Aluminium Mounting Plate for Arduino / CNC Shield
An open source design for a mounting plate to enable an Arduino with CNC Shield and associated electronics to be attached easily to a CNC 1610, CNC 3018 or other aluminium extrusion based CNC machine.
Introduction
This project was designed to solve the problem of mounting an Arduino Uno, CNC Shield and associated electronics on to aluminium extrusion based CNC machines such as the CNC 1610 or CNC 3018. This mounting plate is part of a more extensive project that has the aim of replacing the original electronics supplied with a CNC 1610 machine (a Woodpecker board) with commonly available parts and electronics in order to make the machine easier to fix and also carry out firmware changes.
The original Woodpecker printed circuit board had mounting holes that were spaced to allow easy mounting to the horizontal sections of the CNC 1610 machine, but there is no obvious easy way to mount the four replacement electronic boards without making a custom mounting plate.
Mounting Plate Description
The mounting plate is a folded sheet metal design, made from 1.2mm thick aluminium sheet. Holes (A) are positioned close to the four corners of the sheet cut to accept M5 socket cap head screws and spacers which fix the mounting plate to the aluminium extrusion of the CNC machine. Holes (B) accept the M3 mounting screws for the Arduino Uno / CNC Shield, holes (C) accept M3 mounting screws and spacers for the voltage regulator board and holes (D) accept the M2 mounting screws and spacers for the motor driver board.
Cutouts (E) enable the formation of two folded cable management strips. Cutout (G) is folded along the lines indicated to form a bracket for the DC jack socket which fits into hole (F). Cutouts (H) are then folded up and over the tabs in the formed bracket from cutout (G) in order to give extra strength to the construction, especially when the DC jack plug is removed from the socket.
Mounting Plate Construction
The design can be made by hand if required, using hand tools such as nibblers, saws, files and drills. Given the complexity of some of the cutouts however, this would be a lengthy process. A better alternative is to use a CNC mill with a 1mm diameter end mill or burr. This project can be cut quite easily from 1.2mm aluminium sheet using a CNC 3018 machine or similar. The CAM designs for this are included in the Fusion 360 file download below as are the Gcode files for the various operations involved. With a small diameter cutting tool such as a 1mm end mill, it is important to keep the feed rates low and the spindle speed fairly high so as to avoid tool breakage. The depth of cut in each pass must also be kept low. The exact values used for each of these parameters will have to be changed according to the tool and machine used, but these files provide a good starting point and have been used to successfully cut out the flat pattern from a sheet of 1.2mm thick aluminium using a CNC 1610 machine.
Once you have cut out the required flat pattern from the sheet aluminium, it is a fairly simple task to fold the sheet using combination pliers, mole grips or a sheet plier grip wrench if you have one. The folded cable management strips can be formed around a drill bit of suitable diameter, or carefully using snipe nose pliers.
Download Design Files
CAM
All files are gcode with grbl post-processing.
License
You may use the designs described on this page for any commercial or non-commercial purpose that you wish, providing you credit Capella CNC with the creation of the original design on any product or updated design that you create or distribute. The simplest way to do this is to leave the Capella CNC logo and web address intact on any product or design that is produced.
This design is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 International License.