3rd day
this week the x/y frame finally arrived - weee! - talk about feeling like a little kid at xmas again!
the build quality of this used frame is pretty good: x and y axis is rock solid, with only a slight flexibility in the z axis — we’re thinking we might work on the bars holding the z axis, maybe change the material used to metal rods from printers, as they are about the hardest metal rods we can get our hands on within budget and also the size seems just right.
knowing the dimensions of the x/y frame we started (de)constructing a base for the cnc machine, so we can obtain full use of the z-depth.
jakob sindballe made some truly heroic metal cutting efforts and sparks were flying!! who said engineering isn’t sexy 
see more info on base design considerations in upcoming post
also today we experimented with installing linux cnc on the pc that we found for the project — unfortunately the pc only has 256MB of RAM so the process was painstakingly slooooow. and finally we gave up. so now we are on the lookout for some extra RAM blocks.
we have started wiring the motors to standard parrallel port plugs — this way we can connect and reconfigure the motor setup any way we want to in the future, and also we can disconnect the x/y table and motors from the control unit, which will be very practical later, when transporting the cnc.
we actually sorted the CPU / RAM problem out our selves, as we got another computer which is powerful enough — but we are very interested in printer rods — the diameter should be 9,9mm or larger — can you supply this?
I have a bunch of steelrods from old printers and a bunch of different (slightly old) RAM modules.
What type of RAM do you need ?
If you can use some of it, it’s yours