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3D Printed Planetary Gears
I wanted to try and print some planetary gears to try and make my 4th axis work better.
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RepRap - 3D Printer
Here's my journey of building a Reprap 3d Printer. Took about two weeks to get to the point where I was printing and I am still tweaking things to get good prints but it's working well enough to share :)
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Homemade Bandsaw Bearing Guides
Here's how I made my own bandsaw bearing guides from aluminum tuping and regular skate bearings - for like $20 :)
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Homemade Power Drive
Using a Parallax Propeller Proto board and a Pololu Stepper Driver - I've built a home made power drive for my lathe / mill / drill - Check it out!
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Timing Pulleys
I am working on a project for my Enco Mill Drill Lathe - it's a Power Feed driven by a Parallax Propeller and EasyDriver - part of the project involves making some Timing Pulleys to hook it all up! So this post is about the Timing Pulleys! Check out some pictures and videos!
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Latest 4th Axis
I just realized that I've never uploaded anything about my latest 4th Axis that I've thrown together - so here are some pictures and a video about it!
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Welcome to BackyardWorkshop.com!
Backyard Workshop is a site for my various hobbies, including my homemade CNC machine, Reprap 3d printer, metalworking on my Enco 3-in1 machine, woodworking, aluminum casting, electronics, and more that I do in my garage in Clearwater, FL!
Please check out the most recent projects above and below you can find my blog posts. On the right there's a list of my most popular posts, or using the menu you should be able to find all that I have on here. if you have any questions - feel free to
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Check out my photo galleries and free downloads, and there are a few things in my store that you may want to buy :)
Jamie
There are more and more hobbyists building their own CNC machines. In this series I'm going to try to explain the various parts of a CNC machine, how it might relate to the hobbyist trying to build their own, and give examples and pictures where I can. This is going to be a constantly growing article - so check back often for updates and additions!
First off... What does "CNC" even mean?
The letters in "CNC" stand for "computer numerically controlled" - so if you have a CNC Machine, then you have a machine that is computer numerically controlled... Simple enough, right? OK so I understand the computer part, you need a computer - but what's this "numerically controlled" business? Basically what numerically controlled means is that the computer drives the machine using numbers - X, Y, and Z coordinates specifically (and actually sometimes more but that's a topic for later, let's keep it simple for now)
Oh boy, X, Y, and Z coordinates? You remember back in math class when you worked on X and Y coordinates, right? Well if not, basically, THAT world is laid out on a grid of numbers with zero being the very center and the X Axis going east and west and the Y axis going north and south. Going to the east would take your X numbers increasing in the positive, while going to the west would make them decrease going in the negative direction. the same goes for the Y axis, north is positive, and south is negative.
OK, what about this "Z" business? The Z axis represents up and down in our world. with up being positive and down being negative and below the zero.
What does all that mean for CNC? Well that's the basis of it all really! The computer "tells" the machine to go to a certain X, Y and Z position! It's as simple as that! We will get to calibrating a machine and making sure it knows where all the coordinates are, but basically if a computer tells a machine to go to X1.250, or in other words "go 1.250 inches in positive direction of the x axis", then the machine will do just that. How does it do that? you ask? we'll get to that, trust me :)
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