Thingiverse
Case for Arduino Nano to parallel port by gharley
by Thingiverse
Last crawled date: 4 years, 8 months ago
I started building a CNC machine in 2010 using the design in the book "Build Your Own CNC Machine." I hit a road-block when I realized that my computers no longer have parallel ports and the USB to parallel adapters don't work with the break-out board I have. Then I got distracted by 3D printing and set the CNC aside until a few months ago when I found out about using the Arduino and GRBL (https://github.com/gnea/grbl/wiki). My breakout board is not well documented but I managed to figure out the pin assignments for the X, Y and Z axis pulse and direction signals and voila, it worked. Once I got it all working (still working on limit signals), I decided I needed a case for my set up so back to 3D printing.
I'm a programmer by trade so I prefer to design with code when feasible. I love OpenSCAD but the syntax is so arcane it makes my head hurt so, I've been using OpenJSCAD (https://openjscad.org/) which i really love. I made this object to be parametric but all the measurements are so precise that you probably won't want to change anything except maybe overall length or if you need to accommodate a different DB25 adapter.
There's definitely room for improvement, I've had issues with the tab on the case top latch breaking so I added the reinforcements and it seems okay so far. Also, I haven't allowed for screwing the DB25 connector onto the CNC driver box because I haven't needed to so far. One could arrange the parts in the case bottom, screw in the DB25 connector and then snap the top on.
This is the connector I used...https://smile.amazon.com/gp/product/B07437RWV7/ref=oh_aui_detailpage_o01_s00?ie=UTF8&psc=1 I soldered 90 degree header pins to the appropriate holes on the Arduino Nano, then I could simply use female to male jumpers to connect to the DB25.
I use Candle (https://github.com/Denvi/Candle/) to send the g-code to the Nano.
I'm a programmer by trade so I prefer to design with code when feasible. I love OpenSCAD but the syntax is so arcane it makes my head hurt so, I've been using OpenJSCAD (https://openjscad.org/) which i really love. I made this object to be parametric but all the measurements are so precise that you probably won't want to change anything except maybe overall length or if you need to accommodate a different DB25 adapter.
There's definitely room for improvement, I've had issues with the tab on the case top latch breaking so I added the reinforcements and it seems okay so far. Also, I haven't allowed for screwing the DB25 connector onto the CNC driver box because I haven't needed to so far. One could arrange the parts in the case bottom, screw in the DB25 connector and then snap the top on.
This is the connector I used...https://smile.amazon.com/gp/product/B07437RWV7/ref=oh_aui_detailpage_o01_s00?ie=UTF8&psc=1 I soldered 90 degree header pins to the appropriate holes on the Arduino Nano, then I could simply use female to male jumpers to connect to the DB25.
I use Candle (https://github.com/Denvi/Candle/) to send the g-code to the Nano.