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Mach4 General Discussion / Ok, I've been a lurker up until now
« on: October 07, 2008, 02:37:47 AM »
Hi everyone
My name is Ralph Klaassen and I live in Perth, Western Australia.
I completed a Model C metric machine build in May based on the plans from Rockcliff Machine. You can see the result in attached photo CIMG0238reduced.JPG
No major dramas in building the machine -- the fun part soon started in terms of getting it to do what I want.
I've progressed well in terms of picking up and understanding G-code but then I've been designing and programming microprocessor/microcontroller based circuits for more than a little while now. Of course that background hasn't helped me to understand the relationship between feed rate and spindle speed in different materials so I've trashed a few mills along the way.
So most of my learning curve has been around machining concepts.
My goal is to use the machine to mill out custom control panels for model railroad layouts. Custom within limits of course -- as a customer you'd use a layout application on the web and get to choose from a set of standardized images of things like turnouts and track sections, combine them by laying them against each other like domino blocks within the available area and then submit your custom layout for manufacture. You'd be able to get a PDF back that you could it cut out and put it somewhere on you layout to visualize what it might be like. I'll convert the layout data directly into G-code using a pre-processor from my data format to the G-code. From a programming perspective there will be some interesting optimizations needed to cut what would be represented as discrete sections of straight track into single cuts. Now of course none of this is my day job so progress hasn't been as fast as I'd like.
To give you an idea of what the panels might be like I've attached a photo of one of the prototype panels that I built for my friend who is into modeling railroads. See attached photo S6300033reduced.JPG. This prototype was manually constructed and drilled using a bench press. The results are OK but frankly lacked a certain precision. It was the desire to improve the quality of the finished result that led to the desire to build my own milling machine.
As things move forward on this project I could provide progress updates to anyone interested.
Anyway, that's a brief background. Good luck to you all with your respective CNC endeavours. It's been a fun ride so far.
My name is Ralph Klaassen and I live in Perth, Western Australia.
I completed a Model C metric machine build in May based on the plans from Rockcliff Machine. You can see the result in attached photo CIMG0238reduced.JPG
No major dramas in building the machine -- the fun part soon started in terms of getting it to do what I want.
I've progressed well in terms of picking up and understanding G-code but then I've been designing and programming microprocessor/microcontroller based circuits for more than a little while now. Of course that background hasn't helped me to understand the relationship between feed rate and spindle speed in different materials so I've trashed a few mills along the way.
So most of my learning curve has been around machining concepts.My goal is to use the machine to mill out custom control panels for model railroad layouts. Custom within limits of course -- as a customer you'd use a layout application on the web and get to choose from a set of standardized images of things like turnouts and track sections, combine them by laying them against each other like domino blocks within the available area and then submit your custom layout for manufacture. You'd be able to get a PDF back that you could it cut out and put it somewhere on you layout to visualize what it might be like. I'll convert the layout data directly into G-code using a pre-processor from my data format to the G-code. From a programming perspective there will be some interesting optimizations needed to cut what would be represented as discrete sections of straight track into single cuts. Now of course none of this is my day job so progress hasn't been as fast as I'd like.
To give you an idea of what the panels might be like I've attached a photo of one of the prototype panels that I built for my friend who is into modeling railroads. See attached photo S6300033reduced.JPG. This prototype was manually constructed and drilled using a bench press. The results are OK but frankly lacked a certain precision
. It was the desire to improve the quality of the finished result that led to the desire to build my own milling machine.As things move forward on this project I could provide progress updates to anyone interested.
Anyway, that's a brief background. Good luck to you all with your respective CNC endeavours. It's been a fun ride so far.