Tuesday, May 5, 2015

Collector CNC: Just Getting Started


It may have been overly ambitious...  About 6 years ago I got really interested in RC helicopters and airplanes.  A friend had been "doing" RC for quite a while, and I had watched him fly his RC plane several times.  After seeing how he could fly, it didn't take much encouragement for me to blow a few paychecks on a plane, helicopter and several short course trucks. It might have been several planes, 3 or 4 helis and 5 trucks.  Like I said, a few paychecks...

Two of the trucks I built


The RC Room


Anyway, to get back to the point, I re-discovered that I suck at hand/eye coordination, and excel at detail oriented assembly, setup and general programming.  Needless to say, my sucking at RC is what got all this started. It really re-lit an old fire and drove me to get into 3D printing and 3D CAD.    

I foolishly purchased a production model 3D printer from a big 3D printing company and had nothing but problems.  So over the last 2 years I  researched and modified that printer into a working and reliable machine.  While doing that I have also built a Shapeoko2 based CNC Router, and taught myself the basics of VB.NET programming.  

Conversion of 3D printer to Open Source
My 3'x3' CNC Router in process of being built.  Many of the parts were printed with the finished 3D printer conversion



All that said and done, today is the kick-off of Collector CNC!  My family is on board, and I am dedicating a significant portion of my off time to figure out how to make all this time and self learning pay off.   

Hopefully this will help serve as a portal to other DIYers and Makers who want to get out of the every day and into the hustle on their own!


You can check out some of my shenanigans to date on YouTube Channel

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