Anyone interested in selling Lobo CNC parts?

[Jeff]

I have run out of stock of my last set of Lobo CNC parts and I am probably not going to continue selling them.  I've sold about 35 kits altogether, but it's proven to be more work than I anticipated trying to do this as a little side business.  I'm hoping that someone else out there might be interested in picking up the mantle and continue to offer the sheet metal sets and other bits of hardware for the Lobo CNC mill.  If anyone is interested (or maybe even a makerspace), I'd be happy to hook you up with my suppliers and provide any other information needed for putting kits together.

One particular issue is that of the controller boards.  I'm not at liberty to open-source the PIC-SERVO S3 chip firmware (I licensed the core code from another entity), but I'm happy to sell anyone pre-programmed chips.  I also have a bunch of unpopulated S3x3 circuit boards I'd sell at cost.  (In the long run, though, I think the PS3 boards I've posted about are actually a better solution.)

All this said, I am still planning on keeping the Lobo CNC web site and forum up and running. (And I'm still going to be answering questions and helping fix problem with existing machines.)  But if anyone does want to start selling kits, I'm happy to hand over the reigns for the web site and forum.

-Jeff

[Norman Brewer]

Jeff,

Sorry to hear you are not going to sell the kits any longer.  I have learned a lot about CNC using mine and use it often for woodworking projects, especially for vcarving lettering.  I really like the usb interface from my PC, and the LOBO controller software.

[Nicholas Andreae]

Jeff,

I made two of your mills and have been happy with them. Biggest issue is I want to cut metal harder. Sad to hear it takes too much work. I have spent a lot of time looking at your PIC-1/0 V.1 and trying to find a way to make it worth some money to remake the circuit. 

I think your motor controllers are very very good compared to the standard design on the market of just strapping bigger motors and drivers. If the PIC-1/0 V.1 were on a board and the output step/direction/engage lines were screw tabs, along with the input encoder screw tabs, and if the rotation-to-distance could be programmed easily, I think the market for your boards would be massive. Particularly on places like Hackaday where people are having problems with CNC and are strapping larger motors on to solve it.

Through other means, I got one of these

http://www.probotix.com/FireBall_X90_desktop_cnc_router/

It is close to garbage as I cannot control the motors easily. I want the freedom of the mobile handles that the Lobo has, but the power, torque, and frame of this. The same is true for the Shapoko. The setup, control, and use of them is very very hard because they only rely on endstops. Edge finding and moving the tool with EMC2 or grbl is dangerous and risky as the tool can jump.

If there is any market I would love to see, is your chips able to control homemade CNC machines. Your mills are nice, but there are many mills on the market. Your controller is unique.

[Eric Edwards]

 Dear Mr. Kerr,

                  I am definintley interested in talking to you about what you have in stock left to sell and also about possibly making these kits. Email me and we can continue further talks on this matter.

                                                                             Respectfully submitted,

                                                                                                Eric D. Edwards

            P.S.- if you would rather talk on the phone reply with your number.

[sopor...@gmail.com]

Maybe... I am in the process of make one of it for myself... and upon the costs that I'll find here (in mexico), I could be making some more... right now, I am asking for quotations in inox (GA16) for the body...

the issues could be the motors... could be expensive here. So, I plan to use NEMA 17 or DC motors (I found an open project for open servos)... the drawbacks could be to loose the abitly to measure distances on the PC, but, lets see