mark lewis wrote in a message to Roy J. Tellason:

 RJT> I also remember a DIY project of some sort in a magazine 
 RJT> article,  though just where that was I can't recall offhand. 
 RJT> Given enough hardware,  it shouldn't be too hard.  You'd need a 
 RJT> base frame,  and the sort of physical transport that you see used 
 RJT> in a lot of the older,  bigger printers,  the kind I've scrapped 
 RJT> several of,  including saving such stuff as big stepper motors,  
 RJT> driver transistors,  those polished steel rods,  etc.  Maybe 
 RJT> someday I'll even play with the idea a bit.  We'll see.  I have 
 RJT> *no* idea where you'd go for thinks like the cutters and such,  
 RJT> though.

 ml> ummm... some years back, i was highered to install and set up a 
 ml> series of CAD/CAM workstations for an engraving company... i don't
 ml> remember the language spoken between the CAD and the CAM but i 
 ml> believe it was DXF... 

That sounds familiar,  I believe it's the name of a file format.  There are
also a couple of fairly standardized plotter "languages" and some
of the software that's out there will no doubt provide those as output.  Or
a plotter driver will.

 ml> in any case, the CAM platform was fixed in place and you anchored 
 ml> the flat material to be engraved... the engraving stuff was 
 ml> basically little more than the (old style?) "moving cross" flatbed 
 ml> plotter movement with a dremel type tool attached to a z-axis for 
 ml> automatic height adjustment and precision control instead of the 
 ml> pen-up and pen-down type stuff...

Y'know,  I have a dremel tool and the thought never occurred to me that it
might be a thing to use for this.  

Mine is an older model for which the common accessories are no longer
available,  and i was lucky to be able to find collets for it,  all four of
them.  But somebody pointed me to a source where I could buy a "drill
press" setup for it that was made by a third party.  Perhaps something
like that would be useful,  adaptable to this sort of thing.

I hadn't envisoned much z-axis motion being necessary,  do you think I'd
need much?  And precision in it at that?

 ml> the stuff came with its own CAD package but these guys already had
 ml> autocad and just stayed with it... 

Probably a lot more to it than the one that came with the machine.

 ml> this is why i believe the the talk between the CAD and the CAM was 
 ml> dxf...

Yeah.  You mentioned something about engraving?  Was that what they were
doing with it?  My thinking was along the lines of circuit boards, 
machining rather than etching,  and perhaps the drilling,  and maybe some
other things.

 ml> i'd love to DIY one of these... if nothing else, it'd give me 
 ml> something easy enough to do and market and keep me busy... i've run
 ml> out of ideas and the job market isn't giving me any hits, either 
 ml> ;-(

You in the market too?  I got "terminated" last wednesday...  :-(

I went to an agency today that I'd worked before,  and they cut me loose on
a testing machine,  so I started picking out all this tech stuff just to
see how I would do.  I found it bothersome how much windoze-centric stuff
was in there,  particularly questions about w2k,  and you couldn't skip
them but had to guess,  but on some of them I did pretty well.  I may go
back there and play with it again,  at some point.  They tell me that I can
also access the system from elsewhere,  over the 'net.

But anyway,  this is a project that I've been thinking about for quite some
time now.  Years at least.  I don't expect to make much progress in terms
of actually doing anything with it while we're still stuck here in this
little apartment,  but that's no reason why we couldn't kick it around
some,  either here or in some other channel,  as appropriate.  Maybe
ELECTRONICS for designing some of the driver circuitry,  etc.

Need some stepper motors?  I have a whole box full...  :-)

Best ones,  for sheer size,  come out of old *big* printers (daisywheel, 
etc.) and 5.25" floppy drives.  I saw a regular milling machine one
time that had some the size of soup cans...   :-)

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