I had a dream last night where someone asked how my 3D camera project was going. When I woke up, I realized this rotary engraver could possibly morph into a 3D scanner of some sort. Although using
a photogrammetry app on a phone is probably easier.

I uploaded 2 updated spindle files, BambooPenSpindle_V2.stl & Dowel_31_75mmDia_Spindle_V1_1.stl that use the captive M3 Locknuts & M3x12mm screws to tighten against the motor shaft. I find this connection type a lot easier to swap different spindles out. I also included a STEP & fusion 360 file of the Dowel_31_75DiaSpindle. The fusion 360 file has some variables, but you will probably have to adjust the design some as well. I increased the Bamboo pen spindle hole opening from 11.1mm diameter to 11.4mm diameter which makes it a comfortable fit for me. I used a round file to slightly file the inside of the motor mount spindle until it would just slide on the motor without much force.

Since the motor mount part of the spindle increased a little, I increased the motor mount opening more than enough to accommodate it. It would still fit on the other one, but you would not be able to push it as close to the motor. I also cut out more plastic in the design & still feels sturdy enough to me. The file is MotMnt_25mmHt_Top2040_V2.stl

 

Think I will pursue morphing this rotary laser engraver into a 3D scanner. I found this project (https://en.openscan.eu/) that has most of work done and looks like I only need to buy a cnc shield for the Pi & a light ring for my 5mp pi cam. I can get a Protoneer CNC Shield from Zyltech that I will have to solder & think one of the light rings from adafruit might work. This project uses 12v for the leds and hooked to their special pi hat. The adafruits are 5v, so not sure how they will work (hopefully just a simple modification). Only new 3d printed parts would be to mount the camera & a wider, thicker rotary table. Probably will have to make the legs 500mm long instead of the 250mm. I also have some 1m lengths if they are not long enough. I will look at this more closely in a few weeks after I finish what I am currently doing. Does anyone have alternate suggestions for the Pi CNC shield or light ring?

[Edit] I posted this before looking at the videos for that project. Looks like I will need to have a tilt for the camera. Original design rotated the model. Since I am going to use a pi camera, rotating that will be a lot less weight to move around & should be able to use a servo for it if software end is not a problem to modify.

Here are some more progress photos on the engraving. 1st one shows the 12" laser shield attached. It can slide out from the top easily. The other 2 photos show a hex maze. I engraved it a 2nd time with the solution. The pattern matched perfectly on the seam.

I added a couple more spindles to the file tab. One for 3/8" dowels (Dowel_9_8mmDia_Spindle_V2.stl) which I have a plethora of from a previous project years ago that did not go anywhere. I thought this size, 9.8mm diameter is a close size to the bamboo pens for test burns before trying the pens. The pens are 1mm larger diameter. I also added a toothpick spindle (ToothPick2_3mmDia_Spindle_V2.stl). Rather than use a tightening bracket for the toothpick which probably wouldn't work anyway, the toothpick spindle hole is tapered from 3mm. A drill chuck would probably work better and should get that & the new controller board in the mail in the next few days.

 

I have been playing with a Pan Tilt servo mount for the raspberry pi camera the last few days. Even if I don't make the 3D scanner, this will probably be useful for video of laser engraving. For the 3D scanner, probably will only need tilt servo. I started with this design. Servo Pan Tilt - Raspberry Pi camera by japersik It mostly fit all together, but the servo horn & some of the holes needed to be adjusted.
I only have a raspberry pi 5mp camera which will work well enough for engraving videos, but probably will need a newer camera. I have also been pondering how to make a simple filter for the front of the lens similar to the 12" square orange piece I have. I am thinking kapton tape might work. My wife suggested some sign here stickers. Since the tape will go on the plastic cover, it will not make the lens sticky. Looks like you can also get different color transparent tape.
Here is what my design for this looks like so far. The 2 servos are yellow in the image.

 

I got the servos to work ok & putting them aside for now.

I got my new MKS DLC32 controller board & a 3mm- 8mm drill chuck that has a 1/4" hex shaft. I designed DrillChuck_1_4InchSpindle.stl and added that to the files tab. Looks like this should hold a toothpick well.

I also pulled my table saw out today & cut a 290mmx250mm piece of MDF & am going to attach that to the base of this machine. I am out of T-Nuts, so decided to see if this design would work as this press fit idea has worked for me in the past. The file is V2040_020_MDF_Bracket.stl if anyone wants to try it. You might have to do some light filing.

