Nowadays, handicraft people can increasingly find new machines that are controlled not by hands, as we are all used to, but by computer software and computerized equipment. This innovation is called CNC (computer numerical control).
This technology is used in many institutions, large industries, as well as in private workshops. Automated system management allows you to save a lot of time, as well as improve the quality of products.
The automated system is controlled by a computer program. This system includes asynchronous motors with vector control, having three axes of movement of the electric engraver: X, Z, Y. Below we will look at what machines with automatic control and calculations.
As a rule, all CNC machines use an electric engraver or milling cutter, on which you can change attachments. Machine with numerical control used to add decorative elements to certain materials and more. CNC machines, due to advances in the computer world, must have many functions. These functions include:
Milling
A mechanical process of processing a material, during which a cutting element (an attachment in the form of a milling cutter) produces rotational movements on the surface of the workpiece.
Engraving
It consists of applying one or another image to the surface of the workpiece. To do this, use either cutters or a graver (a steel rod with one end pointed at an angle).
Drilling
Mechanical processing of material by cutting, using a drill, which produces holes of different diameters and holes with many edges of different sections and depths.
Laser cutting
A method of cutting and cutting material in which there is no mechanical impact, high accuracy of the workpiece is maintained, and deformations made by this method have minimal deformations.
Plotter
High-precision drawing is produced the most complex schemes, drawings, geographical maps. Drawing is done using a writing block, using a specialized pen.
PCB drawing and drilling
Manufacturing of circuit boards, as well as drawing electrically conductive circuits on the surface of a dielectric plate. Also drilling small holes for radio components.
What functions your future computer-controlled machine will perform is up to you to decide. Next, let’s look at the design of a CNC machine.
Type of CNC machines
Technological features and capabilities of these machines are equivalent to universal machines. However, in the modern world, there are three types of CNC machines:
Turning
The purpose of such machines is to create parts based on the type of bodies of rotation, which consists of processing the surface of the workpiece. Also production of internal and external threads.
Milling
The automated operation of these machines consists of processing the planes and spaces of various body blanks. They carry out flat, contour and step milling, under different angles, as well as from several sides. They drill holes, cut threads, ream and boring workpieces.
Drilling - boring
They perform reaming, hole drilling, boring and reaming, countersinking, milling, threading and much more.
As we can see, CNC machines have a wide range of functionality that they perform. Therefore, they are equated to universal machines. All of them are very expensive and it is simply impossible to buy any of the above installations due to financial insufficiency. And you might think that you will have to perform all these actions manually throughout your life.
You don't have to be upset. Skillful hands countries, from the first appearance of factory CNC machines, began to create home-made prototypes that work no worse than professional ones.
All components for CNC machines can be ordered on the Internet, where they are freely available and are quite inexpensive. By the way, the body of an automated machine can be made with your own hands, and correct sizes you can go online.
Tip: Before choosing a CNC machine, decide what material you will be processing. This choice will be of major importance when constructing the machine, since it directly depends on the size of the equipment, as well as its costs.
The design of the CNC machine depends entirely on your choice. You can purchase a ready-made standard set of all necessary details and simply assemble it in your garage or workshop. Or order all equipment separately.
Consider a standard set of parts on the picture:
- The immediate working area, which is made of plywood, is the tabletop and side frame.
- Guide elements.
- Guide holders.
- Linear bearings and sliding bushings.
- Support bearings.
- Lead screws.
- Stepper motor controller.
- Controller power supply.
- Electric engraver or router.
- Coupling connecting the shaft lead screw with the shaft of stepper motors.
- Stepper motors.
- Running nut.
Using this list of parts, you can safely create your own CNC wood milling machine with automated operation. Once you have assembled the entire structure, you can safely begin work.
Principle of operation
Perhaps the most important element on this machine is the milling cutter, engraver or spindle. It depends on your choice. If you have a spindle, then the tail of the cutter, which has a collet for fastening, will be tightly attached to the collet chuck.
The chuck itself is directly mounted on the spindle shaft. The cutting part of the cutter is selected based on the selected material. An electric motor, which is located on a moving carriage, rotates the spindle with a cutter, which allows processing the surface of the material. Stepper motors are controlled by a controller, to which commands are sent from computer program.
Electronics The machine works directly on the provision of computer software, which must be supplied with the ordered electronics. The program transmits commands in the form of G codes to the controller. Thus, these codes are stored in the controller’s RAM.
