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Building and Programming the Fabulous Fabio “Arduino-Compatible” Controller Board

Arduino, Featured Articles, hacks 7 Responses »

Dec 152010

Notes on building and programming the Fabulous Fabio “Arduino-compatible controller” board from the Make Your Bot! website (makeyourbot.org) – This is the first in a series of Fabio Arduino-Clone related posts from Track Hacker member JT. Thank you for all of the hard work that has gone into this and for sharing it with the Track Hacker community! -craigbic (admin)

Note: weblinks have been footnoted and moved to the bottom.

Over the last six months, I’ve built, tuned, and tested a 3-axis CNC machine based on plans from Rockcliff Machine [1] Now that it is functioning and capable of milling PCBs, I decided to experiment with using it as an “Additive Manufacturing” machine, in other words, a rapid prototyping machine under computer control that uses extruded plastic filaments to build a structure based on commands generated from a processed CAD file. Continue reading »

CNC Router: Mantis Build Update 4 – No Movement!

CNC, Featured Articles 13 Responses »

Dec 032010

mantis9_small Well, it would appear my Mantis is down and out for awhile! I was doing some test cutting with it – I seem to have the settings in Mach2 correctly adjusted and with a little Ports & Pins tinkering from JT, working predictably and repeatedly – last night when right in the middle of plunging the spindle into a copper PCB, everything just stopped. The 24VDC power supply to run the driver board and steppers was dead with now power LED on! At this point, let me take you back a couple of days prior to this event to give you a little history. Two nights ago, I was test jogging the Mantis around in Mach2 making sure everything was working fine – it was. I deactivated the steppers (hit the Reset e-stop button in Mach) but left the driver and PC powered while I was watching Hell’s Kitchen (yeah, I watch Hell’s Kitchen – sue me! lol). I started watching the evening news afterwards and fell asleep. needless to say, I woke up in the middle of the night and found that the Mantis and the PC were both off and would not come back on. I was too tired to figure out what had happened so I went to bed. The next morning, I checked around and found out that ALL of the AC outlets in my basement were out yet all the lights worked as did my TV. After getting home from work that night I did some poking around and found that the first AC outlet on that branch line out of the breaker panel is a Ground Fault Circuit Interruptor (GFCI) outlet. Thinking maybe it popped I tried resetting it. Nothing so I tired hitting the test button – nothing. It appeard like it wasn’t working. I’ve had these GFCI outlets go bad before so I suspected that was the case. I took the cover plate of f the GFCI outlet and did some testing with my multimeter and found that there was indeed 120VAC going into the GFCI but nothing out on the other end. So figuring that since this a new house (only two years old) it must be a bad GFCI outlet - I jumped out the outlet to reconnect the downstream outlets to the breaker panel. The next evening, I started doing the test cutting I mentioned above. So I unplugged and replugged the 24VDC power supply into the mains – nothing LED still out. I disconnected the Mantis from the parallel port and then replugged the power supply in and it worked! Continue reading »

CNC Router: Mantis Build Update 3 – Movement!

CNC, Featured Articles, hacks 4 Responses »

Nov 292010

mantis9_small Well, I promised, like two weeks ago that I would have a big update for you complete with videos now that my Mantis PCB Engraver is done – sorry the Thanksgiving holiday got in the way. I think it was worth the wait.

CNC Router: Mantis Build Update 2

CNC, hacks, site news No Responses »

Nov 172010

Just another quick update to let everyone know that I have been testing the Mantis, managed to damage and repair the Mantis and have a ton of new gotcha’s to add along with some cool videos of the mantis running. I will be updating really soon. Also, I am getting some feedback from readers that there is interest in buying Mantis kits – at least the wood parts, hardware, and the driver PC boards anyway. I am really, REALLY considering selling them but I need to hear from some more readers first to really gauge the interest. Please comment and let me know if your interested in buying precut Mantis CNC engraver wood kits and hardware. Check back in the next couple of days for the update and Mantis videos

CNC Router: Mantis Build 2

CNC, Featured Articles, hacks 5 Responses »

Nov 092010

mantis9_small So here is the next big update to my Mantis build. I left off with the Y axis table done with the sides, front and back all attached to the base. The Y-axis drive nut was installed but the leadscrew and motor were not. So picking up from there I decided to drill out the 5mm holes needed to mount the leadscrews to the motors. I chucked each leadscrew in a lathe and using liberal amounts of oil, I drilled out one end of each leadscrew deep enough to insert the motor shaft fully. As it turns out, I was lucky to get these holes drilled straight and proper in the old lathe I used at work but I did so there are no problems to report. I then used the Loctite 638 to permanently mount the leadscrews to each of the steppers. I then went on to the Z-axis. This is the most complicated assembly in the Mantis since it incorporates the homebuilt spindle assembly into it. I ran into some gotcha’s on this one. As you can see from the image below, the Z-axis is composed of a plate that bolts to the X/Z connector via T-nuts, the 4 bearings, the two rods, two bottom plates and one top plate. You can also see the spindle motor mount and the pins that hold it in place.

