Author Archives: CNC Design

GRBL Breakout/Shield kit now available

Today we released a PCB kit for a GRBL Breakout Board that fits the popular Arduino UNO Board.

GRBL is CNC Motion Control firmware that runs on the popular Arduino Uno board.
Connecting up wires can be a little fiddly when trying to connect up Stepper motors, limit switches etc.
So we decided to design a Breakout Board for it and make it available as a DIY solder up kit.

We have brought out the all the pins through buffer chips which are open collector outputs and also we have added a optocoupler IC for each limit switch. This allows higher voltage inductive sensors to be used, as well as micro switches.

Full information can be found on our website.

http://www.ukcnc.net/index.php/products/motion-controllers/

As well as connecting stepper motor driver control lines directly to the breakout board, you can also connect it to an existing CNC Machine Controller board that uses a DB25 port and hence you then have USB control !

Here is a video showing it in action.

Update July 2017

Sorry for the lack of updates and newsletters, we have been busy as usual and having fun!
First update is that we are having a sale on the Guitar Pickup Manual Coil Winder.
Full details can be found on the product page: http://www.ukcnc.net/index.php/products/manual-coil-winder
Second update is on the CNC 200mm Coil Winders.
After a long wait, We are now full time on getting the next batch of 200mm Coil Winders complete and should have them back on the shop by the middle of August.

Sorry for the delay on these, but we have not stopped making them, we have just had a lot of different projects to juggle this year.
But we are getting there !

The new batch of 200mm Coil Winders have had a couple of changes.

First being that the motor power supply input is now away from the controller box and mounted at the back of the machine with an on/off switch.
And secondly, Closed Loop motors will now be supplied on both the Bobbin motor and Feeder (traverse) motor. We have been supplying the Bobbin motor with a closed loop motor for a while now, but always left the Feeder motor open loop, as it does not require to travel as such high speeds and also kept the price down. But we have now done a deal where it only costs slightly less to use Closed Loop motors on both and improves the performance and accuracy.

Guitar Pickup Mini Coil Winders back in stock

Well the good news is that we have just finished assembling the next batch of Guitar Pickup Mini Coil Winders .

Even though the British Pound is still weak against the Dollar and Euro, we have kept the price of the machine the same for now, but this may have to change in the future.

So if you wish to order then please follow the link below.

https://ukcnc.net/index.php?route=product/product&path=62&product_id=53

We will be starting on the 200mm Coil Winders next as planned.

Pulse Train Hat for the Raspberry PI launched.

Today we have launched a new product, Pulse Train Hat for the Raspberry PI

As there is so much information to go with the PTHAT, we have setup a dedicated website over at http://www.pthat.com

We hope this will be of some interest in people wanting to control their own motors.

March 2017 update

A bit of a long time since our last update!

2017 has been a bit crazy for us as we have been working flat out on getting a new SECRET! product finished for launch.
It has been in the making for the last year and we have spent the last few months finishing off the prototyping and heads buried in coding of the firmware and example software source code to be released.
The new product will have it’s own dedicated support site which will go live very soon.

More information on this product when it is due to be released.

Some more updates on the following:

CNC 800mm X 800mm machine.

Due to other projects getting in the way, the launch of the CNC 800mm x 800mm machine kit is still delayed.
We have had a huge interest in this machine and can only apologise for not getting it to market yet.
Being a small company with limited budget and limited resource, we have to juggle the projects and products to match what we can cope with at the time.
We spent a lot of money and time getting from prototype to finished product and right and are more than keen to recuperate some costs and get it to you guys, so please bear with us.

200mm Coil Winders.

Unusual I know for us to let this popular model run out of stock for so long, but again because we make all our machines here in our small workshop and there is only two of us full time, we have just not had time to make up the next batch.
We do have a email list with people waiting and we will be cracking on with making up the next batch as soon as we finish launching the new SECRET product !

Manual Guitar Pickup Coil Winder.

We designed a Manual Guitar Pickup Coil Winder at the end of last year and instead of selling it ourselves, we have branded it under the Crimson Guitars label and they have sole distribution on it. We have been meaning to update our web pages with the full information, but it is actually now on sale and can be found on their website. We will update our site as soon as we can.
https://crimsonguitars.com/store/manual-coil-winder-kit/

So just a short update to let you know we are still around and more update soon.

Crimson Guitars release a new video review of a Manual Coil Winder

Crimson Guitars release a new video review of a Manual Coil Winder we designed and branded for them .

In answer to a few of their points raised in the video

CNC Mini Muscle Machines Back In Stock

At last !!!!

Sorry for the delay on getting the next batch of the CNC Mini Muscle Machines built, but they are now in stock.

Both 220v and 110v options are available.

Please check the product page for more information

http://www.ukcnc.net/index.php/products/mini-muscle-mk2-routing-machine/

Or the online shop for ordering details.

https://ukcnc.net/index.php?route=product/category&path=61

Coil Winder ARM Controller Software 3.1 released with Firmware 1.5

We have always stated that our software and firmware is always in development and the main reason is because the more Coil Winding Machines we sell, the more weirder and more wonderful applications people seem to use it for.
So as we get bug reports or feature requests to be added, we try to release a new version as soon as we can.

Recently we sold a machine to a customer who needed very accurate movements down to degree level, using the Scripting engine and off the back of this a few small bugs were found.
These bugs did not really effect the normal Automatic winding feature of the software and firmware, but when sending thousands of quick short commands, there was some tweaking that needed to doing.

The tweaking has ended up in a lot of time re-writing chunks of the firmware and software code and a lot of time sat in front of the machine with a scope and a lot of various combinations of commands being fired at the controller.
We also attached various Micrometer Dial Gauges around the machine and external pulse counters to check every mechanical movement was coming out the same as the scope the debug feedback information from the processor.

I have got to add a great thanks to Dan for really putting the machine through testing and the time he spent helping us out.

Also while tweaking the code to obtain small accurate movements, we have ended up with much cleaner and faster pulse trains, that now improves accuracy and repeatability over the full range of speeds and pitches.
The firmware now looks more closely at the frequency of each motor and taking into account the interpolation that is needed between both motors, alters the pulse train to suit that speed and adjust automatically where needed.

These changes now offer improved return to zero positioning and also resume from pause improvements and higher speeds.
All new machines and ARM controller upgrades will be going out with the new Software and Firmware as default and it is highly recommended that if you have a machine with the new ARM Controller that you upgrade.

As usual the new Software and Firmware can be downloaded from our downloads page.

http://www.ukcnc.net/index.php/downloads/

It has always been free to our customers and will remain so in the future.

Before you upgrade your firmware, please make sure you read the instructions in the forums.

Coil Winder Tensioners back in stock.

We now have all 3 sizes of the Coil Winder Magnetic Tensioners back in stock.

MTCS covering wire sizes 0.04mm—0.14mm 10g—120g
MTCM covering wire sizes 0.08mm—0.25mm 50g—400g
MTCLL covering wire sizes 0.14mm—0.40mm 100g—800g

These can be found on the online shop and also selected as a extra on the 200mm Coil Winder page.

https://ukcnc.net/index.php?route=product/category&path=60

Guitar Mini Coil Winder review by Crimson Guitars

We sent one of our Guitar Mini Coil Winders over to Ben at Crimson Guitars and thought we would share the unpacking video.

These guys are a UK based company that run a Custom Guitar Building Studio, they share their knowledge of building guitars and other projects via weekly videos and online site.

Well worth checking out their site at http://crimsonguitars.com

Here is the video below