Mini

Inspired by this project, I started to build a mini Laser Cutter ...

2016.11.30

I have no idea what espcially made me do this, but after having read about the above stated project and havling lying around all needed material, I started building my own mini plotter.

I started by disassembling two old DVD ROM's. Using the provided images, I tried to assemble everything together, which was not that easy, as only a few details were provided, but my previous work helped me a lot to understand how to build everything.

Due to the size of the sliding parts of the DVD RROM, the printable size just about 40x40mm, but for testing purposes I think this is rather enough.

The provided firmware for the Arduino is quite simple ... too simple for me, so this was kind of a problem. I feel happy using Repetier-Host, but that firmware requires simple stepper drivers. The here used motor shield will not do the job.

2016.12.01

In order to use the Repetier-Host software to control the device, I rewrote the firmeware from scratch. As I never had dome something similar, I checked the provided code as well as the Repetier firmware itself. The next step was to test the communication with the host software, which poped me into a lot of trouble but that way I learned a lot about GCode and weee able to make all needed changes to my firmware.

By the way, I named it "Simple GCode Interpreter" (SGI).

In the video above, I'm engraving a little star. To make it cut, the plotter would need to make 1 or more passes.

2016.12.02

Today I packed all the electronics on a board I taped to the back of the printer. While building the laser driver circuit I burned, once again, a diode. F***

2016.12.03

In the early mornings hours I got the idea to use the old cover as top so that I could include there the volt- and ampermeter quite nicely.