So, one of my projects has been "roboticizing" my table saw to cut hyper-accurate finger joints (fully automated, of course). I have completed it enough to actually make joints automatically, but it is a pain to adjust the spacing as the drives are programmed in a very limited assembly language, and I need to update the programs in both drives to tweak things. It is a pain because of the trial and error involved in getting the indexes to match the cut widths due to the tolerance of a blade cutting through wood (it's not at all like machining metal...).
Anyway, here is a Picasa album of the various stages in the process as well as a couple poorly-lit video clips.
http://picasaweb.google.com/mark.melvin/RoboSaw
http://video.google.ca/videoplay?docid=-5829562471987966238
http://video.google.ca/videoplay?docid=-3239961827766871169
The next step in the process is to write a PC-based interface to this. The drives will actually accept commands via a serial connection, so it will be much easier to send the commands in the order I want and tweak the numbers that way. I just need the time to do it...
No comments:
Post a Comment