Homemade plotter computer interface

[murphyslaw]

Hi guys,

I'm looking into building a small scale (350mm x 350mm approx) X Y plane router or plotter as a project. I am comfortable with building the Mechanical side of the machine as well as the electronics, however... I am unsure how to go about getting from a CAD program to actual position of the plotter. and tracking and stuff.

I dont want to buy a CNC controller, i want to build one myself. i need some advice on whether or not there might be a software solution that might run off the printer port and the plotter could feed its position to a PC rather than having to right my own printer driver or such.

I would appreciate any advice thanx in advance

 

[poor mystic]

Hi Mister Murphyslaw
I wish I could give you a proper answer to this, but as things stand I can't do so myself. However! I'd look for an Arduino forum and ask there. Arduino is made for the kind of job you're into and it's cheap as chips. You could use an Arduino controller and talk to it from the PC, which would then not need to run the CNC table in real time.
Here's my suggestion: http://www.arduino.cc/cgi-bin/yabb2/YaBB.pl
Good luck!

 

[murphyslaw]

cheers buddy i will look into that