Video of Testing!

I borrowed my fiancee's video camera and filmed my CNC machine drawing the snowflake example in EMC2 as well as the letters "GCAM" which I made using GCAM.

Testing continued (Pen)

Today I continued to test my machine with examples built into EMC2 and simple gcode generated by GCAM. I am fairly impressed with the abilities of this machine made from junk I got off ebay and junk from lowes.

Snowflake example.

The J and the circles I made in GCAM.

Close-up of the snowflake.

First Test (Pen)

I made a holder for a ball point in order to test my machine by drawing instead of cutting. I am surprised that the darn thing actually works! Although, I can tell that my table is not level since the pen will write in some places, but others it will not write, or even press to hard and rip the paper. Hopefully some tuning will solve these issues.

Z Axis Works!

Today I got the Z axis working! I used the same basic design as the other axes except I "flipped" it around. The Stepper motor moves with the tool and rails. Hopefully pictures explain it better.

I used 7 skateboard bearings to hold the axis.

Closeup of the bearings.

The nut is fixed to the frame so the stepper motor, rails and eventual tool move together.

All the axes together!

All connected and ready for testing!