First test of my CNC mill

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(sorry about the video quality -- I used YouTube's editor to combine 3 clips and it looks like it chops everything to 1990's tech when you do that...skip to 1:52 to see a closeup...).

I'm almost done building a CNC mill based on Tom McWire's EasyMill (http://www.instructables.com/id/Easy-to-Build-Desk-Top-3-Axis-CNC-Milling-Machi­ne/). I used some enhancements, like teflon tape to reduce friction, from the RepRap McWire Cartesian Bot (McWire Cartesian Bot 1 2 (Death March: Do not build!!!) - RepRap)­.

Most of the hardware is from Home Depot; the plexiglas, threaded rod, and teflon tape are from Small Parts, the stepper motors, Big Easy Drivers, limit switches and emergency kill switch are from SparkFun, the 24V 6.5A power supply is from Amazon, and the Dremel power relay a PowerSwitch Tail from AdaFruit.

Right now it's all controlled by an Arduino Duemilanove interpreting commands from the IDE serial monitor and sending them to the AccelStepper library. I haven't decided yet if I'll add a G Code interpreter on the PC or Arduino, add an LCD, buttons, and SD card reader to the Arduino to make it standalone, etc.

As you can see near the end the AccelStepper library doesn't handle interleaving very well so X and Y don't finish diagonal movements at the same time;

I used a 1/16th" bit (0.0625") and the routed slot varies from .085" to .1" so there's still some vibration that needs to be eliminated too....

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Thanks for the inspiring video. I've bought some of the parts to make something similar but got a bit daunted by trying to assemble it all.

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I've bought some of the parts to make something similar but got a bit daunted by trying to assemble it all

It's a tiresome task indeed but worth doing.

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Thanks Nick. I needed something like this because I wasn't getting enough precision hand building enclosures for my other projects.

I'll admit going in to the project I was a little scared about how I was actually going to build it; particularly how I'd drill holes in the iron pipes and make the motor brackets. The pipe holes were much easier than I thought, I made pilot holes and the iron is relatively soft. The brackets took time but I drilled the holes a few sizes larger than I needed so it was easy to align on the frame.

I've been doing research tonight and it looks like the AccelStepper interleaving problem is a known issue. A couple people have posted code rolling their own solutions for this; I need to figure out what they're doing but that will have to wait until next weekend....