Main Content

I started this project more than a year ago. It was supposed to be the first Make with Ada project but it became the most challenging from both, the hardware and software side. To achieve precise movements, CNC machines use a special kind of electric motors: stepper motors. With the appropriate electronic driver, stepper motors rotate by a small fixed angle every time a step signal is received by the driver. (more info). The rotation motion of the motor is translated to linear motion with a leadscrew. With the characteristic of both, the motor and leadscrew, we can determine the number of steps required to move one millimeter. This information is then used by the CNC controller to convert motion commands into a precise number of steps to be executed on each motor.”

Link to article