After selecting a processing program on the machine (finishing, roughing, three-dimensional), commands are distributed to stepper motors, after which the surface of the material is processed.
Advice: Before starting work, you need to test the machine using a specialized program and run a test part to make sure the CNC is working correctly.
Assembly
Machine assembly do it yourself It won't take you too much time. Moreover, on the Internet now you can download a lot of different schemes and drawings. If you bought a set of parts for a homemade machine, then its assembly will be very quick.
So, let's look at one of them drawings the actual hand machine.
Drawing of a homemade CNC machine.
As a rule, the first step is to make a frame from plywood, 10-11 millimeters thick. Table top, side walls and a movable portal for installing a router or spindle, are made only from plywood material. The tabletop is made movable, furniture guides of appropriate sizes are used.
The end result should be a frame like this. After frame construction ready, a drill and special bits come into play, with which you can make holes in the plywood.
Frame of the future CNC machine.
In the finished frame, it is necessary to prepare all the holes in order to install bearings and guide bolts in them. After this installation, you can install all fasteners, electrical installations, etc.
After the assembly is completed, important stage becomes setting software machine and computer program. When setting up the program, the operation of the machine is checked for the correctness of the specified dimensions. If everything is ready, you can begin the long-awaited work.
Tip: Before starting work, you need to check the correct fastening of the workpiece material and the reliability of fastening the working attachment. Also make sure that the selected material matches the machine being manufactured.
Equipment setup
The CNC machine is set up directly from the working computer on which the program for working with the machine is installed. It is into the program that the necessary drawings, graphs, and drawings are loaded. Which are converted in sequence by the program into G codes necessary to control the machine.
When everything is loaded, trial actions are performed regarding the selected material. It is during these actions that all necessary preset dimensions are checked.
Advice: Only after a thorough check of the machine’s functionality can you begin full-fledged work.
Safety precautions
The rules and safety precautions when working with this machine are no different from working on all other machines. Below are the most important ones:
- Before starting work, check that the machine is in good working order.
- Clothes must be tucked in properly so that nothing sticks out anywhere and cannot get caught. work area machine
- You must wear a hat that will hold your hair.
- Near the machine there should be a rubber mat or low wooden sheathing, which will protect against electrical leakage.
- Access to the machine by children must be strictly prohibited.
- Check everything before operating the machine fasteners on their strength.
Advice: You must approach working on the machine with a clear head and understanding that if you do it incorrectly, you can cause irreparable harm to yourself.
You can find complete safety requirements for working with the machine on the World Wide Web, i.e. on the Internet and check them out.
Video reviews
Review of homemade CNC machine assembly
Video review simple machine CNC
Features Overview homemade CNC machine
Stepper Motors Overview
Review video multi-channel driver for stepper motors
IMPORTANT! Manufacturing printed circuit boards on HIGH-Z series machines - a very accurate and fast process. CNC machines HIGH-Z are the best for today equipment for the production of printed circuit boards. Our machines can mill conductive strip and drill holes at the same time! Printed circuit board manufacturing technology on cnc machines HIGH-Z allows you to achieve very high milling accuracy - 0.02 millimeters. Equipment for the production of printed circuit boards is small in size.
Production of printed circuit boards on HIGH-Z machines
CN Machine LLC supplies the best German equipment for the production of printed circuit boards - CNC machines of the HIGH-Z and Raptor series. We are the official distributor of these machines in Russia.
Technology for manufacturing printed circuit boards on a cnc machine HIGH-Z
You design your PCB, for example in PCAD, save the file as a .plt file (HPGL). Next you need to run the PCNC program (supplied).
For prototypes or small series, it is very important to have the ability to mill printed circuit boards. HIGH-Z cnc engraving and milling machines have the ability to mill a conductive strip with an accuracy of approximately 0.1 - 0.15 mm.
Perhaps you know on personal experience, how inconvenient the lack of milling capabilities is and what additional equipment is needed to mill printed circuit boards yourself.
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Equipment for prototyping printed circuit boards
Using CNC milling machines of the HIGH-Z series, it is possible to produce prototypes of printed circuit boards for small-scale production from materials such as aluminum, textolite, fiberglass, lavsan and other fibrous materials.
