Categories
Thing a day

Thing a day, Thing #18 PCB mill parts

Thing number 18 is actually a couple of parts needed for making my PCB mill. I am building some proof of concept prototypes that will need a lot of very simple PCBs – so I am upping the priority of bringing my old mill back to life. Now that the holidays are over I want to get back into the pace of a thing a day. At least for another 12 things.

I swapped out the electronics for a Spark fun quad stepper board I had left over from a project a few years ago. So first thing was a PCB mount that included a small fan pointed at the motor driver. The electronics are only temporary, since they require a parallel port connection – but I want it up and usable fast.

shopthing_a_day_Jan2015_thing18_electronics.

The next upgrade was to add a spring-loaded table to the mill. This should let me level the table within a 1-2 thousandths of an inch. There’s a nut on each corner and tightening and loosening the nut in each corners changes the slope of the table.

shopthing_a_day_Jan2015_thing18_table_leveling

Finally I mounted a new motor to an aluminum backing plate. I still need to make a stepper and lead screw mount in order to raise and lower the new z-axis. Once I have that sorted exactly I will trim the plates down a few inches to fit. After that I need to add back the optical end stops I ripped out of the mill when I started upgrading.

shopthing_a_day_Jan2015_thing18_motor

Leave a Reply