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Hack Old CD-ROM's Into A CNC Machine - Tinkernut Labs
Hack Old CD-ROM's Into A CNC Machine - Tinkernut Labs
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Got a lot of old CD or DVD disk drives laying around? Trying to find something useful to do with
them besides collecting dust? This project will show you how to transform those old drives into a
3-axis CNC machine that you can use to do all sorts of things like drawing pictures, routing
small circuit boards with a drill, making a laser cutter, or even making a small 3D printer just to
name a few! Watch the videos and follow the steps below to make your own CD-Rom CNC
machine!
Hack old CD-ROM's into a CNC Machine - Part 2: The Soft SUPPORT
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STEP 1
WHAT YOU WILL NEED
The first step, as always, is to gather the parts you need to do this project. Surprisingly, theres
very little hardware. Most of it can be scavenged from old computers, and if you can do that, you
shouldnt have to invest any more than $10-$15. Heres what you need:
Soldering Iron
Drill
(http://www.tinkernut.com/wp-
content/uploads/2015/10/Power-Supply.png)
view
STEP 2
DISASSEMBLING THE DRIVES
Taking apart Desktop optical drives is really very easy. The first thing to do, that is often
overlooked, is to remove the front panel on the drive tray. To do this, force eject the drive tray by
sticking a paperclip into the eject hole. Once the tray is pulled out, the front panel should snap
off by pulling the bottom of it forward and then pushing it up.When thats done, you can then
unscrew the bottom plate of the drive and remove the metal drive casing as well as the plastic
front panel.
Now you should be able to see all of the beautiful guts of the drive: motors, lasers, LEDs, gears
all sorts of cool tech stuff. You can take apart and salvage anything that you think you might
have a use for, but for this project, we are specifically interested in the metal motor tray with the
(http://www.tinkernut.com/wp- stepper motor (the one with the spiral rod) and the laser housing.
content/uploads/2015/10/03_parts1.jpg)
view
The reason we want this specific part of the optical drive is because it offers a motor, track, and
housing that can mechanically provide a smooth back and forth movement, which is ideal for a
CNC axis. So you will need to disconnect any wires leading to the motor tray and separate it
from the rest of the optical drive parts. You can remove the brush-less DC motor from the tray if
it is attached. While not used in this project, brush-less motors make great motors for
quadcoptors. Youll also want to remove the laser and any other glass parts, magnets, or stray
pieces from the laser sled to make sure that it doesnt have anything that can hinder movement
or mounting of other screws.
You also want to extend the stepper motor wires. On most stepper motors have a ribbon cable
that connects to the main board. Its fine to leave this, but just cut off the extended part of the
ribbon cable (see image to the left at the bottom). Solder four new wires to the pin terminals.
(http://www.tinkernut.com/wp-
content/uploads/2015/10/05_parts1.jpg) They should be at least 6 long. I color coded mine so that I could keep all through motor wires
view organized.
Repeat this process for all three optical drives so that you have three bare motor trays and are
ready for the next step.
(http://www.tinkernut.com/wp-
content/uploads/2015/10/07_parts2.jpg)
view
(http://www.tinkernut.com/wp-
content/uploads/2015/10/Still002.jpg)
view
STEP 3
MOUNTING THE MOTOR TRAYS
We need some type of casing to mount the motor trays onto. I used the optical drive cases
themselves. Lets start with the Y-Axis. The Y-Axis will go back and forth, so take one of the
motor trays and mount it parallel to the length of the casing close to one end. Make sure its
aligned as straight as possible and use some motherboard mounting screws to mount it.
For the X-axis mount it perpendicular to the length of another optical drive case, again making
it close to one end and aligning it as straight as possible. Then mount it using motherboard
mounting screws as well. As for the Z drive, we will need to mount it to the laser housing sled of
the X-drive. In order to do this, we need to find some way to extend and create a platform to
mount it to. I used more motherboard mounts and an electrical plate cover. Then I fastened the
(http://www.tinkernut.com/wp- final motor tray to the electrical plate cover ont he X-Axis. I also mounted another electrical
content/uploads/2015/10/12_parts.jpg)
view plate cover to the laser housing sled on the Y-axis to provide it a flat platform as well.
(http://www.tinkernut.com/wp-
content/uploads/2015/10/13_parts1.jpg)
view
(http://www.tinkernut.com/wp-
content/uploads/2015/10/14_parts1.jpg)
view
STEP 4
FINISHING THE HARDWARE
Once you have all of the drives mounted, the final step is to attach the X & Z axis to the Y axis.
You want to mount the X axis perpendicular to the Y axis( looks like an L shape) and adjust
them so that the Z axis is aligned over the Y axis. Scrub through each axis to make sure none of
them are overshooting or running into each other. After you have the alignment set, screw
everything together. I ended up using an L Bracket, but you may be fine just screwing one case
directly into the other case.