Possibility to produce double-sided printed circuit boards. This video from the Perm company Uralintelcom LLC demonstrates double sided printed circuit board manufacturing process with all the necessary operations: milling tracks, drilling holes, trimming a printed circuit board on a HIGH-ZS-400 machine. It is also possible, if necessary, to apply adhesives to the board.
For the production of printed circuit boards, a mandatory option is a mechanical depth regulator, the spring-loaded mechanism of which reads the unevenness of the surface, thereby processing the material to a clearly defined depth.
Advantages of the HIGH-Z cnc machine:
As I remember now, on February 23rd I came across a post on there, where a person wanted to engrave printed circuit boards on a 3D printer. In the comments they advised not to torment the printer's belly and pay attention to the Cyclone PCB Factory project.
I got excited about the idea. Later, at some point I will even regret that I took it, but that will be much later.
I dreamed of my own CNC router for printed circuit boards for a very long time; it was my second wish after a 3D printer. I decided to repeat the project, especially since I already had something in my bins.
I downloaded the project files and without hesitation began to print the parts. Got it done in about a week. I printed everything except the Z axis.
There are no detailed photographs of all the details left. Someone took a screenshot of the print settings and the result. Nozzle 0.4, layer height 0.24. I also printed with a layer of 0.28 - it prints quite normally.
I wanted to make the machine colored, so I printed different parts with plastic of different colors. Plastic used ABS Prostoplast. Colors of space, grassy green, reddening sunset.
It would be better to print everything in gray space. Red and green turned out to be quite fragile and some of the parts cracked during assembly. Some were cured with acetone, some were reprinted.
Accessories:
I had three free stepper motors, bought them for a 3D printer project, and decided to use them temporarily.
I got 8mm guides from inkjet printers, having torn apart several printers into parts. I wooled local thrift stores, Avito. The donors were HP inkjet printers at 100-200 rubles apiece. The long guide was sawn into two parts, on the X and Z axes.
The paper clamp from which I removed the rubber rollers went to the Y axis. The length was just enough to cut along the knurling.
The linear bearings were left over from the 3D printer; I converted the printer to bronze bushings with polka dots.
I decided to use one of my own as electronics. Arduino Uno on atmega328p. I bought an additional cnc shield 3.0 board for Arduino on Ali for 200 and a few kopecks rubles.
12V power supply from Leroy Merlin. I bought it to power three 12V halogens, but it didn’t work. I had to repair the transformer for Tachibra halogen lamps, and this power supply took root on the machine.
I installed 8825 drivers for the 3D printer, but I still have a4988 from the printer. I put them on the machine.
I ordered 608ZZ bearings from Ali, a dozen for 200 and a few kopecks rubles..
I planned to use my Chinese GoldTool engraver as a spindle.
I got the M8 threaded rods from work for free, they were left over from some installation. I almost picked it up from the trash heap.
While the project was being printed and the parts were on their way from Ali, I asked a furniture maker friend to cut out a base and a table from MDF. He was not lazy and did not spare the scraps; he cut out 2 bases and 2 tables. The photo shows one of the sets.
I didn’t have any plywood in my bins; a greedy animal wouldn’t allow me to buy a sheet of plywood. By the way, MDF fit very well.
I started assembling the machine. Everything would be fine, but the standard 13 nuts fell through and dangled inside the gear, and the 14 nuts did not fit into the gears. I had to melt the 14th nut into the gears with a soldering iron.
Gears or dangling on axles stepper motor, or didn’t climb.
The nuts of the M3 screws were turned in the mounting sockets.
I found several square nuts for M3 threads (I once disassembled some kind of plug made from it), which fit perfectly and did not turn. At work I also found some plugs like this and used them on the nuts. These are mainly guide mounts. Regular nuts for M3 threads had to be held with a thin screwdriver blade to prevent them from turning.
Somehow I collected it. Later, while reading topics about Cyclone, I came across recycled machine parts for metric fasteners. From this set I re-printed the gears and the Z-axis limit switch mount. It’s a pity I didn’t come across this set of spare parts earlier. I would print these parts.
Hoping to use his Chinese engraver, I first printed one Dremel mount from the kit, then the second. It didn’t fit, my engraver didn’t fit into any of them. The original Dremel, the simplest one, cost just over three thousand rubles. For what???
Extra spare parts.
And yet, the linear bearings were dangling in their sockets like something in an ice hole.
I had to order a 200W spindle from Ali for a little over a thousand collet clamp ER11. I was lucky to get a discount and use the coupon.
