PCB Mill Kickstarter

[n8]

I wonder if the software will be hackable to use with our mini-mill.

http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/otherfab/the-othermill-custom-circuits-at-your-fingertips

[charlie wallace]

what does your mini-mill take as input?

On Wed, May 22, 2013 at 6:54 AM, n8 <nathan....@gmail.com> wrote:

I wonder if the software will be hackable to use with our mini-mill.

http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/otherfab/the-othermill-custom-circuits-at-your-fingertips

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[Bill Tomiyasu]

The Shapeoko takes standard g-code like most mills.  It just doesn't have any bells or whistles (no separate spindle control or 4th axis support on the grbl shield).  The hard part on the mill, and what Nate is referring to, is that the OtherMill is building an integrated software front-end for Windows, OSX and Linux.  This includes, basic design in 3D, CAM rendering to make the toolpaths and g-code output.  Try and find that for the mac and tumbleweeds blow by...

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bi...@synshop.org

[Nathan Bryant]

G code. :) I'm not sure exactly which flavor.

[charlie wallace]

The mac isn't really much of a supported platform outside of its its niche, its also not something you'd really see a lot of in CNC rooms outside of maker labs, so its good someones doing it. but that is hard too because people get really attached to their CAD/CAM/CAE GUI

If you need 4th axis, there are grbl variations that support it, plus its pretty easy to add it in.

We've been building our own PCB CNC too, the othermill is interesting, but i am not sure about its repeat-ability accuracy and building super fine track PCB's, we took a different approach and retro fitted cheap all metal CNC mills, added a new USB controller and an updated grbl codebase, i've also been looking at some of the other variations to grbl.  We've got more or less the retrofit ready, i'm just trying to find time working on the software.

Does anyone know what the othermills spindle speed is ?

NX is probably one of the more well known OSX CAD/CAE/'s. but end to end it's definitely hard to find a full solution, though part of my day job is fixing that.

[Bill Tomiyasu]

We don't really need the 4th axis.  It was just a comment about the bare bones nature of the mill.  The frame, though it's made of MakerSlide, isn't all that rigid.  Othermill is probably more precise because of the smaller build area.  Here's the link to their website and product info.  Spindle speed is 12,000rpm.

http://www.otherfab.com/products.html 

[charlie wallace]

I figured it'd be low, its OK for a basic PCB mill and it'll do a lot of things, but its also something you can improve on later.

I'm taking one of these which i picked up off eBay cheap.

http://www.carving-cnc.com/

Replacing the parallel port step interface with a USB/grbl variant and updating the spindle, added limit switches etc. Its not a bad little machine.

charlie

[Bill Tomiyasu]

Looks interesting.  What are you using for the the software workflow?  You mentioned trying to integrate a custom solution.

[charlie wallace]

basically writing it from scratch.

[Joshua Hahn]

There is a script for eagle cad that spits out g-code. I used it for a while. Works well. 

Josh

Sent from my iPhone

[charlie wallace]

The eagle one works pretty well ,but its really suboptimal paths it generates, but then our $15,000 PCB mill also generates poor gcode paths too. There are a few gcode optimisers around but the problems is when you amplify, you amplify the noise too. I'm still looking at options for that. I'd be curious to see what else people have come up with,