CNC update

Soo about that Tuesday update... I'm going to need an extension, I came down with a terrible case of apathy and was unable to post on the inter-tubes.
Okay so I received all the parts for the CNC, spent a few hours building it, and took absolutely zero pictures of the process! Go build blog! However since it was a kit, there wasn't much to see.

I went to the Reuseum to pick up some type of workbench supply to power the spindle. It's apparently a unit from a ham radio operators station, and after replacing the horribly-dangerous-non-grounded-death-cable that literally made me fear for my life when testing... The spindle powers up to the required 25V. It's even quiet!

The halftop laptop running the controller is a Sony vaio from prehistoric times, loaded with EMC 2.2, The only distro it will run :) Throw a VNC server on there.. instant headless millbot. In it's defense, it was the only PC I could come up with that had a parallel port. *Thank you Grant!

The stepper controller is a lightobject one. Version 4 I believe? I wasn't able to find the documentation for it online, so it took a bit of experimenting to get the in/outs correct.

*I'll do a bit more digging to find the model number of the controller.  I'll post what I can find about it, along with my current configuration.
And finally a video of the system fully working. Please ignore the shaky camera and me rambling. I assure you the next thing I will be buying is a tripod for my camera!

One Tool to Rule Them all

Starting things off proper with a bad LOTR joke, are your expectations low yet?

Zen Toolworks CNC Carving Machine Kit 7x7
Ordered the parts as of this morning! In addition to the main kit, I ordered the supporting electronics, motor/spindle, and an 7x7 extension kit. Updates on Tuesday when the parts arrive!