I was wondering if there were any electronics experts on the forums that can be a mentor?
The goal in the end: I would like to build a desktop sized cnc machine and I thought perhaps others on the forums would like to also. This is just to give an idea of what a low cost cnc machine is: http://www.instructables.com/id/Easy...lling-Machine/
The steps I had in mind are:
1. pick an electronics learning kit that we could all buy and go through the lessons.
2. move to a microcontroller, arduino, beagleboard, teensy, pic etc. We could discuss all of these and select the one that the majority agrees on.
3. go through learning kits for the selected micrcontroller
4. get into controlling various motor types. Almost all of the cnc I see use stepper motors, but it would be neat to learn about dc motors as well as they are cheaper usually.
5. come up with a nice design, for a cnc machine on our own. They sell plans, but what is the fun in that?
6. building a machine is only the start, then comes the software side. Again they sell programs and there are even open source ones, but it would be fun to write our own.
Another major goal would be to keep the cost as low as possible.
Here are some prices in dollars to give an idea, again I want to stick on the low side, but will leave it the group and mentor:
electronics learning kit, ~130 in 1 about $40 to 500 in 1 for $250 http://www.ramseyelectronics.com/cgi...ion&key=PL130A
microcontroller $16 to $200, http://www.pjrc.com/teensy/ to http://pandaboard.org/
Stepper Motors: Too many variables for me to judge which we need to use, but they range from around $15 to $100.
Rotary Tool $11 to $80 http://www.harborfreight.com/80-piec...kit-97626.html dremel http://www.google.com/products/catal...d=0CJABEPMCMAM
They say the first cnc is the low cost ugly one and then you use it to build your bigger machine next.
After we get a cnc working, then we could move on to making robots with parts we make from our cnc machine
Let me know of any other ideas and hopefully we can have someone on the forums to guide and mentor us.
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