nebbian said...Hey 555, what did you use to position the wire? How do you control it? Did you write the software yourself? Hats off to you, a CNC project isn't for the faint-hearted
The setup is for cutting glider wings, so has two independent 2-axis wire positioning 'towers' with the wire running between them. I used stepper motors pillaged from old photocopiers, and made up the chassis and rails from aluminium, and other photocopier bits as well as some other parts I made in a mate's workshop (he has precision engineering gear that I can only dream of..). The driver board was a kit I got from the US, and it's all controlled through free software running on an old PC.
Nope. I didn't write any of the software, or design any of the circuitry, but the mechanical side is all mine. Takes about 9 minutes to cut two wings, and about 10 seconds to competely change the design ready to cut something else.
I was rummaging through my boxes of "stuff that's waiting to be useful" the other day in search of some small springs, and came across a matching set of grunty stepper motors that I'd carefully put away.. Maybe I should build a CNC fin shaping machine.. At the price fins sell for, it should pay for itself in no time!
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