Gulliver's Traversals I

Finally, and at long last, progress on a project related to personal manufacturing! Meet Gulliver, well, Gulliver's traverse arm, anyway. He has a long way to go, but at least there's something to show for all the work! Once he's somewhat further along, Gulliver will be assisting with Mechanisms, Thermofluids and Kinematics classes and eventually, I hope to fit him with an extruder to make him into a 3D plotter.

Here's Gulliver's traverse arm upside down, being tested, with the controller box and the Mach3 software I'm using to run it. Artsoft's Mach3 software is a state of the art machine control application, extremely configurable and has a free downloadable version that you can use indefinitely. Highly recommended!

Not too long ago, Gulliver started out as merely a printed circuit board, entirely bare. I forgot to take that picture, so here's Gulliver's "central nervous system" with just the first resistors and capacitors soldered in. This kit is the HobbyCNC Pro Driver Board package, and I can wholeheartedly recommend it to anyone willing to do the soldering and assembly. It's very low cost, high quality and comes with clear directions.

After quite a bit of squinting and soldering later, his main motor controller board is ready.

His "central nervous system" is finished up and all four axis motors hooked up and tested.

All hooked up, but nowhere to go. Here's the finished motor controller.