Applications and Implications



For this week's assignment we are supposed to answer some questions regarding the final project. To help us stay on track and make us aware about what has been done before and what can be done in the future.




Here are the questions:


  • what will it do?
-Make it possible to mill PCBs using a fabbale self made small sized, low budget machine.
  • who's done what beforehand?
-I found some cool projects in the archive of FabAcademy for PCB mills one of them was even able to mill double sidded boards. But my own approach is more towards making it as small and as basic as possible so it could be easy and cheap to make for everyone.
  • what materials and components will be required?
-For the frame I decided to use 18mm plywood
-POM for the mechanical parts like bearings and the motor holder
-Nema 17 stepper motors for movement of the axes
-8mm threaded rods
-A4988 Stepper driver boards
-Modified Stashakit
-Distribution PCB
-Wiring cables
-End stops
-8mm Linear rods
-8mm Linear rods
  • where will they come from?
-The structure and the mechanical parts are going to be made in the FabLab using CNC machining. The modified Satshakit and the distribution board are going o be produced in the lab. The rest is going to be bought.
  • how much will it cost?
-The plan is to make cost less than 100€
  • what parts and systems will be made?
-The structure, mechanical parts and most of the electronics
  • what processes will be used?
-CNC machining and electronics design and production
  • what tasks need to be completed?
-Assembling all the parts, calibrating the movement and testing the machine
  • what questions need to be answered?
-Is wood good enough for the structure?
-Is the brushless motor's RPM sufficient?
-How is the practical precision to be compared the theoretical one

  • what is the schedule?
-I plan to assemble the structure and test the movements manually before 31 of may. By 7th of June I plane to have at least 2 axes working perfectly. before th 14th of June I plane to be done with evrything and at least test the machine once as whole. The detailed schedule is mentioned in the final project documentation.
  • how will it be evaluated?
-The callenge is to mill a working FabISP board



Source code is licensed under the terms of the GNU Lesser General Public License v2.1 (LGPL).

Projects, drawings, images and videos are licensed under Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International (CC BY-NC-SA 4.0).

Ahmed Abdellatif 2017