Everyone else started slowly to work on their final project and since I was exactly at 0% in the beginning of the week I built part of my setup, a 2-axis simple plotter. Also I modded a little ink cartridge that squirts ink on demand. Not yet presentable, maybe next week :)

I used this tutorial and modified it here and there. I started by hacking a printer that I got from reuse. I used the steppers from it, a bunch of random aluminium. I bought threaded rods and nuts for them. Pictures of the making the frame, adding the X axis, than the Y...aluminum, plexiglass and a LOT of screws, 2 days work and voilá!

The hardest part was the lead-screw's fixation. The lead-screw is the real soul of the CNC: it converts circular motion into linear displacement for our stage. I drilled a hole through the axis, and hot glued it to my stepper motor. It works surprisingly well although it takes some time to get the wobbling motion out of the picture.