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Jim’s Makelangelo Draws a Badlands Bunny
Jim has been making some heavy mods to his Makelangelo in his home lab and sharing his adventures in the forums. Watch his machine draw a bunny
Tutorials
How to Build a 4-axis CNC Gcode Interpreter for Arduino
I’ve updated the GCode CNC Demo on Github with an example of how to run 4 stepper motors. It could be extended to 6, 8, or more. Watch it in action
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New Product: Adafruit Motor Shield v2
ELE-0035 Adafruit Motor Shield v2 is a stackable version of the v1 shield – put three on one arduino and you can run 6 stepper motors at once. Hello! That’s a fancy 3D printer.
If you are familiar with the v1 shield you will find the instructions a breeze.
A few days ago I published code for a 2-axis CNC machine that runs on Gcode. Here is the same code updated for v2. Click here to see GcodeCNCDemo on Github.
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New Product: Bare Conductive Pens
ELE-0033 Bare Conductive Paint Pens have special ink that conducts electricity. Stick some LEDs and a battery to a piece of cardboard, then draw your circuit and the lights will work! This is great for architecture students who want to light their models. Surface Mount PCB prototyping has never been this cheap and fast.
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Laser Cut Frabjous Tetrahedron Sculpture
This is one of my first Laser cutting experiments. Even though this isn’t the best example of what I can cut I feel it’s worth sharing because it helped me get a lot better. I needed a large piece to test the cutting quality across the entire work area of the machine. I also love jigsaws and puzzles, so when I saw this on Thingiverse I knew I had to make one for myself. In several spots the beam didn’t cut all the way through and there was a bit of burning. That showed me where to adjust the settings and fine-tune the calibration.
After cutting the parts I used masking tape to hold it together while I riddled it out. Once it looked right I put a few drops of contact cement on each corner to finish the job.
Now here’s a question about appearances: If it were you, would you show this version or would you re-cut it and only show the perfect second copy? Some people say I look less confident or less skilled because I show work in progress. I think it’s more honest and educational to show how I got where I am. I might have problem but they don’t include confidence issues. What do you think? Please comment.
