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Last edited by yaddatrance In 2019-6-9 18:54 Editor
I'm restoring a small CNC that was left outside in a gazebo by a buddy for a winter. It was a "I'll bring it back inside tommorrow" project that never happened.
I don't have pics of the state I got it in because I wasn't planning on making a post on it but it was pretty bad. I do have a pic from before it got sent to the doghouse.
The stepper motor bearings were rusty and the spindle control was shot. I replaced the enture headstock (spindle, motor & drive unit) with a spare head I had laying around from another project... A few years ago I made several machines that took spent 5.56 brass and trimmed it down to make 300 AAC blackout blanks using sherline spindles with a cutoff saws which fed into a dillon press using a singulator... Can't find pics of the cutoff half, but here is a crappy photo of what was on the other side.
Anyways, control was a FlashCut system but corrosion made it unreliable so I needed a new control. I had put a DDCSv1.1 on a system a couple years ago and thought it was great as long as you stayed metric and designed the system around the control, so I ordered a RMHV3.1 (a DDCSV2.1 with different membrane) and some hybrid steppers.
Wow, the latest firmware packages make the system night and day from the old 1.1 firmware. I'm a fan of tactile switches so I was very excited when I read about usb keyboard support in the newer firmware's changelogs, so I set about making this new panel. One of my favorite controls is the very classic and venerable Fanuc 3/6 series... My "big" cnc uses a 6MB which, while not the fastest, is very reliable.
I even contemplated just stealing a spare keypad from a fanuc and wiring it up, the lower right corner in the image below has a mockup of a fanuc keypad.
but in the end I was looking for a panel about the size of a sheet of US Letter paper, which would be more appropriate for the smaller machine it's going on. I found a good sized box (263x182x60mm) on amazon (and aliexpress, but I'm usually too impatient to wait for overseas shipping) https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B0781D5YJH
While I was ordering I picked up a 19mm E-stop, a pack of cable glands and a monitor desk mount. I also ordered 16mm switches from china and found a pair of drawer pulls that looked right.
I drew up plans to cut the holes on the laser cutter. Making sure to dodge as much of the bumpy plastic parts as I could.
Once the box was cut I made labels and test fit the switches.
For years I used to make labels by laser printing on painter's blue tape and transfering with heat, but recently all the tape brands has a leather-like texture which makes it inconsistent. So this time I just printed on laser transparency. I drew the icons as vectors and you can download the svg of the icons in attachements.
frontpanelicons.zip
(14.08 KB, Down times: 736)
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