Years ago, I had a machinist friend who graciously let me work in his shop to learn about working with metal. Being able to do things with metal facinated me and I was SO fortunate to have nagged him :-) into teaching me how to deal with the normal tools in a shop as well as mills, lathes, surface grinders and so on. Most fun learning experience in my life, blessed to be taught by a master! This bit of education lead me to getting a job in a CNC shop writing code to make parts. Wonderful opportunity that has been nothing but fun and rewarding in the process.
Let me say that my primary work has always been that of a programmer type, the fancy title is "Systems Analyst", which I suppose is correct since besides figuring out what needs to be done, I often write the code for it. I used to do it for beancounters, but managed to move into microcontrollers and if that is all I can do, I can live with it :-).I took this project on for the love of playing with metal and combining that with my life long love of programming. Being retired and handicapped now, I have time, but the budgetary constraints are challenging :-).
As noted, this is primarily an education endeavor. If it works out to be useful, so much the better. In the process it keeps me interested, challenged and busy :-).
I'm working with this leasurely and it is a work in progress, so be patient with this mess :)
Driver and electonics for this project.
materials for this project (so far).
base for everything (10" square). (So far).
More to follow...