Finished!

Now that I've written the title for this post, I have to admit that a project like this is never finished. I mounted and wired the limit switches, so all the minimal requirements have been met. I just hot-glued the switches to the machine.

I set about testing the switches. I wrote earlier about the control process in the firmware. After opening the limit switch circuit (they are wired in series) the steppers shut down. Obviously you need to then back the machine out of the corner you're in. So pressing the throttle button switches to "escape mode" and the limit switches are ignored. I ran the spindle into the upper Z axis switch and it stopped as designed. I entered escape mode to pull away from the switch. Then I moved the table to the front edge to test that switch. It's possible I forgot to exit escape mode because the table plowed through the switch popping it off and then ran into the hard stop. This caused the screw holding the coupler to the end of the lead screw to come loose. The stepper just spun in place without moving the table. I had to remove the stepper motor and re-tighten the screw. After restarting I completed testing all 6 switches.

So now I have all the hardware in place, but it's time to start making it better. What's really cool about a project like this is that I can now use the machine to make the machine better. First I need to write a G-Code interpreter to build tool paths in my Java object format. This will allow me to use a plethora of other tools to generate tool paths. I have some tools for designing circuit boards and generating milling paths. It looks like I'll be back on the computer for a while now. I'll be designing 2 PCB boards, one for inside the control box, the other for the control panel.