Made from Dremel drill and drill press. I removed the bottom plate & mounted the column to the back with U-bolts.
Acrylic is so easy to work with. It can be cut, drilled milled & glued and it's very strong, doesn't warp or break easily.
The design is the same as the big PCB drills, the table moves, not the drill head.
With the exception the real machine tables I've worked around ride on air. Like the old air hockey tables
Important note: These NEMA teen motors don't have enough torque to drive the table (no bearings).
Good pics were hard to get due to the black & silver - high contrast problems
Bigger pics have better color, I re-did them
The rails are, top part:
rod glued to channel & bolted to the drill table.
This assembly rides on the bottom piece of channel bolted to base.This works very well as
there is no lateral movement. No slop.
Rod is 1/2" steel. channel is aluminum 1/2"
Drill cam motor. The same type can be gotten from old VCR's
I think this came from a really big, old printer, as it's geared down.
I used a reed switch and magnet - round thing at bottom for positioning
Table motors. I used a piece of very thin PCB for motor rotation positioning. I cut the round with a compass and drilled a .016" hole for the I-R device.
The math is:
Using 1/4"-20 thread per inch rod & 1.8 Deg motor
.05 @ 1.8 deg = 200 steps
400 steps = .1
.1 @ 1/4-20 = 2 rev
move motor 250 steps to get past first IR reading
(can't count past 255) then read the position. Make sense??
Table fabrication from bottom. The drive nuts are superglued to bronze bushings