CNC Stuff

Some years ago I started with the design of a large CNC milling machine for milling styrofoam. This meanwhile resulted in a number of nice projects, some of which are presented here.

Elanimal

Elanimal is the big CNC machine that was my first project.

It is still being used. Not only for cutting styrofoam but also for tooling board, wood and even aluminum are being processed by this machine.

CNC Controller

Elanimal started with a Linux CNC based controller. The PC running Linux was connected directly to the stepper motor drivers through the PC's parallel port.

After some time I decided that LinuxCNC was not (yet) good enough for my purposes and I bought a USBCNC module. Some more changes have been implmented through the years.

Pendant

On hand operated machines we are all used to those nice handwheels that are used to move the machine. Most hobby CNC machines start of with just a keyboard but I think that every CNC machine needs a 'proper' pendant with a handwheel that operates identical to the one on hand operated machines.

USBCNC has an input for a handwheel using a rotary encoder but I also wanted some buttons to use instead of the keyboard. The resulting pendant is still a project in progress.