This page last updated July 20, 2005

What about CNC?
CNC is acronym ( ack-row-nim :-) for Computer Numeric Control. The "Computer" part of that is key, as it's at the heart of the system. This computer interperets code, usually of the G or M flavors, and translates that gibberish into machine impulses sent to the controller board(s)...

For my setup, I'm using a plain-jane Athlon 700MHz with a 512Mb RAM and a 40Gb HDD. Pretty easy to pick one of these up for next to nothing now adays (mine was free) as they are considered "worthless" to most. The truth about it is, this is really too much computer for a CNC machine (from what I've seen anyways) but it's nice to have the extra horsepower for a great graphical front end.

Now we need something to run on the computer... The computer doesn't have to be as some would normally think about a computer in terms of having a Windows (ACK!) operating system on it. It could be some proprietary operating system dedicated to the machine, but for the purpose of this site, we will be assuming that we are talking about a Home PC style computer.

Software

With that, we come to software... For my CNC setup, I've decided to use EMC. EMC is a program that was developed by NIST (you can read all about it on the website) and needless to say, even though it's completely free, you have paid for it if you are a US citizen (remember the saying that there's no such thing... blah...) EMC runs on a Linux platform (don't get scared here!) which also happens to be free to use and modify... Source for both is readily available on the net if you look for it. I chose EMC because I'm used to the programming language it was written in, and the support that's out there (via forums and listservs) to help out when I need to modify it. Hmmmm, and it was the only one I found that was "free".

EMC will support up to six axis machines at the time of this writing (I don't know if plans are in the works to control more of them, but 6 should suffice for 90% of the people as most machines only need 3, maybe 4.) My first machine, the CNC Router will require 3 to start off with, but I will work my way up to 5 with the addition of an automatic tool changer that I'm working on designing!

Updates:
08/12/05 - Finished the creating and soldering of the driver and breakout boards. These will be tested when I get some motors and power supply.

08/16/05 - Almost done with the "crude" linear power supply. Voltage tests came out good (solid 35VDC).

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