While the spindle was moving, I printed out a mount for it from the machine kit. And again there is a puncture, it is just as defective. And not a word about the spindle clamp.
As a result, I found and printed this mount for a 52mm spindle. After a little modification, the mount fit on the machine, the spindle fit into it well.
But the bearings on the Cargo bushings had to be removed from them. I installed Chinese LM8UU
I would also like to say something about the Chinese 608zz bearings. New bearings with play. Terrible. One thing is that they are relatively inexpensive. I didn't look for bearings from us.
By the way, the bearings fit into the seats just like something in a hole. IN seats the bearings were loose. I don't know if this is a bug or a feature. As a result, I applied electrical tape to the bearing races.
The Chinese lm8uu and lm8luu from a 3D printer also turned out to be rubbish. As a result, I made sliding bearings for the Y axis on Cargo 141091 bushings. I printed out a plastic cage and inserted a pair of bushings into it. The resulting bearings were inserted into the mounts.
For the Z axis I chose more or less lively lm8uu. On the X-axis, I installed the upper bearing lm8uu, and instead of the two lower ones, I printed a plastic cage to the size of lm8luu and inserted a pair of Cargo bushings into it.
Luckily, I bought them at one time. They came in handy.
While assembling the machine, I regretted taking it on. But there was nowhere to go, the project had to be completed. Collected. Launched!
Some more photos of the assembly process.
The very beginning of the assembly...
Once again, washing the sink from red stains of ferric chloride, after etching the board, I thought it was time to automate this process. So I started making a device for making circuit boards, which can already be used to create simple electronics.
Below I will talk about how I made this device.
The basic process of making a printed circuit board using the subtractive method involves removing unnecessary areas of foil from the foil material.
Today, most electronics engineers use laser-iron-type technologies to home production plat. This method involves removing unnecessary areas foil using chemical solution, which corrodes the foil in unnecessary places. My first experiments with LUT several years ago showed me that this technology is full of little things that sometimes completely interfere with achieving an acceptable result. This includes the preparation of the board surface, the choice of paper or other printing material, the temperature combined with the heating time, as well as the features of washing off the remaining glossy layer. You also have to work with chemistry, and this is not always convenient and useful at home.
I wanted to put some device on the table, into which, like a printer, you can send the source code of the board, press a button and after some time receive a finished board.
With a little googling, you can find out that people, starting in the 70s of the last century, began to develop desktop devices for the manufacture of printed circuit boards. First of all they appeared milling machines for printed circuit boards that cut out tracks on foil PCB with a special cutter. The essence of the technology is that at high speeds, a cutter mounted on a rigid and precise CNC coordinate table cuts off the foil layer in the right places.
The desire to immediately buy a specialized machine passed after studying the prices from the supplier. Like most hobbyists, I’m not ready to shell out that kind of money for a device. Therefore, it was decided to make the machine ourselves.
It is clear that the device must consist of a coordinate table that moves cutting tool to the desired point and the cutting device itself.
There are plenty of examples on the Internet on how to do this coordinate table for every taste. For example, the same RepRap copes with this task (with adjustments for accuracy).
I still have a homemade X-ray table from one of my previous hobby projects to build a plotter. Therefore, the main task was to create a cutting tool.
A logical step would be to equip the plotter with a miniature engraver like a Dremel. But the problem is that a plotter that can be assembled cheaply at home is difficult to make with the necessary rigidity and parallelism of its plane to the plane of the PCB (even the PCB itself can be curved). As a result, cut out boards on it more or less good quality would not have been possible. In addition, the use of milling was not in favor of the fact that the cutter becomes dull over time and loses its cutting properties. It would be great if copper could be removed from the PCB surface in a non-contact manner.
Already exist laser machines German manufacturer LPKF, in which the foil is simply evaporated by a powerful infrared semiconductor laser. The machines are distinguished by their accuracy and processing speed, but their price is even higher than that of milling machines, and assembling such a thing from materials available to everyone and somehow making it cheaper does not yet seem to be a simple task.
From all of the above, I have formed some requirements for the desired device:
- The price is comparable to the cost of an average home 3D printer
- Contactless copper removal
- The ability to assemble a device from available components yourself at home
So I began to think about a possible alternative to laser in the field of non-contact removal of copper from PCB. And I came across the method of electric spark machining, which has long been used in metalworking for the manufacture of precision metal parts.
