User talk:Alpha

Hello,

since I read an article in Make about home made CNC project I wanted my own CNC to play with (and a 3D printer!). Right now I don't have the money and or room for a large CNC. As a backer of the MakerSlide project I wanted to use it for some time. I'm also a Arduino fan so I guess the ShapeOko will be a good starting project for me! Thanks Edward Ford!

I have a Sihouette SD cutting plotter and I'm a contributor/maintainer to the Robocut project to use this plotter under Linux. I did implement (revers-engineered, USB sniffing etc) the kiss cut feature you can see in this video.

The items I recently ordered (including tax and shipping): 1 x Mechanical Kit from inventables for $207 3 x Nema 17 Stepper from sparkfun for $62.82 1 x GrblShield from synthetos for $75.34 1 x 24 V power supply from digikey for $39.34 The parts I already have: 1 x Arduino (~$23-$30) I have some original ones and some from seeedstudio... 1 x Dremel rotary tool (~$50) I picked up at Walmart some years ago More parts, but I'm not sure yet what I need exactly: Spindle mount for Dremel Spindle mount for pen Spindle mount for cake icing dispenser/frosting pen Did I miss any essential parts?

Here are my short term targets: and some long term goals:
 * build a CNC
 * get experiences with MakerSlide
 * make a circuity board with a CNC
 * decorate a cake with frosting using a CNC
 * cut fondant for a cake using a CNC.
 * install the Dremel
 * learn 3d CAD
 * design a open source cutting plotter

>Did I miss any essential parts? Yes, cable and connectors. Looks like Lowes is not carrying a 4 core 18 AWG stranded cable. Maybe Home Depot, I will check tonight. We also have a local electronic shop I would like to support, however there opening hours and my work schedule is not matching up  But I guess Saturday morning will work...

Software: I did test QCAD with dxf2gcode and or pycam-0.5.1 and it looks like this is a working 2D solution for Linux. I was also able to install CNCSimulator under Linux using WINE. FreeCad is a 3d CAD program, but it looks like it is very slow on my computer. So far I was able to open the STEP file from the ShapeOko project. The next step is to find a GCODE sender that works under Linux.