The obligatory test circuit

Well, it had to be done really :) what else could I choose but an NE555 LED flasher.

A few tips: 

1) don't use 20year old PCB material. The board was warped, copper filthy, copper soft and difficult to mill. 

2) don't try to use 25year old resistors that you've found in a box.

3) put on your glasses before drilling the holes in the board (I thought I'd save time and not CNC the holes....)

Strangely enough, all of this combines to make a bit of a mess. Almost impossible to solder. I've never seen better examples of dry joints. Oh well, I got there in the end. Toggling LEDs.

It's running on 3xAA batteries in the pack under the PCB. 

(Ignore the fragments of text on the board - nothing to do with this test!)

Disaster and slow recovery

For the first time everything is really running perfectly. Mach3 is all setup correctly. Really happy - and then...

Yesterday XP died. I mean really really stuffed! Even my Linux live cd won't see the hard disk. I think it is physically stuffed. 

Talking to a neighbour yesterday i told him "My data should all be backed up but I've lost all my Mach3 settings."

He calmly turned to me and said "but program settings are data". 

Of course he is right. Why hadn't I backed these up or written them down or etc etc etc???

Reluctantly I now have to start building all this stuff up again. 

12 hours later and XP is installed again, all updates, patches etc run. 

Mach3, Cambam and Eagle back on again. 

After a good load of adjusting, I have enough settings in Mach3 to make the motors run again. 

The distance calibration seems a bit off at the moment but I'm happy to see it moving again. I think the old hard disk is destined to become a novelty door stop. 

Was the new bit worth it? Oh yes!

Clearly my attempts to save money were a waste of money. I finally gave in and bought a real 30degree isolation router bit on line. 

This may sound stupid but the first observation was how sharp it is - I mean REALLY sharp - this has to be a good thing!

I wound up Mach3, adjusted the z axis zero and went for it. 

Awesome! Perfect cut, no jagged lines as it catches rather the cutting. I wonder if I can reduce the track size ??????

Amazing. The only wobbly piece was in the middle at the top. I had the feedrate set way too high and also the board wasn't stuck down well enough. 

Ok so this needs a little more fine tuning but this is seriously impressive.