文档介绍：How-To: Build your C machine (Part 1)
Posted Jun 29th 2006 6:21PM by Will O'Brien Filed under: Features, Misc. Gadgets
Ready for some hard core gadget creation? If you thought
your dremel tool was handy before, in today's How-To we'll
start building our C machine. Aside from the geek
factor, it can be handy for making things like PC boards
without chemicals or maybe some little styrofoam voodoo
heads of all your enemies, uh friends.
Gentlemen, start your soldering irons.
Computer controlled mills have been around for a long time. If you just want to buy oneone, Sherline makes mills that are
ready to go (pictured is C ready model -- just add your own motors and controller). But then again, if you wanted
to buy one, you probably wouldn't be reading this, now would you? C machine is a lot like a precision drill press with
a table that moves in two directions -- seeing mercial unit like the one above should help you visualize the end goal.
We'll be making ours from scrounged, recycled, and adapted parts; today we'll be going over the basic parts we'll need to
build our own.
[Update: If you're not quite sure what C machine is, check out the Wikipedia article, mkay.]
Parts Hunting
For Part 1 of the How-To, we'll go over all the ponents of the project and get started with the controller.
The ponents of the C machine:
• Stepper motors
• drive positioning screw
• 3 Axis stepper motor controller
• Linear slides
The most ponent to determine the construction of your milling machine is the motor. Motors can be
purchased from surplus houses, but the cheapest place to get them is from old dot matrix printers. Apple Imagewriters are
one of our favorite sources. They contain multiple stepper motors, and the primary is pretty beefy. As a bonus, just about
every dot matrix printer has a hardened steel rod that can be useful for our nefarious goals.
A stepper motor is an odd beast. Most motors sp