COSLOR-JUSTIN-XY-AXIS-CNC-ROBOT-PROJECT
Channel: Justin Coslor
Date: 28/03/2012

This is a machine that I built for a school project at the technical school that I attend. It is an xy axis cnc robot. It is a portable home-made simplified computer-numerical-controlled machine for millwright engineering, part fabrication, and manufacturing projects. I looked at various designs on images.google.com and youtube.com, and tried to improve on those, and made use of information and free open source software Arduino code from "Making Things Move", "Arduino Cookbook", and "arduino.cc". I made the machine out of lumber from hardware and craft stores, stepper motors recycled from broken computer printers, ABEC-5 inline skate bearings from an old pair of thrift-store skates, threaded rods and fasteners and pieces of metal hobby pipe to fit the rods in the bearings, some rubber hose and superglue to fasten the stepper motor shafts to the threaded rod (with a wooden slider block around a nut that moves forward or backwards as the stepper motor turns the threaded rod axle), washers made from bicycle inner-tube and a leather punch, sticky-back velcro, sheet metal, zip-ties, two-wire 22-gauge solid Bell Wire, wire nuts, a proto-board, lead-free solder, tape, a soldering gun, a magnifying glass helping hand soldering circuit board holder, power strips, thrift-store power adaptors, a hundred dollar refurbished laptop computer, a five dollar thrift shop camera tripod, 5-second set-time jet glue, metal wood braces, fasteners, hinges, plexiglass, a hasp, home-made wooden bearing blocks housing the inline skate bearings, Arduino Uno microcontrollers, EasyDriver stepper motor drivers, and various parts from thrift stores and local home and hardware and electronics stores, as well as online purchases. One thing that I discovered in building this is that it really helps to measure and draw center lines on every surface of every piece of lumber, to improve alignment precision, and to temporarily apply jet glue to pieces needing to be clamped together for drilling a bolt hole or screw pilot hole through both. It also always helps to measure, mark, center-punch, and drill pilot holes for every screw to avoid inaccuracy and to avoid splitting the wood). In place of a workshop I used a hand-held motor tool (with lots of bits), old power drills with bits and mandrel grinding/cutting/sanding wheels, an electric saber saw, various hand tools, a pencil and ruler and permanent marker and pen, a motorcycle stool for a table, clamps, etc. In the video the xy table cnc machine is used to move around a digital 800X USB microscope to scroll around on the surface of a dime enlarged on a laptop computer screen, as a demo, but it could be easily programmed to do much more. In the future I hope to add a z-axis and a video game controller connected to a programmable database to do automated repetitive wood-burning, engraving, router work, xyz motor tool work, and maybe even have a robotic gripper hand connected to the z-axis for pick-and-place work similar to an automated storage and retrieval system and end-effectors. Thank you. It took me a few months to design and build this machine, but the video took less than twenty minutes to film. Justin M Coslor, Bellingham, WA. March 28th, 2012. The project, required tools and books, any my education for it was paid for by a Federal Pell Grant, a State Need Grant, and an Opportunity Grant.