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Don this is really, REALLY impressive and I am very glad to see you getting closer to your dream here. Great work my friend!!!

Thanks Hesh..! It's been a fun project, that's for sure. But it's beginning to get "old" now, and I just want to get it all wired up and running now. That's going to be the tricky part. Oddly enough, assembling this was a lot easier than I expected, even though it's made entirely from aluminum except for the linear rails and bolts. Funny what can be done with a chop saw and a drill press! It still astounds me to some degree. I thought I was going to have to pay someone a lot of money to machine a lot of this, but it was easier than expected. Aluminum cuts easily, although you have to use cutting fluid to keep it cool and from sticking to the drill bits. It taps very easily too.
Hey Hesh, you should build one too! Now that you're gonna have a killer basement shop, I'm betting you could fit one in there...

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"I want to know what kind of pickups Vince Gill uses in his Tele, because if I had those, as good of a player as I am, I'm sure I could make it sound like that.
Only badly."

Yeah Hesh...come on over to the dark side....

Well I don't think that I have any where near the level of mechanical skill and craftsmanship needed to build a CNC rig like you are doing Don. But this fascinates me to no end and is probably a lot more fun to watch running then my washing machine is.....

I was trained, long ago, as a programmer and know or knew Cobol, Fortran, Pascal, Basic, and later some C. Oh I forgot MAD which was written at the University of Michigan and stands for Michigan algorithm decoder..... So the programming part is of great interest to me too.

I once wrote a program for traveling execs that factored in the specific government per diem allotment for most North American cities and assisted the user in cheating on their/our expense accounts....... Idle minds are dangerous.

Don I have known that you have wanted to do the CNC thing for a while now and I really appreciate that you are sharing with us the birth of your new rig. Way-to-go!!!

Great work, Don!

I don't know if you've posted this elsewhere, but what's the total cost you're running at for all the components?

A quick breakdown would be greatly appreciated.

-Clint

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-Clint Beacock

It cost me a lot of wood that I loved dearly......

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"I want to know what kind of pickups Vince Gill uses in his Tele, because if I had those, as good of a player as I am, I'm sure I could make it sound like that.
Only badly."

As of 4:20 this afternoon (4/25/08), I have finished with the mechanical end of building the cnc, with the exception of mounting a couple limit switches.
Now, I am starting in on the wiring. I am going to wire a basic version for now, and then once I get things "moving" I will enclose all the electronics in a Lexan case, and add a bunch of bells and whistles like switches for jogging the axes around, and a joystick for moving it around too.
My power supply is ready to go, and I can commence hooking up the controller and motor drives shortly. Tomorrow I need to go buy the hook-up wire for everything, and I'll be in good shape.

I hope to be able to put it through the "Sharpie Test" within a week or so. A Sharpie test, for those who don't know, is simply mounting a sharpie marker to the spindle plate and trying to draw something with it. No sense wasting wood at this stage of the game...

I'll try to post some pics later this weekend.

Thanks for checking in and all the encouragement...

Don

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"I want to know what kind of pickups Vince Gill uses in his Tele, because if I had those, as good of a player as I am, I'm sure I could make it sound like that.
Only badly."

Don, this is an exciting time, congratulation and I'm looking for to hearing about it's first moves.

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Jim Watts
http://jameswattsguitars.com

Me, too!

Me too !

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"I want to know what kind of pickups Vince Gill uses in his Tele, because if I had those, as good of a player as I am, I'm sure I could make it sound like that.
Only badly."

I know I'm a little late but

VERY COOL

Good luck getting it finished up & running.

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CVT Inc.
A tour of our shop (Somewhat outdated)
My Personal eBay profile. BCWoodBug

Thanks Jason, and nice to see you back!!!!

Getting something wired is the easy part...but getting things to communicate and do what they're supposed to do is a little trickier. I have a big learning curve when it comes to understanding the Mach3 controller software. CAD I understand....CAM is a new world for me, but I'm learning bit by bit.

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"I want to know what kind of pickups Vince Gill uses in his Tele, because if I had those, as good of a player as I am, I'm sure I could make it sound like that.
Only badly."

I was able to do most of the wiring over the weekend. I still have some left to do, and this is only temporary wiring until I can get a box put together to hold all the electronics. As I mentioned in my last post, getting something wired is the easy part, but getting it to work is a whole different ballgame. I'm hoping to have some luck this evening in getting some motors to spin.
Almost there...
When I get this thing running, I will try to put together a small YouTube video of it in action and get a link posted here.

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"I want to know what kind of pickups Vince Gill uses in his Tele, because if I had those, as good of a player as I am, I'm sure I could make it sound like that.
Only badly."

Don, that will be incredible. I can't wait.

Small hitch....I have to send one of the electronics parts back to California to get something done to it so that it will work properly. <sigh>

I knew it was going too smoothly. Murphy was gonna find this project eventually - I guess it was just a matter of time.

