Pragmatism in code

Waxing lyrical about life the universe and everything code related since lunchtime 2006



  • Carvey Update



    PCB Layout After stripping down the controller I’ve settled on a path forwards with the replacement design. Top of the list is getting all of the components mounted up within the same space. Thsi is important as the old main board is enclosed within a steel housingm located at the rear of the main enclosure, which provides protection whaever else is going on inside. So I’ve taken a look at the layout of the components....


  • Carvey CNC



    Carvey I’ve long been a follower of the desktop CNC scene and was pretty impressed when the Inventibles Carvey was released. It was a very professional looking machine greatly different to the typical CNC routers made from bolt together extrusions. It’s most appealing features were the enclosed workspace and simple workflow, similar to the Sienci MillOne in that it placed importance on the requirement for a proper enclosure to be used as a true desktop...


  • Open Hardware Licensing



    A dilemma… If you’ve been following my work you will probably know about the DIY Flow Bench project. This is an open source software / hardware device that measures volumetric air flow and is used in applications like automotive cylinder head development. I created the project back in 2018 after having had the idea for some time. Since then I have worked on it off and on, covid and family permitting, to get to the...


  • Fusion 360 Plasma Post Processor - Combining Files



    UPDATE: Tim added an additional field in his plugin that lets you specify exactly which G-codes are used as end marks. This allowed me to easily remove the M5 command without needing to edit the source code. In addition to this Tims is now detecting whether spaces are present in the generated output files. If spaces are found it retains them, but if they are not found it no longer adds them. This means that...


  • Handheld Wifi MPG for ESP32 based CNC Controllers

    ##It all starts ith an idea… I had an idea to create a WiFi pendant using an MPG jog-wheel, axis and speed selectors in a pendant with it’s own ESP32 controller. I figured that it would probably be trivial enough to squeeze an ESP32 into one of those cheap MPG pendants you can buy on ebay. It can then communicate via WiFi with the GRBL-ESP32 or ESP3D-WEB-UI. This bypasses the need for additional I/O and...


  • ESPduino + Protoneer CNC Shield



    If you’ve been following my recent posts on building a new improved Sienci MillOne you may recall that I wanted to experiment with using an ESP32 board rather than the Arduino UNO / Rasberry Pi setup that I already had set up.Well after some experimentation I now have the MillOne running under ESP32 control. Setting up the Protoneer CNC Shield was pretty straight forwards, in fact the only modification that needs to be undertaken is...


  • Installing FlatCAM on OSX Big Sur



    One thing that I wanted to be able to do on the Mill One was to make some prototype PCBs. Generally I use JLCPCB but there are occasions that I just need a quick and simple solution to make a PCB that did not involve waiting. Making a PCB by milling or isolation milling as it is commonly referred to is not without its challenges. PCBs need to be completely flat, tooling needs to be...


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