by BrianV | Feb 17, 2019 | HobbyCNC Blog
HobbyCNC PRO Rev 2! I’ve made a few changes to the popular HobbyCNC PRO board. Most of the changes are cosmetic or functional, but one in particular is a big departure from the Rev1 boards. What hasn’t changed: Roughly the same form factor (it is a little...
by BrianV | Jan 20, 2019 | Uncategorized
EZ and PRO Mounting Templates Never really thought about it until I was recently asked the diameter of the mounting holes on the EZ board. I couldn’t remember. (FYI, 0.125″ [3.2mm] is the spec’d diameter). That got me thinking about the mounting...
by BrianV | Nov 25, 2018 | HobbyCNC Blog
Your Motor is Fine! Customer received some new stepper motors and found it very difficult to spin the shaft by hand. Naturally, the thought was the motors were ‘bad’. Normally, you can easily turn a stepper motor shaft by hand, and you can feel each of the...
by BrianV | Oct 9, 2018 | HobbyCNC Blog
This is a very unusual chip to blow like this. Just like with the blown driver chip, damage like this indicates a LOT of power. But this chip is nowhere near any high voltages. The Diagnosis Assembly error? Nope. This was an assembled PRO board, so it was fully tested...
by BrianV | Jun 6, 2018 | HobbyCNC Blog
When my children were growing up I used to tell them that “Experience is a difficult teacher; she gives the test first and the lesson afterwards”. I have found frequently throughout my career that I tend to learn the most when I fail. Mistakes are annoying...
by BrianV | Dec 12, 2017 | HobbyCNC Blog
I’m delighted to share that we just had the 1,000th download of our DIY CNC plans! I have such fun with my home-built machine that I wrote-up the plans, documented all the dimensions and assembled it into 72 pages of instructions! If you’re looking to get...
by BrianV | Dec 12, 2017 | HobbyCNC Blog
One of the things I like to use my DIY CNC router for is to make PC boards using the isolation routing technique. My latest prototype is Isolation routed PCB with solder mask for an opto isolator board to be used with the HobbyCNC Pro when the user experiences...
by BrianV | Sep 20, 2017 | HobbyCNC Blog
I’ve started using checklists. A few nights ago I made a small, careless mistake and wrecked one of my nice 60 degree milling bits (at $14 a pop). My ‘favorite’ mistakes include: restarting LinuxCNC and forgetting to reload my program forgetting to...
by BrianV | Aug 5, 2017 | HobbyCNC Blog
Making sure your stepper motor wiring is robust and secure is critical. Most (all?) stepper motor driver instructions include the warning “do not connect/disconnect motors while power is applied”. Curious why? A brief-yet-incomplete intro to stepper motors...
by BrianV | Jul 14, 2017 | HobbyCNC Blog
I recently assembled 5 PRO 4-axis boards. I’m pretty careful. I follow directions. I am quite familiar with the boards. Only 60% (three out of five for you non-math types) worked first time! Oh the shame. Careful(er) visual inspection revealed the problems: One...
