My homemade desktop CNC mill - Clip 2/6: Arduinos and whiteboard drawings

I am building a desktop-sized CNC milling machine from scratch, using mostly parts from the hardware store. This video series will document my progress and tell a lot about the parts that I use, my electronics, specific problems and their solutions. Hopefully, this series will encourage some people to make their own machine. It is not easy (and I don't recommend it to beginners in building hardware), but from all I learned while making my machine, it is definitely worth it.

This clip will explain on the whiteboard how a CNC machine can be controlled using arduinos and the software GRBL. It also explains some parts such as the LCD and the keypad that I have used for my machine.

[nithinc]

You can use an i2c module for controlling a 16×2lcd using just 2 pins (plus 2 as ground and vcc)

[TheAussietazza]

Great Project i think i will just make one the best of the cnc i have seen so far thank you for your effort

[LucasHartmann]

Nice trick with the custom chars. I would have deemed this display impossible until I saw how you did it. :-)

[KennethScharf]

Instead of using diodes to or the pulses together for a common interrupt, you could have used the 'pin change' interrupt. Each of the 4 ports (A, B, C, and D) of the atmega328 can be programmed to issue an interrupt whenever any of the pins on that port change polarity. I think you can make use of this inside of the arduino framework, but you could also program it directly in the avrgcc C language. I've made use of this interrupt to handle a rotary encoder for one of my projects.

[nath.o.]

Hello, why you don't use the I2C bus for the display? So you need just 3 pins from the uno ;-)
nice tutorials! thanks!

[jaycelonefuentes]

Very helpful video.. Thank you for sharing!

[razielhamza]

in case you use an arduino uno, and the grbl ...wich pins is for x axe and Y and Z ..and how do you know it ? :) i stopped my mini cnc till i found an answer :) :)

[usarduinosandmore]

Have you checked on how to add optical encoder's to this project? I have read it makes positioning absolute to a single step!

[jimjohnson]

Very good video on the electronics but I have a question. Instead of using 2 Arduino Uno why not use a single Arduino Mega?

[ayganotomasyon]

but there is something wrong : jogging arduino counts the pulses and knows the position in automatic mode but when you jog GRBL arduino lose the position. Like forcing the axis manually. Let say if your bit break during milling and you change the position by keypad to replace briken bit you can't go back otiginal path.

[valex]

I can not open the CNS middle.brd, sch Help me please!

[BrainSlugs]

It's weird to me that you didn't just use a RAMPS setup with Arduino -- RAMPS is a common Arduino shield that can control up to 5 stepper motors (with a common A4988 or DRV8825 stepper controllers, you can get 5 of them for about $10 to $15 now, and you can easily configure microsteps up to 16x or 32x with them...), and you also get 3 high current outputs if necessary, and 3 analog inputs, and 6 end-stop inputs.

Plus, you can optionally connect an keypad / LCD / Buzzer / SDCard slot to it, and there's a ton of firmwares for it (mostly tailored to 3D printers, but they're not so smart that you couldn't just use one for CNC milling instead, and some of the firmwares are for CNC milling)...

You can buy a full kit (including an Arduino, and motor controllers) on amazon for around $50 - $60 USD.

[robertperezrivera]

hello, your project is very interesting and I also want to do .. Where are the libraries of programming in the arduino? Have if I can pass please

[denisatkins]

Sir. Do you have any more info on this schematic, I have been trying for a year now to do what you did.

[evaldodossantos]

Please pin direction output is on which pin? Thank you