(http://www.tinkernut.com/wp-
content/uploads/2015/10/16_parts.jpg)
view
(http://www.tinkernut.com/wp-
content/uploads/2015/10/17_parts.jpg)
view
STEP 5
CONNECTING THE ELECTRONICS
1 x Arduino
1 x PC Power Supply
Youll also need various wires and maybe some soldering equipment to connect everything
together. To see how everything connects, its best to download the Fritzing schematic above. It
will show you the ports and pins that everything runs to. Along with that, Ill try to explain
everything here as well. Ok, here we go.
Y Axis X Axis
After you have the motors connected to the stepper motor drivers, and the stepper motor drivers
connected to the Arduino, all we need now is power. Since this project focuses on scavenging
most of the parts from old computers, I will be using and old computer Power Supply Unit
(PSU). PSUs have a mess of different colored wires coming out of it and you can use the color
chart to the left to determine what the voltage is for each wire.
On all ATX power supplies, there is a green wire that senses when the PSU is plugged into a
motherboard, and if this green wire is not plugged in or connected to anything, the PSU will not
turn on. So to bypass this, we can use a small piece of wire as a jumper to connect the green wire
(http://www.tinkernut.com/wp- to a black ground wire (use photo below as reference). Then to power the stepper motor drivers,
content/uploads/2015/10/psu_wires-e1445871207504.jpg)
view you will also need to run a wire from a 5v (red) wire and one from a GND (black) wire. These
wires are the ones that should be split out and connected to all 3 of the stepper motor driver
boards. Again, you can use the photo below as reference.
PSU Wiring Diagram
(http://www.tinkernut.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/10/IMG_7355.jpg)
view
The only other thing we need to do in this step is to add some sort of print head to the Z-axis to
make the machine do what we want it to do. It could be a motor and drill bit to create a milling
machine or a 3d print head and extruder to make a 3D printer, but Im just going to use a simple
marker to turn this into a CNC drawing machine
STEP 5
THE SOFTWARE
At this point, all the hardware should be completed. The only thing thats left to do now is to
install the software that will make it run. The CNC machine runs off of a programming language
called G-Code (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/G-code). It essentially tells the X, Y, and Z axis
which specific coordinates it needs to go to. By itself, Arduino has a difficult time interpreting G-
Code, so we will need to install a G-Code interpreter program called Grbl
(https://github.com/grbl/grbl). Here are the steps you need to take to install Grbl on your
Arudion (Uno).
(http://www.tinkernut.com/wp- Download the Grbl Hex file (https://github.com/grbl/grbl)for your specific version of
content/uploads/2015/10/still04.jpg)
Arduino (I used version 0.8c for my Atmega328 Arduino Uno)
view
Download the XLoader (http://russemotto.com/xloader/) software.
Using the Xloader software, select the Grbl Hex file you downloaded, select your Arduino
from the dropdown menu, and select the COM port that the Arduino is connected to.
Now that the Arduino is prepped and ready to go, we need to install some software that lets us
control the CNC machine. A great easy to use program is called Grbl Controller
(https://www.tinkernut.com/demos/383_cnc/grblcontroller.zip). After downloading and
installing it, you can open it up, select your Arduino port and click Open to connect. Now you
can use the arrows on the lower right to jog through the motors. Make sure that the dropdown
box in the lower right corner is set to 1 instead of 10. If any of the platforms are running
backwards, you can go to Tools > Options and then invert the axis for the backwards motor.
(http://www.tinkernut.com/wp-
content/uploads/2015/10/still05.jpg)
view
STEP 6
CREATING IMAGES
After you have successfully gotten everything up and running, the last thing to do is import a
picture. The Grbl Controller software requires G-Code converted images. If all you want to do is
test it out with an image, you can download my Tinkernut logo here:
If you would like to create your own image, you will need to convert your image to SVG first
(https://convertio.co/jpg-svg/). Then you can go to the website makercam.com
(http://www.tinkernut.com/wp- (http://www.makercam.com/) and upload it. Alternatively, the MakerCam website also allows
content/uploads/2015/10/still08.jpg) you to insert basic shapes by going to Insert and then selecting your desired shape. But
view whether you upload an image or generate one from the menu, these steps will help you convert
it to G-Code.
Using the Arrow tool (from top left toolbar), select your entire image.
You can pan around the grid by selecting the Hand tool from the toolbar. Use it to drag the
image back to the center of the screen.
From the upper right corner of the page, change the measurements to cm.
Using the scale option from Edit > Scaled Selected, scale the object down and move it so
(http://www.tinkernut.com/wp-
content/uploads/2015/10/still08.jpg) that it fits within the single square that is in the corner of the grid (use the picture to the
view left as reference).
With the image still selected, go to Cam > Follow Path Operations. Change the target
depth to -1, the safety height to 1 and the step down to 0.1 and then click OK.
Lastly, go to Cam > Export Gcode to save the G-Code of your image.
All you have to do from here is upload that image to the Grbl Controller software and hit begin
to start printing! It may take some tweaking to get the Axis adjusted perfectly, but once you have
it adjusted, you should easily be able to print any image!
(http://www.tinkernut.com/wp-
content/uploads/2015/10/still09.jpg)
view
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