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"I want to know what kind of pickups Vince Gill uses in his Tele, because if I had those, as good of a player as I am, I'm sure I could make it sound like that.
Only badly."

Shssss...Please don’t tell Murphy where I am…my belt sander is nearly operational.

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Rich S

"The inconvenience of poor quality will linger long after the thrill of a bargain has been forgotten"

Don't worry....I think he's planning on camping out here for a couple more weeks...

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"I want to know what kind of pickups Vince Gill uses in his Tele, because if I had those, as good of a player as I am, I'm sure I could make it sound like that.
Only badly."

For those who have been checking in and not seeing anything new....

I had some issues with one of my electronic components not connecting with the Mach3 controller software. It may be a firewall issue or something else, but I'm having to chase down the problem by eliminating things one at a time. I have that particular unit out at the factory for testing, and should get it back within a week if not sooner. Until then, I'm a bit stalled.

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"I want to know what kind of pickups Vince Gill uses in his Tele, because if I had those, as good of a player as I am, I'm sure I could make it sound like that.
Only badly."

do you mean FW software on your computer running mach 3?

If so, I would recommend that you dedicate a computer to JUST doing mach3. Mach3 has some very sensitive timing issues, and if you run other software on the same computer, you risk stalling during a cut. Most people will dedicate an "older" PC or laptop JUST for doing this.

I seem to recall there was a good guide for making windows "dumb" to enable it to run mach3 much better. It was not until I did this, that I began to have some very good results running mach3.

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-CyborgCNC
http://www.cncguitar.com
https://www.facebook.com/CncGuitar

Actually, Mach isn't the issue, it's the Gecko G100 that's been giving me fits. It couldn't stay connected to the computer. It would initially connect but then the system would dump it. I thought it was my computer or a firewall issue, but it was really the G100. The IT guy at my work tested it on a couple computers and it did the same thing. Prior to that, I had sent it back to gecko for testing, and they cleared it of any problems and sent it back. The only problem is that their diagnostic computer plugs into the USB port on it rather than the ethernet port, so it didn't catch any potential physical issue with it. Something I learned a long time ago was that when trying to diagnose a problem with something, you should hook it up to test equipment, but then you have to try to recreate the problem. So anyway, the long and short of it is I'm waiting for a replacement unit before I can get this gantry and z axis moving.
I think next time I build one of these things I'll use the new SmoothStepper unit along with a breakout board instead of the G100. Actually, if I can't get the G100 working to my satisfaction, I will sell it on eBay and get the SmoothStepper. My patience is wearing thin...

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"I want to know what kind of pickups Vince Gill uses in his Tele, because if I had those, as good of a player as I am, I'm sure I could make it sound like that.
Only badly."

That really stinks Don! As if all the waiting around to ship parts back and forth for testing isn't bad enough...then the guy at the other end doesn't even test the component in the same manner that you are using it. That is poor service in my book. Hope you get what you need very soon.

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Jeremy Vonk

I wouldn't call it bad service... They just ran the diagnostics to test the unit from an electronics standpoint, and it did pass. But if there was an issue with something in a connector, it might not pick that up. Their customer service has actually been pretty decent, they just had a small issue with not trying to replicate the problem after they tested it. But as to the real test of their customer service, they're replacing the unit with a new one, so I can't complain.

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"I want to know what kind of pickups Vince Gill uses in his Tele, because if I had those, as good of a player as I am, I'm sure I could make it sound like that.
Only badly."

I got the replacement part on Wednesday, and connected it successfully to the computer. Then last night I loaded all the firmware and was able to connect to the Mach 3 software perfectly. Looks like I'm finally moving forward again.

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"I want to know what kind of pickups Vince Gill uses in his Tele, because if I had those, as good of a player as I am, I'm sure I could make it sound like that.
Only badly."

We have Lift-off ! ! ! ! ! ! !


Well, today I decided to connect everything up and see what happens, so I brought my laptop and the G-Rex Controller down to the cnc and hooked it all up.

Success isn't always sweet, sometimes it's shocking. When I got it all to connect, and then opened up the shuttle jog part of the software, the last thing I expected to happen when I hit the Z+ button was to hear a noise coming from the Z-axis motor, and to see it actually moving upward. I was so shocked that I took my mouse pointer off the button and un-clicked it. I screemed up to my wife to come running down. She thought I did something to myself (an assumption with much history behind it), but low and behold, she saw me actually and successfully move all three axes.

Now to figure out what in the world to do with this thing..........

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"I want to know what kind of pickups Vince Gill uses in his Tele, because if I had those, as good of a player as I am, I'm sure I could make it sound like that.
Only badly."

Congratulations Don!
Can't wait to see you use this thing.
I'b be interested in hearing some repeatability numbers, later after you play awhile though.
Have fun!

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Jim Watts
http://jameswattsguitars.com