# Machine Design ## Intro *Machines in a week* *It's easy, so to speak* *In minutia is mayhem* OK, welcome to Machine Week. If you're reading this, chances are you're about to design a machine, and then build it, and then 'bring it online', and then do something with it. Exciting! There's a great deal of complexity here! I have done this a few times now<sup>1</sup>, and every time it's a new adventure. This document will serve as a guide for how to make (almost) a fairly standard 3-axis machine. *!ALERT! ~ This is a design process ~ !ALERT!* so please bear with any ambiguities, and the inherent nonlinearities present. For example, I already have a machine in mind, that I want to build (for reasons) - you may have an entirely different type of machine in mind, for different reasons. When possible, I will take asides to explain my reasoning, but overall, I intend this to be (1) a guide - for how to build this machine or slight deviations thereof, and (2) an exposition on (almost) how I go about considering machine design. Mostly, I hope to demystify CNC D&B<sup>2</sup> ### In this order, we will do: #### Design: - Draw a Layout (Rhino Suggested) - Detail the Axis - Detail Interconnects #### Manufacturing: - Do Material Layout in Rhino - Program CAM in Fusion - Do the Milling #### Assembly: - Put it together! - Alignment, alignment, alignment! #### Electronics Assembly: - Plugs, Switches, Power, oh my! #### Motion Control - TinyG with a Big Heart (and minimum acceleration!) #### Machine Communication - Chilipeppr - Learning about GCode #### End Effectors - Open Season: Design your own! ## Layout First thing, you'll want to get a hang of what rough sizes / shapes / orientations your machine is going to have. - X, Y or Z ? mm? relative scaling? Relative Stiffnesses? ## Parametric Axis - Go Here https://github.com/fellesverkstedet/fabricatable-machines - Racking (two senses) - Pinioning ## Axis Blocks - Connect ur axis ## Doing the Milling - First we go to fusion - Then we do the milling ## Plugging in Motors - Coils are connected - One and two ## Configuring TinyG - https://github.com/synthetos/TinyG/wiki - Steps / mm - Acceleration - Travel, etc ## Talking to, loading firmware on, TinyG - Arduino, I hope? - Chilipeppr (rad alert!) ## Gcode Basics - may it RIP # Footnotes 1. Link Machines 2. Design and Build