Old scanners for CNC parts?

I think they are too weak... maybe old ones still have metal frames and big motors, but all the new stuff is really minimized. Plastic small belts, small drive motors, etc.

old plotters would be a much better source. Attach a dremel to the pen and you are done :-)

bruno

Rex B wrote:

The whole scanner! Scan a part, make a film of it (print on OH-film) and etch the part. Of course, you can etch parts for your CNC. :-)))

OK, you might find two steppers inside, but they will be too weak for even mickey mouse work.

SCNR Nick

Not for CNC, but they have a nice flat piece of glass. gary

punch tape servo drives would work for a small machine. They are hardly ever used any more with rs 232 ports on newer machines. The GE tape drives had pretty good sized motors.

John

No, too puny. The stuff of toy robot type projects.

The key is small. The problem is that the steppers used are very low power. If you drive a carraige with them ( low friction carraige), then use some other force mechanism to move a cutting tool into the workpiece they work. But the steppers do not have the power (force ability, actually) to push a normal cutter into a workpiece very well. Still, if you use a VERY small bit and advance it very slowly, it should work. I saw a mini-cnc-mill for milling printed circuit boards that used small steppers. The mill only went down through the copper, which was about

15 mill, the mill used was 1/32 inch in diameter, and moved rather slowly. It was a neat little deal, much quicker than photo etching a pc board, but you still walked away and came back an hour later.

Still, for a modeler like me this would probably be adequate, and I have been actually looking for such a project article in mags and on net.

Laser! :-)

--Donnie

Find a HP plotter - then just convert the existing pen into a high speed cutter - then you can plot to it from almost any windows program. Windows to provide the driver....

Martin Martin Eastburn @ home at Lions' Lair with our computer lionslair at consolidated dot net NRA LOH, NRA Life NRA Second Amendment Task Force Charter Founder

D>

The plotter servos may have a problem with the extra mass of the higher weight of the cutter and motor. Even if the servos have the power needed to drive the cutter you could experience overshoot and hunting.

Bill K7NOM

Yea - the Kennedy and GE - reel to Reel - 16" of tape flying !

My dad used a tape drive that was 2" wide tape, 1.5 miles long and took

0.5 miles to get up to speed. Then it acted like a disk drive streaming! He had a room of them as backup to his two rooms of large disks. Overflow. (the rooms were really floors in the monster building). :-)

Martin Eastburn @ home at Lions' Lair with our computer lionslair at consolidated dot net NRA LOH, NRA Life NRA Second Amendment Task Force Charter Founder

John wrote:

Have you ever heard of the multi-floor falling tape system? IIRC, it was described as rows upon rows of remotely operated clips w/ tapes hanging on them; each tape must have weighted a little at the bottom to get it to fall correctly.

To run a program, the operator pushed a button to release a tape, it fell into a funnel of sorts leading to the read head, and landed in the basement. The operator then carted the tape back to the top and put it in the correct clip.

I have no first hand knowledge of it, but it came from a reliable source, and is just crazy enough to be true.

Bill

Yes - there are issues abound.

I have used a small 8x10 or there abouts flatbed that uses a 200k RPM very high speed motor that drives a 10 mil endmill that cuts PCB material. The motor isn't all that large - it isn't a handful when extracted. The gantry has to carry the load and balance it. The software like most CNC software and Plotter software has high speed flats and slows down on the corners. Overshoot isn't a issue at all.

The issue is conversion of a robust unit into a more robust unit. Maybe the control board is the main save - since it accepts and translates the plotter control codes.

Martin Martin Eastburn @ home at Lions' Lair with our computer lionslair at consolidated dot net NRA LOH & Endowment Member NRA Second Amendment Task Force Charter Founder

Bill Janssen wrote: