Finally after many years I have helped put together a decent CNC machine. My mate Tyson recently purchased a Widgitmaster Midi router, and I supplied the PICSteps and some motors. After much fiddling about we have a really decent router (albeit a little smaller than we'd like, but that'll be fixed on the next machine :)

Tyson is using Mach3 and SheetCAM to drive the beast. We've custom built a drive system with a 36VDC toroidal transformer, four huge smoothing caps, two solid state 240V AC relays, a switch-mode 5V supply, a parallel breakout and a blower fan. Plus we've added two remote emergency stop boxes and various other little niceties. Tyson being the cabling and socket guru has used Radox cabling through out, with Bootlace Ferrules, Speakon/Powercon connectors and sockets for the stepper drives and all power connections. It'll all be mounted in a custom built steel box which will be mounted under the bench. It's looking pretty sweet!

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Release Firmware V2.0 today.

I've made two versions, one with a motor current timer and the other without. Also the LMD18245 bug has been worked-around and now the motor should be silky smooth in both directions. The bug was a pesky thing to figure out, but now the curves for both directions are correct and the direction switch is fixed to deal with a silicon bug in the LMD18245.

The previous hi-torque firmware has been removed as the resultant curves didn't yeild any improvement in the motor. The hi-torque curve seemed to produce a more notchy and resonant movement than the current curves do.

Anyway enjoy!

Finally sat down and figure out the new torque curve adjustments. Be interested to see what torque and performance people get with this firmware. Thanks to Henrik (mk2lehe @ http://www.cnczone.com/) for the information.

It took a little longer to figure out than I originally though, namely because it was 11pm and my brain wasn't working fully.

Anyway let me know how it all goes.

I'm working with Henrik (mk2lehe @ http://www.cnczone.com/) in upgrading the PICStep firmware to utilize a "High Torque" stepping wave instead of the Sin/Cos wave I'm currently using.

This update should increase the torque of the steppers (I don't know yet how much, but it sounds like a worth while amount) and help reduce the resonance in motors even further.

I'm also toying with the idea of replacing the way the modes are selected and instead of switching to the different wave patterns for Full, 1/2, 1/4 and 1/8 I'll use burst pulses of the 1/8 pattern to make the Full, 1/2 and 1/4 modes work. This will make these modes silky smooth like the 1/8 mode, but offer the increased mechanical step size and potentially a lower drive pulse width.

Also I'll endeavor to fix the "switching modes while the drivers are running" bug too (not that anyone else has noticed it other than Henrik 8) ).

Stay tuned!

Terry has been busy building his own wind turbine to power lighting in his garage at home. He's constructed the blades and most of the mechanical components using his home-made router driven by three PICStep drivers. You can check out his website at http://www.terry-is.f2s.com/ and his wind turbine website at http://www.build-a-windturbine.com/

You can also see Terry's router in action milling out one of his blades in this rather cool video.

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Well after a few pokes from people, and the fact that it made good sense I've decided to change the way the interface on the PICStep was laid out. It's now fully compatible with PMinMO.com parallel port interfaces (opto and non-opto) which give you a better choice for interfacing to your PC. It's also allows you to mix and match the drivers with any of the drivers available that have compatible interfaces. Version 4 is otherwise identical to V3.1 (with only a small exception of the optional crystal capacitors that I added for people who don't use resonators), the only difference is the 10 pin interface header and the addition of the Mode jumpers on the driver rather than the break-out board. You CANNOT I repeat CANNOT use this version with ANY of my interface boards as they aren't pin compatible and you are likely to explode expensive components of you try! The interfaces you can use are :-

• 4 Axis PC interface
• 3 Axis PC OptoIso interface

Enjoy! (Oh and any contributions are graciously accepted!)

Finished the opto-isolated input daughter board for the opto output board. Needs a 5V supply from the output board, and a separate regulated 5V supply for the PC side.

I'll write more about how/where to get this later.