Bored Borg wrote:
On Fri, 5 Sep 2008 13:58:21 +0100, Morris Dovey wrote
(in article ):

http://www.iedu.com/DeSoto/Projects/JBot/

Just when you think it's safe to go in the water, some great big left-field
surprise shows up and chews yer foot off.

I love the idea, and a few years ago I'd probably have dropped everything and
gone for it, but I have soooo many things going on I just daren't get back
into electronic tinkery. When the earth was young I built my own synth. It
took months, cost me a fortune and sounded great - but not as great as the
off-the-shelf model I bought six months later for about a fifth of the price.
I used to service all my own hi-fi, but I've a tape deck that needed a new
head about 15 yrs ago and it's still on the "get round to it" pile.

I bought controller kit and four steppers from www.hobbycnc.com - it
took about an hour to assemble (solder) the controller card, and another
half hour to make the cables.

CNC sounds like a great idea for an educational project, production or just
an end in itself but I daren't go there at the moment. :-) (hmm... er, does
the software run on MacOs?)

One of the possible reasons for using CNC is to achieve a higher degree
of precision than would be otherwise be possible. I've designed a number
of joints that can only be executed with computer controlled cutting.

I downloaded and use TurboCNC from DAK Engineering ( www.dakeng.com ).
You can download the S/W for free, and register it for US$60 if/when you
want support.

AFAIK, this package is only available for MS-DOS, which suited my
platform. You might Google around to see if there's a similar package
for the Mac.

A good resource is the forum at www.cnczone.com

--
Morris Dovey
DeSoto Solar
DeSoto, Iowa USA
http://www.iedu.com/DeSoto/