Design and Manufacturing of CNC Milling for Small scale Industries

How to make CNC Milling machine : Mechanical Project

Introduction:
In modern CNC systems, end-to-end component design is highly automated using Computer-Aided Design (CAD) and Computer-Aided Manufacturing (CAM) programs. The programs produce a computer file that is interpreted to extract the commands needed to operate a
particular machine via a post processor, and then loaded into the CNC machines for production. Since any particular component might require the use of a number of different tools – drills, saws, etc., modern machines often combine multiple tools into a single “cell”. In other installations, a number of different machines are used with an external controller and human or robotic operators that move the component from machine to machine. In either case, the series of steps needed to produce any part is highly automated and produces a part that closely matches the original CAD design.

With the on-going development of technology and economy, new industrial requirements such as high precision, good quality, high production rates and low production costs are increasingly demanded. Most of such requirements, including dimensional accuracy,
conformance to tolerances of finished products and production rate can be met with better machine tools. With the help of CNC technology, machine tools today are not limited to human capabilities but are able to make ultra-precision products down to Nano scales in a much faster manner. The traditional design philosophy of machine tools is multi-functionality and highest precision possible. However, with the dramatic increase of industry varieties and the growing demand of miniature products, these general purpose machine tools are not efficient, either in terms of machine time or cost, in manufacturing products with special sizes and precision requirements

There are several advantages of using small machines to produce small sized objects. With a smaller machine size, space is saved. The energy required to operate the machine is reduced as well. It now requires less material and components to make the machine, hence bringing down the cost greatly. The weight of moving component also comes down so that during operation, the vibration and noise, as well as pollution to the environment, are markedly reduced. As the machine becomes denser and lighter, it becomes more portable. The layout of the manufacturing plant can be more flexible. The productivity and manufacturing speed also increases due to possible faster operation.

Objective:
The idea behind fabrication of low cost CNC Milling Machine is to full fill the demand of CNC machines from small scale to large scale industries with optimized low cost. A major new development in computer technology is the availability of low-cost open source hardware, such as the Arduino microcontroller. An advantage of open source hardware is that a wide variety of ready-to-use software is available for them on the Web; therefore the prototyping and development times are drastically reduced. Moreover, a wide range of low-cost interfaces and accessories such as Arduino shields are also available. However, for the development of low-cost models of CNC machines, such tools may be quite adequate from the viewpoint of machine control. In this project, the development of a prototype 3-axis CNC Milling Machine using Arduino-based control system is presented with the following specification.
• Low cost
• Easily operable
• Easy interface
• Flexible
• Low power consumption

how to make cnc milling machine - circuit Diagram — how to make cnc milling machine – circuit Diagram

Methodology:
This system can be divided in to three modules.
• Mechanical system
• Electrical system
• Software system

Mechanical system gets necessary control signals from electronics system which ultimately results in desired actuation of motors. Electronics system gets command or a set of commands from software system and generates controls for mechanical system.

Mechanical System
The mechanical system is assembled in such a way that the 3-axis movement is achieved by using the linear bearings and guide rods. Stepper motors are mounted to the each axis which is the source of motion acted according to the control signal generated from the electronics circuit. Each stepper motor is coupled to the screw rod which carries nut with the help of coupling bush. This screw rod and nut arrangement is responsible for converting the rotational motion of the stepper motor to linear motion. The linear motion of each axis is carried away smoothly by the linear bearing and guide rod assembly connected to the each axis which is capable of load carriers and allows linear motion in each axis.The controlled motion in each axis is achieved directly by controlling the rotation of the stepper motor. The speed of the motion in each axis can also be controlled by direct control of the speed of the stepper motor by giving required control signals. Thus the tool path of the spindle fixed to the end effector is controlled in each axis for smooth carving or cutting action of work piece.

Electrical System
Electronics system comprises of:
• Power supply
• Microcontroller board
• Stepper motor driver board
Power Supply
Power supply is heart of the CNC system which converts the AC voltage to DC voltage and supplies required voltages to the corresponding devices. Microcontroller board operates at 5v supply whereas the stepper motor board operates at 12v.

Microcontroller Board
ATMEGA 328p Arduino based microcontroller development board is chosen here to control the motion of the system. It acts as brain of the CNC system which receives the commands from the software system from computer connected through the USB serial port.
Arduino development board is flashed with the GCODE interpreter code which was written in the C language, which is responsible to generate the control signal for corresponding command signal from the computer system to the stepper motors which directly controls the motion of the tool path. The command from computer or software system is received and converts them to the actual electronic signals to the Stepper Motor Driver Board.

Stepper Motor Driver Board
Pololu A4988, micro-stepping drive designed for smooth and quiet operation is chosen to drive the NEMA 17 stepper motor. Stepper motor Driver Board receives the control signal from the microcontroller board to the terminals PULSE and DIR which generates the corresponding digital pulse signals for stepper motor to control the rotation of the motor.

Software System
The software tool chain of CNC-based manufacturing is represented in the fig 1. The part to be machined is designed in computer-aided design (CAD) software, whose output is a drawing in one of many acceptable formats most preferable format is .stl format. This drawing is then fed to the computer-aided manufacturing (CAM) software, whose output is the machine readable code used for numerical control of the machine. Since implementation of the G code is machine dependent, it is necessary to test out different choices for an open source G code interpreter for the Arduino, so that the correct motions are obtained for the machine axes through the stepper motor driver. We have used grbl, an open source G-code interpreter or milling controller for the Arduino development board.