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The vMachine is a full featured proof-of-concept implementation of a V plotter. It is essentially a CNC machine that uses triangular kinematics to work in a cartesian coordinate system.
It is based on the inexpensive, yet powerful ESP32 module, rather than the usual Arduino class processors. The ESP32 can easily be programmed from within the Arduino development environment and has dual cores, runs at 240 Mhz (as opposed to the Arduino at 16Mhz) and comes with 520KB (as opposed to 2KB) of RAM. In addition the ESP32 includes full onboard WiFi and Bluetooth capabilities, and can be had for $5, or about half the price of a genuine Arduino.
Therefore my primary design decision was to base this, and my future CNC projects, on an ESP32 processor.
TODO: VIDEO - introduction to the vMachine (good thumbnail for front image
The vMachine project is intended to accomplish several goals. First, I wanted to start developing and publishing open source CNC machines with the ESP32. And so I built the machine and now present the designs and information needed to build one.
The vMachine includes a full Web Browser User Interface so that it can be controlled wirelessly from your phone or computer via WiFi. It can also be controlled via the serial port on the ESP32, via Telnet on port 23, or via Bluetooth for usage with commonly available gcode sender programs. Finally, it can also store gcode files on the optional SD Card and run jobs entirely locally, right on the ESP32, via the optional Touch Screen User Interface , without involving any other devices.
TODO: create animated gif specific to _vMachine
This repository includes all of the files and information needed to build a copy of this machine. It includes the files needed to 3D print the plastic parts, as well as the underlying Fusion 360 designs if you need or want to modify the 3D printed parts. It includes all of the schematics and information needed to breadboard or otherwise create the electronic circuits, as well as the KiCad files behind those, and the Flatcam and GCode files I used to mill my own circuit boards for this version.
I have tried to provide a general roadmap for building a vMachine on these pages.
A specific goal of this vMachine project is that it is generally scalable to a larger machine, specifically one that can work with 4x8 feet sheets of plywood, using a router to cut the plywood, as with the Maslow CNC. Credits go to the Maslow team, as this vMachine source code actually contains a port of the Maslow triangular kinematics to the ESP32. I hope to build such a machine in the near future, and it should be relatively straight-forward to scale this project up to a larger machine of some sort. The size of the machine is entirely parameterized within the software and user interface.
But most importantly, this project establishes a general approach to building ESP32 based CNC machines of various types, not only the vMachine but also typical 3 and 4 axis CNC machines or any other kind of machine I might choose to build in the future. It is entirely based on the next generation FluidNC project, a hugely important codebase that I have forked and modified slightly so-as to better be able build projects within the Arduino IDE development environment.
Included in this repository are a number of ready-to-go gcode files that you can run on the vMachine. It is beyond the scope of this project to teach you how to use Inkscape, or Flatcam, or Fusion 360, or any other available program to create gcode files to feed to the vMachine. You may use any of those, or any other program you wish, to create gcode files for the vMachine.
But, if you build the machine, and populate the SD card from the sdCard folder in this repository, there are some gcode files you can use right away to test it, verify it is working correctly, and even produce some nice drawings. You can also view the contents of these gcode files to see what kind of gcode the vMachine expects so that you can produce it with any of the above programs, or by hand, as necessary.
TODO: VIDEO - Running the vMachine Demo Files
The video above demonstrates the touch screen UI, the browser based Web/Wifi UI, and the serial terminal user interface by running the following "programs" (gcode files) via one of the user interfaces:
- homing - first we "home" the machine
- center.g - moves the sled to the center of the page
- ruler.g - starts at the center and prints a simple ruler pattern
- draw_boxes.g - draws boxes on the board itself around the work area and 12x9" and 11x8.5" paper sizes
- /test8.5x11/test8.5x11.ngc - a sophisticated test that draws rulers, shapes, a compass and a sailboat on 11x8.5" paper
When you build a vMachine, the first thing you will print will probably be ruler.g, and you can do that by just manually moving the sled to the approximate center of the work area, before you get homing working. Once you can home the machine, and you setup the G55 and G56 coordinate systems, you can run the draw_boxes.g gcode to draw the work area, and 12x9 and 11x8.5 alignment boxes directly on the board. Then you can tape a piece of (US letter) paper in the 11x8.5 alignment box and print the full test8.5x11.ngc reference gcode on that.
TODO: Image of test gcode output
The documentation starts with this page, and includes the following additional pages:
- History - my personal historical perspectives and photos of early prototypes and previous versions of the vMachine.
- Hardware - details the physical construction of the vMachine, including the 3D printing and mechanical parts.
- Electronics - the schematics and home made circuit boards for the machine.
- Software - contains an overview of the software architecture and details about how to configure the vMachine
- Installation - instructions on building and installing the vMachine firmware onto the ESP32 using the Arduino IDE environment.
It is recommended that you read all these pages BEFORE constructing a vMachine. If you are going to build a machine from these sources, or part of them, you should START with the Installation page and the first thing you should do is build the firmware and install it to a bare ESP32 dev module with just a USB cable.
As part of that process it is required that you verify and utilize the browser based WiFi UI to the module and upload some files to the file system on the ESP32, so with just the bare ESP32 module you can verify that the firmware is installed, test the Web UI, and make sure that it runs more or less correctly BEFORE investing any time in 3D printing or creating breadboards or printed circuit boards.
In any case, all of these pages, and this source, is provided in the hopes that you will find it useful and/or interesting.
Please also see another CNC machine based on the same architecture, my implementation of an ESP32 3 axis machine on an inexpensive CNC 3018 from China ebay.
These "machines" are relatively small INO programs. They are built on top of a number of other libraries that provide the bulk of the functionality.
- FluidNC - the next generation ESP32 GRBL machine
- FluidNC_UI - a touch screen user interface for FluidNC
- FluidNC_Extensions - some extensions to FluidNC
The core of the machines, the GRBL (g-code) interpreter, is based on the FluidNC library. The operational details of the machine, what g-codes are supported, the basic serial command protocol, the wifi and webserver, the machine configuration, and most functional aspects of the machine are provided by this library.
On top of FluidNC I have built FluidNC_UI, the touch screen user interface, as a library that can optionally used in ESP32 CNC projects. Please see this library for a description of the User Interface.
I have also added a FluidNC_Extensions library that contains a number of features that are used in this, and other machines based on this system. This library contains methods and objects to abstract and extend the FluidNC core. Specific contents at this time include:
- some easy to use debug/info/error output methods
- methods to abstract the state of the FluidNC machine
- methods to abstract control of the FluidNC machine
- methods to supplement the FluidNC configuration system, and
- an implementation of mesh bed levelling
This library is licensed under the GNU General Public License v3.0
Credits
- To the Maslow CNC team for the kinematics.
- To bdring and the FluidNC Team