Homebuilt CNC router using uni-strut and aluminum castings

Here is a build log of my CNC router made with aluminum castings produced in my garage foundry, and uni-strut(tm) with roller blade bearings for slides. I worked on sporadically in my spare time for about 8 months.

This machine does not use steppers, but instead, servos which are made with DC motors and quadrature encoders. This greatly simplified the drive electronics as well as being cheaper. It is also very quiet as you can tell when I do pen plotting around 5:13.

The main controller is an arduino clone running GRBL 9.0c. The 3 axes are driven by an arrangement use boarduinos which take the step and dir signals from GRBL, read the encoders and then drive the motors with PWM using mosfet driver boards I got from robotshop.com:

http://www.robotshop.com/en/cytron-13a-5-30v-single-dc-motor-controller.html

The boarduinos use firmware I developed and is open source, here:
https://github.com/dynamodan/ClosedLoopDC

I use BlenderCAM 9 for generating toolpaths, and bCNC for communicating to the controller over a usb cable.
https://github.com/vilemnovak/blendercam/wiki
https://github.com/vlachoudis/bCNC

I also made a two-part follow up video on specifically the patterns I made for casting the aluminum parts:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4drTtrM5HTs

You can find more of my projects on my web site here:
http://www.dansworkshop.com/

Music: Landras Dream and Happy Strummin' by audionautix

Music by Audionautix is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution license (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/)
Artist: http://audionautix.com/