Moving Day

Well I decided to shift my blog from my personal site over here so more people can see it. Hopefully this kind of things interests others. The project got pushed to the back burner due to life money and all that other fun stuff. I have purchased some new borosilicate glass tubes with a slightly larger diameter and thinner wall for better heat transfer. I have also decided to stick with the laser heads I have and will try using a more flexible epoxy glue. As it heats and cools it shouldn't crack like the last one. I am still not too sure how this will work but at least this way I won't have to start all over. As for attaching the coolant lines to the acrylic tube I will continue to use the metals rings I made but also find a better glue to seal them to the tube.

I am also working on a CNC table which I will document on hear as soon as I can. It is going to be a 4'x4' table with dual drives. I plan on attaching my laser a router and plasma/Oxy-fuel for the heads. I have wrote my own control system for an automated drill a while back I will modify to control this system. The software was written on linux using a real time kernel. All loop calculations are done in software. I am using a Mesa 4I65 with some custom FPGA code programmed on it to control IO and ADC/DAC's. The drill software was only a single linear axis with a programmable spindle speed so programming the arcs on dual axis is going to be the fun part. Pic of the drill below..















Anyone have expericence writing velocity profilers for more than 1 axis? I think I figured out how to do it but I would like to discuss this with someone who has experience in the field. I would like to program it for 3 axis motion so I can do some 3D routing. I thought about just using a CNC program like EMC but I like the experience I get when trying to do these things on my own.