I am struggling student now in finalizing my ideas for my final project.
These are some of my ideas:

1. Ink Refiller for board marker and technical pen

2. Moving AIr pump for aquariums w/ air regulation control

3. Transformer rewinder

Please note that the above ideas must be interfaced w/ a PC. Give simple circuits,easy to buy and design. Preferably using C or Pascal programming to control and using a bipolar stepper motor.

Thank you for bearing with me w/ these ideas. I am open w/ any other suggestions using computer interface.

Turn a printer into a CNC mill... Now THAT would impress your professor!

Originally Posted by Marks256

Turn a printer into a CNC mill... Now THAT would impress your professor!

what is a cnc mill?

Originally Posted by mramos1

Pascal? Oh Borland kept that alive. Was that N. Worth or something like that. Trivia time.

what do u mean?

Originally Posted by mramos1

Pascal? Oh Borland kept that alive. Was that N. Worth or something like that. Trivia time.

Yes it was, and it's still alive and well, known as Delphi. The Microsoft versions were pretty useless, but the Borland ones were great - incredibly fast to compile, which is why Borland called it 'Turbo Pascal'. Mind you, the 'Turbo C' compiler was many times faster than Microsoft's as well.

A CNC mill is a milling machine that can be ran from a computer, and used to engrave words, or make custom parts.



here is some info on CNC;

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/CNC

Originally Posted by matthewlittle2006

my school has something like this for making pc boards, it etches the board and drills it too, pretty cool, but for $4,000, i think i'd rather stick with making them by hand...

Only a cheap one then!

A guy who used to work with me, Neil, has a younger brother called Martin, who used to be a CNC machinist at a local factory. He used BIG, VERY, VERY EXPENSIVE CNC machines to make parts for Rolls Royce jet engines!. He used to use very expensive special alloys, lots of titanium and stuff - and the components were extremely expensive, with VERY tight tolerances.

I presume the machines ran to £100,000's?, or perhaps even millions?. But when you're churning out parts that cost £10,000's it rather puts the machines price in perspective!.

Yeah... If you could make one out of an old printer(i am actually going to play around with it), i, as well as your professor, would be impressed. Oh, you need good software, too.

how can i make an old printer into a CNC machine?? im afraid it will cost a lot to build that thing..

any comments on my previous 3 ideas?