I have the latest firmware from Makerbase flashed on the controller after a little bit of hiccups. Someone on another forum mentioned FluidNC firmware located here GitHub - bdring/Grbl_Esp32: A port of Grbl CNC Firmware for ESP32 They have an example file for the MKS DLC32 controller so am thinking of trying that firmware after I test the Makerbase flavor. I am not using a screen which isn't supported on the FluidNC yet.

 

I got the MDF clamps put on & feels pretty good. I used a rubber mallet to hammer them in & it pushed some of the plastic out of the grooves, so had to take each one out after hammering them in most of the way & then put them back in. I know these brackets would not hold up under structural stress, but all I need these for is to give it a solid base with less vibration as I intend to mount a raspberry pi camera to the back top of one of the vertical 2020 V-Slots. My thought is this will help cut down on vibrations for the camera. I have also been clamping this machine to my worktable, so am hoping I will not need to do that anymore.

 

It is too easy to disconnect 3 wires & get a better photo. I take this machine apart too much to work on cleaning up the wiring. There are only 3 sets of wires in this design and only the laser wiring moves. Since you brought this up, I probably should add some of these clips to it though. Add more V-Slot to my Makerfarm 10" Prusa i3v

 

Looks pretty good. That pen lends itself to a portrait orientation anyway. It is nice to see someone else using this machine. You could use foam core wrapped around 3 sides of the engraver for a cover or get some 1/2" rigid insulation. i have mine inside another enclosure for now. Now that I have a nice base for it, I might take some of that 1/2" insulation I have left over from the panels from my other enclosure to put around it, so I can take it outside.

I engraved a pen of a logo of a local brewery we like yesterday. The best logo I had of it was from the side of growler, so I took a photo of it & edited some & came out pretty good. I really need to clean up the logo better before trying it again.

I also had a slight problem yesterday with the rotary motor. Thought I had a bad motor. After swapping out the motor, then the Nano board, I swapped the wire. That was the problem. I wasn't thinking it would be the wire or it would have been a lot quicker troubleshooting. I will remember that for next time.

I am playing with this articulated Pi Cam mount design. His tolerances on the threads are too tight for me, so am modifying it to use M8 threads in openscad where I can add tolerances easier. I initially did the M6 threads he had which would be less design changes, but think M8 for plastic threads will work better. Threads are one thing I find easier to get tolerances in openscad rather than fusion 360.

 

After playing this Pi Camera mount design, PrusaPrinters think I have the parts modified to work the way I need them. If vibrations from the machine movement does not bother this, looks like it should work well. I am hoping to get all the parts printed today.

 

I did a test run of the video with laser turned off & seems to work without any vibration, so will continue on. With focus test, I need to be a little further away, so will probably have 1 or 2 more links and coming off the side instead of the front of 2020 to give it more offset. Nice thing about these cameras is there is hardly any weight to them. There is no audio with this setup unless I do audio separately and sync it in post processing. Here is the software I am using for the raspberry pi camera. RPi-Cam-Web-Interface - eLinux.org

 

I finally got around to publishing the files on Dedicated Compact Rotary Axis Laser Engraver by GeoDave & updated the files here also. I tried to upload a zip file of all the files, but thingiverse doesn't seem to allow that now.

 

I did my 1st video test with the raspberry pi camera. I forgot to up the video settings but will do that next time. I had to move the camera further away & attach to frame of my larger enclosure. Minimum focus on that camera is about 500mm unless you dig out the glue on the lens holding it fixed which I was not able to do yet. I saw another video of someone engraving a Compass Rose & thought this would be good for a pen. I found a site with some compass sayings and rewording it to Follow your Compass Not your Phone. While engraving this, I thought of another saying appropriate for the circular engraving. Follow your Compass, Don't Go Round & Round.

 

How about Pi to 100 decimal places wrapped around a Bamboo pen? I will post the Lightburn file to the files tab.

 

Make sure your machine limits for the rotary axis are long enough. That burn is about 290mm long in the rotary axis. I find it interesting that you can set that rotary axis to probably just about any length. I did 4 of these engravings before I was happy with it. The 1st two I did with single line text. On the 1st double line text, part of the number was under the pen clip. I changed the angle of the text to fix it. I was thinking about making another one with a lot more digits & smaller text, maybe 1000 digits. I would write a lisp program this time to generate all the numbers to get a closer distance. I manually moved all the digits last time which was a bit of pain, but looked good.

