Sketchpad

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Sketchpad

Postby CorneliousJ » Wed May 18, 2011 7:37 pm

Hello, i am an senior electronic engineering student at RCC: Institute of Technology in Toronto, Ontario. All of the students in their senior year are asked to group up, then design and implement an idea, be it innovative GPS implementations, to a balancing robot or the like. As it stands my group has an idea for a CNC machine, with an additional 'attachment' in order to record designs.

Essentialy it will be a CNC machine along the same frame as seen in your video:
CNC machine Makership Linear Bearing system Frame.jpg
CNC machine Makership Linear Bearing system Frame.jpg (11.31 KiB) Viewed 8735 times


but we intend to have the recording device to be on a similar frame as this photo:
Sketchpad Makership Linear Bearing system Frame.JPG


The recorder will be the same physical operation as an CNC machine, but will have a pointing tool replacing the drill/extrusion head, and will record the position of the pointer to a PIC18F4680 as the user traces a design, or part/tool , which will then direct the CNC machine to drill it out.

As it stands this project is mainly to show that we can implement the knowledge we've gathered at our school, so complication of design isnt neccisary, our teachers are more interested in us being able to implement the coding and interfacing.So when a friend pointed me towards the "MakerSlide" forum and it appeared to be exactly what we need to get the physical aspects off the ground, needless to say we got very excited about your offer for funding.

Please consider our idea "Sketchpad" , and thank you for your time :)

Jesse & Dave @ drjeco@hotmail.com
CorneliousJ
 
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Re: Sketchpad

Postby bdring » Wed May 18, 2011 8:02 pm

You are taking my Sketching in CNC idea in a new direction. :)

That idea is interesting. It might be easier than you think. Motor drivers take step and direction pulses to move. If you where able to generate the those pulses from encoders on the sketch side, you could send them directly to the CNC side. The encoders would need to have the same resolution. You might need a PIC to decode the quadrature pulses to set the direction, but some simple discrete logic might do it too. You need to worry about the stepper keeping up with rapid moves. Servos might have a better chance. Adding a little mass to the stylus might dampen rapid moves too.

Is there anyway you can do a rough sketch of what it might look like. I think I would qualify for a sponsorship.
Bart
"If you didn't build it, you will never own it."
bdring
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