[Coco] [coco] coco CNC

[George Ramsower]

Got the lead screw, nut and motor in place, calibrated and working fine.
I just now finished making the pilot holes in the slide to drill and tap for 
the screws to mount the working table onto.
Next, I'll secure the table with double sided tape and re-run the program 
with the Z axis moved up to the table and make the pilots for that.
Tomorrow, I'll drill and tap the slide and drill the table.

 Then comes the hard part... I need to mill out the holes in the table so 
that a standard machine screw will see a flat surface inside the holes. This 
means I have to mill a CIRCLE!!
 That's the real bottle neck on this system. Using SIN and COSIN is 
painfully slow. However, being as the circle only has to be about .375 inch, 
it won't be all that bad except that it takes several passes to make each 
hole and I have four holes to do.
 I started thinking on this yesterday and I think it's time to start using 
the cassette relay to turn the dremmel on and off so I don't have to listen 
to this thing scream while the thing is moving from point to point.
 When I did the pilot holes on the slide tonight, it was a pain to wait for 
the dremmel to get close to the designated point of drilling(actually, I 
used a .030 end mill) and then turned the dremmel on to make the hole as it 
approached the designated spot. A person could fall asleep waiting for the 
"rapid move".
 I have the OS9 Motor on and off routine, so I'll work on that later to 
incorporate into this system. UGH! A RELAY! I hate relays.  Maybe later, I 
finger out a way to put an SCR on the thing.

 A machine language routine to do a rapid move would be ideal, except I have 
no clue how to do that. So... I have to bear with it.

 Future projects shouldn't reveal this problem as I won't be moving four or 
five inches to make the next cut. This current project is unique inasmuch as 
I'm building the machine with the machine. Go figure.

George