CNC Tutorial Blog for droid builders

[Droid]

Yes, your right...although a parallel port id dated, they work well with mach used pc's with them usually can be bought for less than a 100 dollars... There are USB drivers, but I have not used one as of yet since my current setup works well. If you do many flat designs, I encourage you to look into cut2d or cut3d, they have many features of cad/cam software that usually costs thousands....

Thanks for the tutorial.

I am just in the process of converting my Sherline Lathe and mill to CNC. So this is timely.

My original intention had been to use EMC2 but the attitude of the forums there rather put me off. I have nothing against using open source software, in fact I was part of probably the most successful open source project ever. But having to install a particular build of a particular distribution to get the real time kernel strikes me as a kludge, as does use of the parallel port to drive the machine. No modern motherboard has come with a parallel port for at least five years. Some day the hobby CNC world is going to have to bite the bullet and work out how to do the job over a USB port.

Mach3 looks like a much better way to go.

Cut2d and cut3d look much better than the alternatives as well. I can't believe how hard it is to find CAM software. I would have thought Solidworks or AutoCad Inventor pushed out G-code as a native function. But noooo. The professional solutions are $3000 and up. My experience of that type of software is that it is usually rubbish to use, the more the product costs, the worse it is to use because the person who makes the decision to spend $10 million on a piece of software is not going to be the poor schlep who has to fight with the thing every day.

 

[Droid]

So the CNC r2 is about complete. His head is not CNC's, a blank aluminum dome. some printed templates and a dremel... Other than that, he has come along nicely. R2 moving and Shaking – CNC and R2D2