Last night, Mike and I finished mounting the last motor to the CNC frame (the Y-motor), as well as the delrin nuts to the Z and Y rod housings.  (This was after I disassembled, drilled holes in, and reassembled the wrong part.  Mike, ever the gentleman, politely suggested that I "potentially" drilled the wrong plate, before fixing my mistake. Heh.) 

Now that it's done, the final design moves our stage (i.e. the workpiece) in the X direction (about 24" of travel), and the router moves in Y (about 12" of travel) and Z (about 5" of travel).  Mike also donated a new router bit to the cause - one which can plunge into our workpiece (and which is about 10 years newer than the bit we had on the router before).  

When all was set (and after we tried to find Marshall to share in the first CNC test), we turned the router on for the first time (which is to say we plugged it into a power strip and hit the 'on' button).  That thing is enormously fast, and it sounded like an airplane engine buzzing loudly in the little shop.  Both our eyes widened, and we kind of adopted the same stance soccer players do when they line up for a penalty kick.  Gonna have to get a plastic case to enclose the whole apparatus soon.

But then we mounted a piece of foam on the stage, plunged the router bit, and jogged the motors around.  It worked great.  Below is the very first piece we cut:

The image is a little hard to decipher - it's a piece of foam block, about 12"x24" and 4" deep (the larger cut is about 6" across).  We just traced out a few random shapes.  Lots of fun, but we quickly wanted to see what we could do with wood.  We took turns operating the controls of the motors while the other kept an eye on the stages (we don't have emergency stops yet when the stages reach the end-of-travel), as well as kept a hand on the off-switch to the router.

Here's my piece:

 and a close-up:

Even though I wrote the directions of the motors on a piece of paper and taped it to the computer monitor (counter-clockwise = "away" from each motor; "clockwise" = towards each motor), I still made a few errors jogging around the workpiece.  (It took a while to realize that moving the stage "away" from the motor essentially means moving the router bit in the opposite direction - a bit counter-intuitive at first).  I tried writing the word Steampunk, but clearly ran out of room.  Heh.

So now we've finished what we consider Phase 1 of the project - the mechanical and electrical infrastructure.  Now we're really looking forward to moving onto Phase 2 - getting the software to work (creating CAD files; converting those files to a toolpath; then converting the toolpath to commands for the individual stepper motors to carve the shape).  After that, we'll have fun in the final Phase 3 of this project - learning the "sweet-spot" processing parameters to efficiently, accurately, and aesthetically cut different materials (wood, plastic, wax, metal, glass) with different router bits, cutting speeds, travel speeds, set-ups, etc.  Great fun!

Today, Drew and Matthew came by from 10:30 till 4:30 or so.  We had a trip to Radio Shack, to Lowes, grabbed lunch, and then did some work.  We wired up the stepper motors to the CNC controller board, started sanding the antique pupil's desk with a power sander (needed to take turns to keep our arms turning completely to rubber), and learned a bit about shop tools, plasma cutters (i.e. real-life light sabers!), CNC design, stepper motors, and more.  A good first day!

Wiring up the CNC stepper motors in the shop:

.... and sanding decades of graffiti and chisel marks off the antique desk we intend to turn into a computer....

Matthew would start, then Drew would take over, and then I'd put some elbow grease into it...

A great start!  Looking forward to the finished projects.  Before and after photos will definitely be posted...

This is a blog detailing the goals, projects, and progress of the Steampunk Laboratory. 

The Steampunk Lab is an exploratory exercise in what hopefully will be very practical design, fabrication, and vending of technartistry - from computers which look as if they were manufactured around the 1880s, to flowers which open and close as you approach them. 

The next few posts will detail a few potential projects, describe the development and design of this site, and list the tools and resources at our disposal.  Hopefully this blog will prove to be a promotional vehicle for the Lab as well as a sounding board to other equally eccentric and creative people.  Please feel free to join up and comment!

-Alex