With this method, the metal is removed by electrical discharges, which evaporate and spray it from the surface of the workpiece. In this way, craters are formed, the size of which depends on the discharge energy, its duration and, of course, the type of workpiece material. In its simplest form, electrical erosion began to be used in the 40s of the 20th century to punch holes in metal parts. Unlike traditional machining, the holes could be made into almost any shape. Currently, this method is actively used in metalworking and has given rise to a whole series of types of machine tools.
An essential part of such machines is a current pulse generator, a system for feeding and moving the electrode - it is the electrode (usually copper, brass or graphite) that is the working tool of such a machine. The simplest current pulse generator is a simple capacitor of the required value connected to a source DC voltage through a current limiting resistor. In this case, capacitance and voltage determine the discharge energy, which in turn determines the size of the craters, and hence the cleanliness of the processing. True, there is one significant nuance - the voltage on the capacitor in operating mode is determined by the breakdown voltage. The latter depends almost linearly on the gap between the electrode and the workpiece.
Over the course of the evening, a prototype of an erosion tool was made, which was a solenoid with a copper wire attached to its armature. The solenoid provided vibration of the wire and interruption of contact. LATR was used as a power source: rectified current charged the capacitor, and alternating current powered the solenoid. This design was also secured in the plotter pen holder. In general, the result met expectations, and the head left continuous stripes with torn edges on the foil.
The method clearly had the right to life, but it was necessary to solve one problem - to compensate for the consumption of wire, which is consumed during work. To do this, it was necessary to create a feed mechanism and a control unit for it.
After that, I began to spend all my free time in one of the hackspaces in our city, where there are metalworking machines. A lengthy effort began to make an acceptable cutting device. The erosion head consisted of a rod-bushing pair providing vertical vibration, a return spring and a broaching mechanism. To control the solenoid, it was necessary to make a simple circuit consisting of a pulse generator of a given length on NE555, a MOSFET transistor and inductive sensor current Initially, it was intended to use the self-oscillation mode, that is, apply a pulse to the switch immediately after the current pulse. In this case, the frequency of oscillations depends on the size of the gap and the drive is controlled according to the measurement of the period of self-oscillations. However, a stable self-oscillatory mode turned out to be possible in the range of head oscillation amplitudes, which was less than half the maximum. Therefore, I decided to use a fixed oscillation frequency generated by hardware PWM. In this case, the state of the gap between the wire and the board can be judged by the time between the end of the opening pulse and the first current pulse. For greater stability during operation and improved frequency characteristics, the solenoid was fixed above the wire drawing mechanism, and the armature was placed on an alloy bracket. After these modifications, it was possible to achieve stable operation at frequencies up to 35 Hz.
Having secured the cutting head to the plotter, I began experiments on cutting insulating tracks on printed circuit boards. The first result has been achieved and the head more or less consistently provides continuous cutting. Here's a video showing what happened:
The fundamental possibility of producing circuit boards using electric spark processing has been confirmed. The immediate plans are to improve accuracy, increase processing speed and cut cleanliness, and also make some of the developments publicly available. I also plan to adapt the module for use with RepRap. I will be glad to have ideas and comments in the comments.
We produce mini CNC drilling machines for the production of printed circuit boards. From us you can buy equipment for drilling and milling circuit boards and electronic equipment housings at an affordable price.
SK Router machines for the manufacture of printed circuit boards
Equipment for the production of printed circuit boards is presented in the product catalog of IC "Router" drilling machines with CNC. Models for printed circuit boards are designed on the basis of our milling and engraving machines and are equipped with special high-speed spindles. The presence of such a spindle allows you to drill and mill printed circuit boards with high speed and accuracy.
If you require a machine for more universal use, you can look at our mini milling machines as standard and multi-purpose drilling equipment.
Application area
Mini machines for printed circuit boards SK "Router" are used at enterprises in various industries: from general production to aviation and space. In addition to drilling printed circuit boards, such machines can also successfully mill electronic equipment housings. In this way, it is possible to realize complete production of electronic devices.
Complete set of drilling machines
The basic supply of machines for printed circuit boards includes a set of equipment sufficient to begin producing boards in serial mode. At the same time, to increase productivity and convenience of working on the machine, the equipment can be completed additional options: CNC system, automatic tool change, coolant and other technological equipment.
PCB drilling video
Watch the process of making a PCB on one of our drilling machines:
