Ok, since I don't have access to a milling machine for the time being, cos it's my old man's and the drive belt broke, does anyone know of a way of handcutting plastic?The type of plastic suited for handcutting would be useful too, but any type of plastic can be scored and snapped in half, but it's the internal cuts I'm concerned about...Obviously drilling holes is easy, but what about squared holes? Using a fine cutter on the milling machine makes this task easier, but since it's out of action, are there any ways of doing this by hand, other than filing? I'd like to be able to write stuff afterwards, so tiring my hand isn't going to help ;)Any suggestions? Wood may be easier but then I'd like my panels backlit, so clear plastic is the easiest choice...

Hey maybe we could aks the electronix guiniusses here to design & devolop a tool with 3 or 4 ... (damn I don't know the word .. what's those transparent round "heads" which suck themselves on glass or plastic ?) .. of those things and in which you can mount upside down a dremel and then hang it up to an USB or any other port and controll it with steppers from your computer.....Oh well, maybe better to do it by hand ;) I think a good dremel kit should get you underway. Not cheap and I wish I had one too.

>Ok, since I don't have access to a milling machine for the>time being, cos it's my old man's and the drive belt broke,>does anyone know of a way of handcutting plastic?>>The type of plastic suited for handcutting would be useful>too, but any type of plastic can be scored and snapped in>half, but it's the internal cuts I'm concerned about...My co-builder has built a very simple machine (non-computer controlled) out of a few pieces of wood, six drawer slides, and three threaded rods and a few other small pieces.He built it by looking at the images on this site:http://homepage.ntlworld.com/gloomy-place/cncold.htmHere are pics of what he built:http://cockpit.varxec.de/tools/xyz1_galleryidx.htmlhttp://cockpit.varxec.de/tools/xyz2_galleryidx.htmlhttp://cockpit.varxec.de/tools/Its pretty nice, but you can't do things like engraving and other things that need exact Z-axis resolution. The drawer slides (the ball bearing type) are good only in one orientation, but not in two. But its perfect for milling plastics stuff. When I got bored filing my throttle unit cover, I used the machine and the results were great and since there were only straight lines, it was easy to do.Manuel

Harbor Tool sells a 'knock-off' dremel type set made in China for about $20.Richard

This stuff sure looks awesome.However it looks as complex to make as it is to make a cockpit ;)It's similar to the idea I had. Maybe if it is just planned to be used for making squared hols in transparent plastic it might be an idea to use an drill holder so you can move it up/down (can be bought everywhere or self made) in combination with a platform on which you can fit your plastic and then have 2 weels to shift the platform on 2 axis. Quite same as this stuff but manual controlled.

As I was checking the above links, I also found this:http://www.crankorgan.com/I want one:)Any one of them will be fine:)

>As I was checking the above links, I also found this:>>http://www.crankorgan.com/... while we're at it...there is a discussion going on over at some rc airplane model forum about those kind of CNCs. The guy who runs the above site is also participating. Its interesting just to see the pics of the machines people have been building.This particular thread has been running since Sep 23, 2002,and is still active. (last post was yesterday)It has 1891 posts, and 188900 views !!!It takes DAYS to read through all posts, so beware. :-)So finally here's the link:http://www.rcgroups.com/forums/showthread....20&page=1&pp=15Manuel

OMGthese guys are so ready for a "CNC battle" or even "CNC modding" ... give it a nice color and some pictures on it !you think it would be possible to controll this with the fsbus steppers ?it doesn't seam all that hard to make ..only you would need to have the input come not from FS but from some other software ..would be awesome to see FSbus become, not only the hardware to make your cockpit work but also the hardware which makes your cockpit period.:D

Just an idea for backlit panels made easy is to use a milk-white plastic as the base, and just print the design on a paper and laminate it, then put it over the plastic. If the light shines through, it helps to print another copy of the design in BLACK and blur the image a bit on a graphics program so alignment is not super-critical, and put that sheet of paper between the laminate and the plastic to block light from the non-text-label areas.Works fine, and might serve you fine, at least until the machine is fixed..? All you need to do then is to drill the holes.//Tuomas

Heh, I already use laminated paper for the backlighting, just need clear plastic to allow the light to reach the lettering :(I'm seriously considering making my own small cnc mill as the one I use at the moment is feckin' HUGE!! Just as well cos we milled the heads off a Merlin XIV with it ;)

I use a standard drill press with a two way moveable table. I chuck a milling tool in the chuck and take my time. I have done aluminum in this way. You have to be careful because the drill press doesn

>OMG>>these guys are so ready for a "CNC battle" or even "CNC>modding" ... give it a nice color and some pictures on it !>>you think it would be possible to controll this with the fsbus>steppers ?No need for FSBUS. The bigger FSBUS stepper drivers might be able to do it.. maybe.The steppers used for those machines are usually bigger ones, demanding quite a bit of current. I wanna build one using TIP120/TIP125 darlington power transistors. They are cheap and easy to work with and are rated at 5 Amps.You usually use G-Code to mill/drill/whatever with your machine.You generate G-Code from your CAD program and feed it into a program that controls the stepper movements. Most people use circuits with h-bridge drivers (using eg. TIP120/125) that connect to the parallel port.The guy selling the plans (site mentioned by Matt O.) also has a driver circuit based on those TIP transistorsManuel