Can Transformer

I was thinking about the battery connections on my DIY digital watch and how tricky it was for me to create things out of thin metal. Either I cut it by hand, which always results in less than perfect parts, or I spend quite a while setting up my CNC3020 and cutting it on that. That gives better results but can be fiddly.

Then I made the link between the problem and the drinks cans that I melt down for raw material. Drinks cans are made of aluminium or steel and come in a nice uniform shape. So I decided to make a machine that can turn these cans into useful stuff. And the CanTran was born.

It's actually a sort of CNC lathe that is designed to chop up drinks cans, transforming them into useful things. Putting a can in the machine is a simple matter that takes just seconds, using a spring loaded tail holder and a 3D printed part that engages in the can top at the other end.
 
It's got three stepper motors and a Proxxon rotary tool to do the cutting. The controller is a Duet:

 

 
which has a nice web interface and accepts gcode. I've always had a problem finding a tool to generate gcode, so I created a small simple script to convert DXF files to gcode. This isn't too complicated a task as the CanTran has 3 axes, but in reality is a 2D machine. The script converts just lines and arcs from DXF (LibreCAD) into gcode with just 2 Z depths at the moment. Any tool that generates gcode should work.

I use a D bit cutter, the same type I use to mill PCBs.


There's a little tour of the prototype here:

This is the machine cutting some test slots into a can. This is sped up by a factor of 20:

You can make labels with it:

You can cut letters into the can and then illuminate  it:

Or, cut abstract patterns and do the same:

I've put the 3D files here:

https://www.thingiverse.com/thing:3570030

We'll have to see how useful it turns out to be...

And the there was what went wrong.