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CNC Router: Mantis Build Update

CNC, hacks, site news 3 Responses »

Nov 032010

Just a quick update to let everyone know that I HAVE finished building the Mantis CNC router, I am actively testing and troubleshooting it and that I do have a HUGE update to this series coming within the next day or two – probably tonight! I plan to put my own dimensioned drawings up in DXF format as free download for anyone looking to build the Mantis but most importantly I have a ton of pictures and tips and hints on building the Mantis as well as a bunch more “gotchas” that I ran into. Many of my readers cannot wait to see the update – JT I’m looking in your direction – and I can’t wait to get it up for all of you. Building the Mantis CNC engraver has been fun and I can’t wait to start putting it to use milling out some cool model railroading PCB’s.

CNC Router: Mantis Build 1

CNC, Featured Articles, hacks 19 Responses »

Oct 182010

mantis9_small I have started building my little Mantis CNC Router / PCB Engraver. If you’re not aware what the Mantis is, you can checkout David Carr‘s (the designer of the Mantis) blog/wiki at http://makeyourbot.org/mantis9-1 . It’s a little CNC router (footprint is 10″ x 10″) purpose built with a custom, low cost yet highly accurate and tightly built spindle specifically for engraving PC boards but it can be used for most any kind of light engraving or carving – the designer actually carved his face in chocolate in 3D relief! I am hoping to use the finished Mantis to carve PCBs for electronics hacks and maybe even for electronics kits available for sale here. I will continue to post my progress to the blog and let anyone interested in building this neat little machine some of the issues and gotcha’s I come across. So lets get everyone up to date here:

CNC Machines for Model Railroading Projects

CNC, hacks, site news 2 Responses »

Sep 272010

mantis9_small Well I have started on a new CNC project even though I haven’t finished my CNC router yet although I am 95% finished with it. I have started building the Mantis 9 -1 3-axes CNC PC Board milling machine by David Carr from MIT. It’s a fantastic little desktop PC board milling machine – it is little compared to the 12 inch by 18 inch capacity of my larger CNC router and I plan to use it to start doing some electronic projects – such as LED flashers, walkaround train controllers, sound boards etc… I plan to use the larger CNC router to put together some posts on making model railroad layout control panels, molds for casting building models in resin, etc.. while I use the small Mantis 9 for very intricate PC board milling and making fine brass model super-detailing pieces just to see how they come out. I have actually acquired all of the parts to make the Mantis 9-1 and it looks like a relatively easy build but we shall see.

Locked Up Ardunio Duemilanove, Finale!

Arduino, hacks 5 Responses »

Sep 172010

Well, I tried using the Pocket AVR Programmer I got from Sparkfun to reload the bootloader to my existing Arduino Duemilanove ATMega328 chip but it did not work. However, this interesting saga has a happy ending – MakerSHED (where I got my Duemilanove board) technical support has notified me they are sending me out a NEW Arduino Duemilanove board! How’s that for great technical support? I really thought they were going to say “Well, you must have blown out a component or a pin experimenting” and tell me it’s my own fault and not do anything since it is a development board. Great to see there are still companies out there that value their customers! As I was awaiting what I thought would be the inevitable dismissal from MakerSHED, I started looking into Arduino alternatives and came across this awesome little company called Freetronics! You guys HAVE to check them out! It’s just two guys but one of them, Jon Oxer was co-author of the popular book “Practical Arduino“ (maybe you’ve heard of it?) and they make a FANTASTIC Arduino clone (in fact it’s 100% compatible with a Duemilanove) called the Freetronics TwentyTen (in keeping with the Arduino culture you can call it the “Duemiladieci”). They are expert Arduino hackers themselves and really looked at the Duemilanove and took note of it’s good points and bad points and really listened to the Arduino community when they designed the TwentyTen. It’s an awesome board that is getting TONS of good reviews and it’s even been overclocked! Well what makes this “improved” Duemilanove so great? Well here is a list of improvements and you can be the judge:

Arduino Temperature to LCD Hack

Arduino, Featured Articles, hacks 6 Responses »

Aug 292010

Well here’s another little hack that demonstrates hooking up a temperature sensor to an Arduino Duemilanove micro-controller and displaying the temperature on an LCD. Before you say anything, yes I realize it’s not directly model railroad related but I suppose it could be if you needed to monitor the temperature from something, say a model railroad volcano with lava flow. Really it just demonstrates how easy it is to hook up an analog sensor to the Arduino and get meaningful data out and onto an LCD. I can picture the LCD embedded in a cool layout control panel and you could certainly swap the temperature IC for something like the opto-interruptor in my hack on making a Model Railroad Scale Speedometer and be able to display the scale speed of a model locomotive right on the LCD. Well anyway, it’s a good foundation for other more model railroad related projects to come and it tests out and shows off some of the new doo-dads I picked up recently.