Version One of Case Complete

The Sanguino is all wired up to the stepper driver board and I've got 2 cables for manual controls connected (16 wires). I connected the throttle controller and ran a test with all three motors spinning at a speed proportional to the throttle position. While the Sanguino will be the final microcontroller, I consider the optoisolator board temporary as well as the 2 Cat-5 cables connecting the manual controls. I intend to mill a nice PCB board with proper connectors on the back panel and secure it to the case properly. Right now the connections are all made internally and cables have zip ties at the rear panel to keep them from being pulled free. The manual controls will be connected with the DB-25 connector that was intended to be used to connect the stepper driver to a "real" computer.

Things are looking a little more crowded in there now. It's mostly wiring taking up the air space. I've got the cover on it now and my workbench is quite a bit neater.

These days my day job has me working almost exclusively on one project, a product that we sell. I used to do a lot of custom projects lasting 6-12 weeks on average. In the middle of a project you got a lot of momentum going. The foundation was laid long ago and you're hammering through each component. Then when the project is done, it's time to start the next. That's when things slow down. It's hard to change gears and start arranging the pieces for the next project. I call this the "New Project Blues".

I just finished about 8 or 9 weeks of electronics work. Now it's time to write some software. That's a pretty big mental shift. Last fall I dashed out the prototype for a tool path "scripting language" along with a 3D preview / animation. I have a simulator of the milling controls that is coded the way I intend to code the firmware on the Sanguino, taking "steps" for each direction in 3D space. So the next step is to build on that to simulate the manual control. The basic idea is to set the "vector" indicating the direction of travel and the target speed and have the firmware interpolate the current speed to the new speed. I'll flesh that out in simulation first, then port it to the Sanguino. I'll need a serial communications protocol to set variables and send commands from the laptop.