do want to get moving on things again.

That being said, I do have a tiny bit of progress to report on the CNC router build. With some help from friends at The Gizmo Dojo, I managed to test the stepper motors, and get the control board to run through its smoke test! It’s rather boring, but it’s an important milestone. We know that the electronics work!

 

One set-back, though: there seems to be a problem with my software toolchain. The Universal Gcode Sender I’m using on my Mac doesn’t appear to send proper line-feeds after commands. Using the Arduino environment directly, I can send test commands and get responses, but I get no such responses from the Gcode Sender. I checked its code (it’s Java and open source, so I can see the code), and it appears to think that it’s sending the proper line-feeds. I’ll be testing it in Windows and perhaps Linux (which would be nice, as I ultimately want to run the router from a Raspberry Pi or something).

A little background: several months ago, I was given the go-ahead to build a CNC router for use at our office (well, FOR our office – it’ll stay in the garage at home). With some input from Tom at The Gizmo Dojo, I chose an OpenBuilds OX CNC build, and started ordering parts. The parts have arrived, and have been in the garage, with occasional small bits of progress. I could probably finish the physical build if I had a solid weekend to work on it.

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