Wayne Gramlich's Manufacturing Projects

This document only lists my manufacturing related personal projects. The full list of all my personal projects is available along with my current priority list.

My current manufacturing related personal projects are:

Mikini Mill

I have purchased a Mikini Mill to help me realize some of the projects I wish to build.

Most of the projects below are pretty old and are not being actively worked on.

CNC Projects

I have some big plans over the years for my table top CNC mill and lathe. All of these CNC projects are stored in the CNC projects directory.

FunCAD Computer Aided Design

This is my attempt at a basic mechanical computed aided design system.

Steps CNC to Stepper Converter

This program is repsonsible for processing a limited sub-set of RS-274 (i.e. "G-codes") into a sequence of time pulses for the X, Y, and Z axes.

Hot Wire Milling

The basic idea here is to build an X/Y/Z machining table that steers a hot pointy wire/needle around. The hot point should be able to melt a variety of interesting materials such as:

Wax

A piece of wax, could be used for a lost wax casting.

Any Low Melting Point Metal

While lead is the most commonly used metal for hobbiest casting, there are some new metal compounds that have a low melting point but do not contain any lead. There are some justifiable concerns about the toxicity of lead.

Styrofoam

Styrofoam can be directly used is some situations (e. g. architectual models, model railroad scenery, etc.)

This project is basically just hooking up some stepper motors to a X/Y/Z table. There is the additional interesting problem of writing some software to drive the stepper motors to machine interesting shapes.

Computer Controlled Mill/Lathe

A long time ago, I got a hobbiest mill/lathe. I have always wanted to hook it up to a computer to dabble in CADCAM (Computer Aided Design/Computer Aided Manufacturing.) This is a fairly simple project of hooking up some stepper motors to the appropriate locations of the mill/lathe.

Modular Robots

I have always wanted to build a robot. There is this plastic toy sold in the United States under the brand name Capsela (tm) that allows someone to plug together some interesting mechanical contraptions. I would like to expand upon that idea and build a bunch of modules that can be plugged together to form different kinds of robots.

Roving Eyes

A roving eye is a remote controlled platform with a video camera (preferably stereo vision) and, when appropriate, an audio audio system. The basic idea is of roving eye is to be able to visit a place without actually being there. The roving eye platforms being considered are land (actually land/air), water (actually land/water), submarine (water only), sky (air only), and space (micro-gravity/vacuum).