I’ve sold my old heavy duty CNC and acquired an old non working Roland MDX-20 Modela that needed some love.  These little engraver/modelling machines sold for many thousands of $$$ in the past and were widely used in various industries.  Sadly this unit hasn’t had the best life and needed some work to get it going as the original controller board had been (destructively) removed and some seriously hacky working on the wiring left it in a real mess.

With few hours hacking on the weekend I now have all three axis moving they they should using an open source ‘TinyG’ controller board which mates with web based control software.  All that is left to do is build a new spindle as I’m not happy with the runout on the standard setup, I’ll need a little lathe time to make that once the parts (and tools) have arrived (and tidy up the wiring).   Fortunately the local hacker space has a metal lathe that should be up to the task.

This unit is small enough that I can bring it on project day to show off 😉 and maybe even mill some PCB’s.

This CNC will be used to make circuit boards for assorted radio projects, first up will (probably) be a series of RF filters.

http://www.vk2vjb.net/2015/05/30/good-bye-to-one-cnc-hello-to-a-newish-one/

This year we will consider holding special project days where we can get together and demonstrate and use amateur radio.

Possibly not at Rose Bay but certainly nearby. Would amateurs like to suggest topics for these “special” project days please?

73 John VK2LJ