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My name is Dan Mauch, founder of
Camtronics, inc. I have designed and built fifteen different machines over
the past 7 years. The original machine was designed to drill prototype printed
circuit boards. It is still in use today and has drilled over 200,000 holes (See
N&V Nov 93). The next machine is a converted 1/2 HP bench drill press. It uses a
drill press 5X7 cross slide with an integral vise. This machine is used to drill
large holes in 3 inch x 3/8 aluminum angle stock. The third machine is probably
the world's first home CCNC bandsaw. It is used in my business to cut stock to
various lengths as programmed while I am working on other projects. The fourth
machine is a high speed modification of the circuit board drill machine and is
designed to drill holes in a variety of materials. The last machine, called the
Wire Wacker, automatically measures and cuts #16-30 wire. A spool of wire is
placed on a stationary spindle. Wire is fairlead to a rubber capstan attached to
a stepping motor. A rubber pinch roller provides the traction. The wire is fed
to a guide tube. A solenoid operated cutter, cuts the wire. How is that for a
high tech wire cutter? The program that runs the Wire Wacker is only 22 lines
long and was written is QBASIC. It asks you how long you want the wires and how
many pieces do you want. The machine then proceeds to cut a uniform pile of
wires as ordered. The next machine is a Engraver. Using Corel draw or any other
good graphics program, select a clip art image. Load it into you PC. Then
export is as an HP-GL file. Load that file into your shop computer, put a piece
of material into the engraver, scale the image up or down, turn on the machine
and press the Enter button. Then watch as it engraves complex shapes into the
material. I have engraved images of dogs, horses, trees and numerous other
shapes as well as text. I now have a new circuit board drill machine that is
smaller than the original version.
It has a travel of 5X5 inches on the X-Y axis and 2" on the Z. What is neat
about it is that it uses a Dremel Drill press stand. I will soon have a kit that
is easy to assemble. I have drilled , routed and plotted with it so far. Runs
very fast with my new controller (chopper).I also have a new larger 1/2 HP bench
type drill press. It too is faster and more powerful. It has a travel of 6X6".
Subsequently I have retro fitted my JET 12X25 lathe to CNC using drivers of my design and 300 oz in stepper motors. My Enco 6X36 milling machine was converted long ago to CNC. First I used some off the shelf superior electric drivers then add my own. I have susequently modified it again to use a servo system designed by Bill Wainright. We hope to sell servo systems in the future.
I have converted my Mill drill to run off of servo motors.
There have been many other machines
but those have been the most notable.
These machines are amazing to watch! They can do things that most humans are not
capable of accomplishing. Have you ever tried drilling a .014 hole in a printed
circuit (PC) board? Those drill bits will break if you even look cross-eyed at
them. Since a human hair is .005 inch, a .014 drill is not quite three
times as thick. I have drilled over 200 holes without breaking one of those fine
drill bits. It would take extraordinary skill for a human to drill a hole with
that drill bit and not break it. The machine not only drills the holes but is
does it with precision not previously possible in the home or shop.
The first device that I call the Experimenter's CNC drill machine cost under
$400 to build. Next, was the 1/2 HP power drill press that cost under $400
including the price of the drill press. The CNC bandsaw including the cost of
the bandsaw was under $400. The other circuit board machine cost under $300 to
assemble and only took 16 hours to design and build. The Wire Wacker, as I have
affectionately name the CCNC wire cutter, was built for under $150!
© 2005 Camtronics, inc.
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