Saturday, September 10, 2011

More Board Design & CNC Touch-Off Plate

Today I worked more on the schematic design and some sample board layout designs to see just what will fit within the room I have to work with.  It looks like I'll need two circuit boards to fit all the goodies I'm wanting. 

This evening, I added a touch-off plate to my CNC router.  This is needed to very accurately measure exactly where the top of the stock is and zero the z-axis to that location before I start cutting.  With the prospect of cutting my own circuit boards, this got me off my butt to get it done.  I've been wanting to do this for a few years and now a good enough reason came along.  The step-by-step directions on how to set this up in Mach3 are here.  Essentially, I can now hit a button inside Mach3 that will lower the Z-axis down until the tip of the endmill makes contact a sensor pad, then it stops automatically and sets that point as the zero+thickness of the sensor pad.

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