There are a lot of choices out there for a desktop CNC machine made for routing copper clad board, wood, brass, and aluminum. This application generates the step pulses, but the timing is maintained by the dongle no real-time kernel needed. the application used to control this dongle is a hack of the EMC/LinuxCNC project written in nice, portable Python. The software is where this really shines.
It’s fast - at least as fast as the parallel port in the ancient laptops we have sitting around and plugs right into the CNC controller box for the Sherline.
With a bare minimum of parts, this chip converts USB into a parallel port for real-time control. The core of this build is the rt-stepper dongle based around the PIC18F2455 microcontroller. Instead, he built a USB dongle and wrote the software to turn this mini CNC into something usable with a modern computer.įirst up, the hardware. While some of us still have a Windows 98 battlestation sitting around, doesn’t.
There’s a problem with it, though: normally, the Sherline CNC controller runs off the parallel port. If you’re looking for a small, benchtop CNC machine for PCBs and light milling the ubiquitous Sherline CNC machine is a good choice.
