Electronics progress

Yet another pololu carrier board

pololu carrier board

So I've got most of the mechanics done, but I'm looking to rebuild it with belts instead of the leadscrews.  While I'm trying to design a workable belt system with some scraps I have from a few steppers, I've been working on the electronics side.  I've got the stepper drivers finished and will be sending it out to a boardhouse in the next few days and hopefully will have some boards built in a little while.  I've uploaded pics of my design on the reprap wiki and thingiverse.
http://reprap.org/wiki/Pololu_Electronics#ljyang
http://www.thingiverse.com/thing:3634

I'm still putting the final touches on the silkscreen before I send it out for prototype and will post up the final design files for the board soon.

New build, new blog

So I've been reading about the reprap project for a while, and I thought it was time to actually start my build.  I'll be building a combined cncrouter/repstrap.  I've been going over things and I think that I have a good base of knowledge now and a design sketched out to build.  I am building a variant of the Wolfstrap machine.  The Y base and X standards are being built from a re-purposed Ikea Rast nightstand I had in my shop.  I will be using an arduino mega with Pololu stepper drivers for movement.  I will be building the Cartesian robot first then integrating the electronics so that I can hopefully use both reprap software with the arduino, and EMC2 from linuxcnc.org for a cnc router.  I am hoping to accomplish this by decoupling the stepper drivers from the arduino in some manner and connecting the cabling to a parallel port for the Linux cnc control.

I am keeping records of my purchases so that I can calculate my total build cost and also provide a complete BOM after it is completed.  I am working on this in the evenings and hope to finish and have my first print by the end of 2010.  I am being realistic with my goal given my two children take most of my time and I have only 1-2 hours in the evening 2-3 days a week to work on this project.  Progress will likely be slow, but hopefully will be completed by the end of the year, or hopefully sooner.

Items already in hand:
Ikea rast
4x steppers (nema 17 from sparkfun)
5x pololu stepper drivers (from pololu.com)
1/4-20 threaded rod (from home depot, had it in my shop from a previous project, some of it is a bit bent so hopefully can get it to work)
1/4-20 nuts (also from home depot from the previous projects)
10-24 x1.5inch screws, nuts and washers.
Arduino Duemilanove (using it to test out stepper drivers, need to order a mega)
drawer slides for linear motion - 2x 22", 1x 14". 22" for x/y motion, 14" for z motion (home depot)
breadboard for prototyping
miscellaneous passive electronic components (resistors, capacitors, etc)
PC power supply
atx breakout connector (from sparkfun)

Items to buy/make
breakout board/shield for mega to house stepper drivers
Arduino Mega
extruder

I'll post pictures as progress is made.
LJ