Most CNC’s have a some form on board controller. In the very least there are jog/stop buttons on the mill itself. The Inventables Carvey was only produced for a short time and it was geared toward teachers and schools. It has a Atmega-32 based but is a more or less a a glorified stepper driver. In normal usage the CNC is tethered to a computer and a web based G-Code generator/sender.

While the provided software works well but it is limited in functionality and it is incapable of V-Carving. The solution to this using 3rd party CAM software. By using 3d party CAM software allows for generation of more complex G-Code. I am using MeshCAM right now for the Tool-Path/G-Code generation. Once the G-Code is generated it has to be sent to the CNC. There is a USB-B port on the back of the CNC to allow for a serial connection.

The next challenge is finding a way to send the G-Code to the CNC. This is accomplished with the help of G-Code Sender. Not only does this have the capability to send the G-code to the mill it also lets me reset the 0 zero position and send jogging commands.

With all of this done the CNC has all the normal functionality of a 3-axis CNC. Unfortunately it still requires a laptop tethered to it to run G-Code sender. I was able to use this setup for a few months and while it did work It did get annoying to have always leave a computer with the CNC.

I began searching for a simple solution and inexpensive solution. I happened to have a Pi 3B Kicking around with a some damage to the PCB. It still worked fine but I didn’t want to use it in anything that was of critical importance. I picked up a official Pi touch screen and 3D printed a case out of Mark Forge Onyx. This made for a pretty clean set up but I didn’t like the way the Pi powered the screen. I was able to further clean up this setup by powering the screen off the test-pads on the bottom of the PI. By soldering in these jumpers I was able to power the pi and the screen of one micro USB connection.

After assembling the Screen in the housing I flashed the micro SD card with Raspbian and installed G-Code Sender and Thunderbird. Adding a email client to the pi meant sending G-Code to the it would be as easy as sending a email.

This project has been successful and has been activity used in the Brass Lego Project.