Oh I didn’t see you there.
I’m getting bored waiting for this CNC mill frame to arrive. It’s time for a project.
Let’s build a keyboard tray for my computer cabinet.
Cut cut cut bang. Just like melting that asshole’s doghouse.
You know who needs power feed on their keyboard tray? If you guessed me, you’re wrong. But shit, let’s do it anyways.
So I measured the inside of the cabinet and cut and stained a length of wood accordingly. I mounted some L brackets and a stepper motor to it. Also I stained the keyboard tray.
To be continued…
So that proved a theory good and well but it doesn’t do shit now does it. I spent a while after that researching linear stage systems but came to no spectacular conclusions, just a textbook grasp of the concept. I have so many more questions about everything in the entire machine.
So I decided to send some money over to Zen Toolworks to have a look at their solution to these problems. 7x12x5 capacity, it should be along shortly.
Take a look at these awesome instructions.
Tell me that’s 296 jpegs with no annotations. Ohhh yes yes yes.
No don’t tell me. 0.7 threads per centimeter. I bet you didn’t expect me to be that hardcore. When my machine tools come in the mail I light the manuals on fire. Give me a box with two hundred unlabeled parts and the contents of your SD card. I’m just that good, and I appreciate you assumed as much.
So I’m going to set up a simple stepper-controlled moving platform.
I went to Home Depot and grabbed some drawer slides, threaded rods and nuts.
I grabbed a cardboard box that seemed a manageable size and mounted the drawer slides on it. I cut up another box to make the platform to size.
I grabbed a Sherline stepper motor mount earlier on so I used that. It’s a piece of shit, just an L bracket screwed and hot glued onto a piece of cardboard. You wonder how they make a name for themselves like that.
I attach some nuts to the bottom of the carriage to catch the threaded rod.
I bought this damn TIG welder and all this steel stock but I was on the phone with a technician at Hardinge earlier and this is actually how it’s done. I’m as shocked as you are.
I hot glue and screw the motor mount onto the base.
This kind of quality is what sets us apart from other brands like Bridgeport and Gorton.
The Hendersons across the street, they have this beautiful pair of Bridgeport mills converted and running on Mach3. I can’t even begin to describe these assholes. Let me put it this way. Their doghouse is a perfect scale replica of their home. The entrance is a working scale garage door. It has its own scale doghouse. Solid aluminum.
Or they did, until somebody rubbed mercury paste on it. Kids these days.
Anyways I want my own mill. Fucking jerks. My doghouse will be steel.
I need to start by understanding the fundamentals of controlling the motors. I ordered a stepper motor and an EasyDriver from Amazon. I’m using an Arduino as the control platform because it’s so well documented.
I couldn’t find any pin headers at RadioShack for the driver board so I picked up a 24 pin IC socket to cut up with my dremel.
It looks like a hot mess from the other side. So look at the soldering instead.
The next step is to build a simple moving platform to test it on.
westernlabs 
