Re: [CAD_CAM_EDM_DRO] Allegro UCN5804 stepper driver

It's nice to see someone else who's working with FIRST (I'm on team 114). I
brought machinery back to my High School which hasn't had a metalshop since
1982 so that we could move beyond hacksaws and hand drills. Now we have a
50 year old lathe, an Excello vertical mill, and I acquired a Taig CNC mill
(benchtop). We just saved up enough money to buy a Newall DRO for the mill,
which had ~150 thou of backlash (yes, 0.150") when we got it. Some
tinkering got that down to 0.050", but that's still way too much anything
accurate without the DRO.
If your into do it yourself CNC, try one of the Hobby CNC kits.
http://www.hobbycnc.com/ They come as kits, but with the PCB and all the
components. I have two, one that drives the Taig and another one which used
to drive the taig, until I blew out two of the driver chips (an incorrect
setting caused the problem). Soldering the components and building an
enclosure is a good project.
We'd like to know how the project comes along
Michael

On 9/13/07, Chuck Merja <chuckm@...> wrote:
>
> >>I have about 10. How many do you need?
> Dan Mauch
> THANKS - Well, I'd like to get at least 3 or 4, probably. Maybe I should
> tell you what I'm up to and then go from there.
>
> I'm an engineer turned farmer - er a farmer with an old engineering degree
> and I do a lot of volunteer work with our high school kids. We have built
> 120 lb competition robots the last 3 years for FIRST competitions. We are
> not a very wealthy school district and our school shop has been neglected
> for some time. We have a lathe that helped win WW II, anf hasn't done much
> since, a mill/drill that I found for us and some welders - TIG, MIG,
> stick,
> oh and a plasma cutter. None of these has even a DRO, let alone CNC
> capability, and I am interested in getting into this century and bringing
> the kids along. So, we have printers and computers to salvage, and I've
> seen Bruce Shapiro's work eg - http://www.taomc.com/bits2bots/index.htm ,
> as
> well as Dave Benson's http://www.stepperstuff.com/ . Both of them use
> 5804's in very simple circuits to use salvaged steppers to make stuff
> move,
> so I thought I'd start there.
>
> I've also been able to get some plans for like 24 x 24 cnc router tables
> donated, and I thought I'd work with the kids to build our own cnc router
> as
> sort of a next step. Looking for stepper suggestions for this, btw.
>
> I realize that I'm looking for "old technology" with the 5804's, but it
> looked like a place to start.
>
> I'm very open to suggestions, and would appreciate any guidance you might
> want to give.
>
> Thanks so much for the initial reply and thanks in advance for more..
>
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>
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