I've been working on plans for a robot. While discussing this with my chief assistant, he had an excellent suggestion: “Dad, I have an idea, why don't we first make a robot that can make other robots?”. Chad is 11 and has some experience with Mindstorms and, as you have just noticed, is somewhat on the lazy side.

Which is a valuable character asset when you are a robotics engineer. Who would want a robot built by an engineer that likes to work hard? Aren't robots all about getting out of work? Or at least making work easier? more fun?

After thinking about it for a while, I realized Chad was right. So, we done a little research (that's what we call googling) and come up with an excellent self-published book by David K. Steele. It is called CNC Router Plans, Plans for Inexpensive CNC Router Tables.

This book is well illustrated and has detailed plans for building five different CNC tables. With work areas ranging from 13”x13” to 27”x64”. The simplest table is rather simple and after looking around my garage, I determined that I have all of the parts on hand. But 13”x13”? Well, we decided on the 25”x37”x6.5”, we will have to pick up a few items, but overall it just fits our needs better.

So we have started construction. My plan now is to build it pretty much the way the book shows it, then we will upgrade those pieces that we need to in order to fit our need. I want to re-engineer the Z axis a bit – get it laid out to work with a rotary flexible shaft wood carver tool. Here are a couple of the items I'm looking at:

I especially like the latter: it has both 1/4” and 1/8” collets and I'm pretty sure I can figure out how to mod that speed control so the CNC controller can manage it. Using such a tool should lighten the gantry a good bit; however, that could mean it won't handle as deep a but. We will have to very carefully engineer this part in order to get the rigidity necessary.

Speaking of software, we in the Quakenbush household are big fans of Linux, so we will be using EMC2. Many of its tools are written in Python – our favorite programming language. My chief assistant has been using Python to code video games for a while now, so we are thinking about contributing some tools to the EMC2 distribution.

Ultimately, I'd like to use the machine to not only carve wood, but to carve machinable wax. See http://www.machinablewax.com We could then use the wax to make molds for either metal casting or to cast plastic parts as needed.

As progress gets underway on the CNC table, we will post pictures and maybe even get the cam corder out and keep you abreast of our project. In the meantime, if you are interested in building your own CNC router table, check out Daniel Steele's web site:

http://solsylva.com/