Homebrew PCBs

On Fri, 03 Oct 2003 11:39:10 -0400, Don Perry <mojo@...> wrote:

> I am working on a CNC machine, home made, slow work in progress.  I now
> use a dremel with a flexy shaft extension.  Its hooked to a 5 1/4 floppy
> disk drive head carriage assy.  I run the stepper up and down and it has
> plenty of power to run the setup.  I put two hall effect sensors on the
> side of the assy and it auto cycles the bit up and down.  That keeps the
> cycle time (up and down) down.  The bit just comes out a little over top
> of the board and waits for me to align the bed for the next hole.  Then
> one push of a foot button and it auto cycles the bit.  I have a dollar
> store laser pointer that pin points up the drill bit landing point.  I
> had to add a collet, black cardboard hole punch with a pin prick in it,
> to the inside of the pointer screw on lens.  It was not quite fine
> enough of a laser dot.  Helps this blind guy allot.  I use SAA 1027s, no
> longer made, I had 8 of them in a parts drawer.  Im sure any cmos
> circuit with 500 ma worth of power would work.  It only needs direction,
> stop, and clock.  So with all that working.  I move on to the bed X and
> Y driver hardware and control software.   I would like to find a gw
> basic program ready made or some program that could be patched or
> modified by a rookie without allot of trouble if needed.  Also, DOS
> based, if anyone has an idea here. Hope I don't end up writing my own,
> but, Cheap is my standard.  And I only make a few boards a month for
> personal use.
>

hi don

which type of rails for x/y do you use?
i think you can't mill with this setup?

stefan