I spent the past couple of days driving up to WA for summer vacation. I packed the CNC machine in the trailer; it takes up a little less room than a telescope imaging rig.
Everything seems to have made it through the trip in working order, although there are a few scrapes here and there. The mouse, which I am sure that I tested as working before I left CA, is DOA, so I will have to borrow a mouse. Let me take this opportunity to say that I hate the fact that I have to drive this machine with a desktop PC. There is no reason (other than laziness / luddite) not to switch to USB. Yes, USB might have problems keeping up with the pulse rate. But that can be designed around. Come on, people. Figure it out.
Anyway, back to the PC later.
First night in WA, I unpacked the trailer, got everything stacked up inside my father-in-law’s shop, and while trying to figure out what I could work on, I hit upon the idea of building out the RJ45-to-DB9 connectors that I will need for the Gecko-to-motor connections.
I ohm-ed out the connectors, and found that a sane person created them, since the same color wires go to the same pins for both female and male. I decided to hook them up such that the power transmission wires were at the edges of the CAT5 cable (pins 1/2 and 7/8), and the current-limiting-resistor connections were right in the middle (pins 4/5), so there is a pin between the resistor and either power pair, and the power pairs are separated. I have no idea if this will make a difference, but it made me feel better.
I put together all 3 male and all 3 female ends, and that was about it for the night.
Once the sun came up, I did a little sorting. I cleared out a space big enough to work in the shop, and moved the parts pile to their new spot. There’s no power on that side of the shop, so I installed my extension cord (following the perimeter of the shop where I could, to reduce the possibility of someone tripping).
With Anthony’s help, I got the Y-gantry reinstalled on the X-table. It’s one of those jobs that could be done by one person, but is a lot easier with 2.
I thought about putting together an Arduino sketch to make the stepper motors produce music, but I couldn’t get it all together. I got as far as learning that there is a tone() function on the Arduino, and hooking up the piezo speaker to play a little song. But trying to convert it to stepper commands was giving the The Headache, so I moved on.
Not a lot of actual sawdust-making today, but a successful road trip is usually its own reward.