 

Looks like making pi go to 1000 digits was easier than I thought. Lightburn shows it taking 10:39 which is usually all a few minutes on all the short segments. Rotary width is 947mm with 1mm high letters. I won't be able to test it until Monday. I might have to try pi around a toothpick next. Won't be too many digits though.

 

Pi to 1000 places wrapped around a pen. The numbers are 1mm high & a little over 0.5mm spacing on the spiral.

 

I tried a couple of drill chucks. One really inexpensive one that went from 0.3mm to 8.0mm & another one from Amazon that is 2mm-13mm. The Amazon will handle a toothpick & the bamboo pens, so this seems like a good all around choice. I was initially concerned about using one of these as I thought it might scar the pens, but just need to be careful not to tighten them too much. I also liked the Amazon one that had 3 different adapters. I chose to make a spindle to handle the largest adapter for the best support. Outside diameter of that is 21.8mm and I added .25mm all around it to make 22_3mm_Spindle_Adapter.stl which is added to the Files tab. I am using 2-M5x12mm screws with locknuts for locking the spindle and chuck in place. I haven't tested the Amazon chuck yet, but seems like it should not have any problems. You might loose a little more height of the pen as the 3 jaws are a little recessed at that diameter as you can see from 3rd photo.

 

This was quite wobbly when I put it on the machine. I thought there was a problem with the chuck, so I turned it upside down & chucked it directly to the motor & seemed straight. There still could be a slight bow in the 1/2" square thread on, but that seems unlikely. I increased the diameter of the whole thing. 1st fatter version was a lot less wobbly, but now I am increasing it a little more & added 2nd bracket screw to see if that makes the difference. My print settings are .2mm layer height, 5 perimeters & 50% infill. I am using eSun PLA+ which has a little flex to it but have the least number of problems with this filament. I might try PETG if it still has some wobble. I prefer not to use straight PLA if I can help it. I might could print one in ABS but have not printed with that in many years.

 

I have a Hepa filter in my room now, so the smell should at least dissipate better. This spindle is such a small footprint, it will probably print ok in ABS. I usually use 3M 2.82" wide painters tape on top of borosilicate glass with the PLA+ at 45c. I have printed an 8" circular speaker cover with just the glass, but have to clean it after each print. With painters tape, I can usually go weeks without doing anything with it. I used to use glue stick a lot when I used a mirror instead of borosilicate. Will definitely use the gluestick with the ABS on the glass. I have 2 other printers, but currently not in use. A Folgertech Delta & a Zyltech 12". They both currently have bowden extruders which I have always had problems with. I need to put a direct drive extruder on the Zyltech & that should work again. My main printer used to be a Makerfarm i3v 10", but the only original parts on it are probably the x,y & z motors and build plate. I swapped all the wood out of a few years ago for V--Slot & cut the carriage & X motor mount out of aluminum with my Sphinx CNC.

[Edit] It still has some wobble to it & does not appear to be my plastic mount. I will have to do a short video of it turning to scrutinize it better.

 

Here is a video crooked test of the drill chuck. Looks aligned straight in the adapter. I have 3 openings all the way down that I was able to measure if the chuck was even in the adapter. I am only off by 0.05mm between the 3 opening holes. I would like it to be perfectly straight but might be as close as I can get. See if anyone else has suggestion for this.

 

I usually have to adjust the pen a little in the plastic adapter to get it pretty straight & have gone over several of them without problems. I did have one time it did not, but think the pen slipped in the plastic slightly. The laser is a lot more forgiving on slight surface height differences than a CNC or a 3D printer. This will probably work better than the plastic adapter since it less of a fuss to get in there correct the 1st time. This chuck came with 3 different metal adapters & still have the SDS-Plus Shank to try with it. This is 10mm in diameter and over 40mm long. I was thinking the short fat adapter would be better, but the more height with the longer shank might be a better choice. I have already tried the 1/4" Hex Shank but was using a lot thinner plastic adapter. That plastic adapter probably should be fatter also.

The main reason I want this as straight as possible is for toothpicks. Being a lot straighter is critical with those.

 

This one was even more wobbly & plastic adapter seemed straight to me. Guess I will send it back.

[Edit] This 3d printed 3 jaw chuck might be worth playing with. 2.5inch Three Jaw Chuck by mdkendall