Maker Faire 2024 and whatnot!

Written By Cameron Chaney
Exciting Compass Router News: Maker Faire Highlights & New Tech Upgrades!

Maker Faire 2024 and whatnot!

always a great time

Maker Faire Bay Area 2024 is a wrap! Such a great weekend getting to meet all of you talented and creative people. In an unexpected turn of events, the Handheld CNC Router received an Editor’s Choice award!

our router’s spiffy new accessory

If you came by the booth, you may also have noticed a curious little yellow power tool adapter on the front of the device. There wasn’t actually access to power the first day of Maker Faire, but I had luckily packed a power tool adapter and a couple DeWalt 20V batteries. So, for the first time, I tested out cordless mode! And it worked. As the saying goes, necessity is indeed the mother of invention. The Compass Handheld CNC can now go cordless!

Tech Updates

Since the last newsletter, I have been making even more fun upgrades to the machine. First off, the new PCBs that I was so excited about had to be completely redesigned. Turns out SPI communication is really not amazing for long distances, and especially not through cables. After a lot of testing and hitting my head against the wall, though, CAT8 ethernet cables have solved my problem. It definitely seems a little overkill, but I’ll take all the noise shielding I can get when running high RPM power tools. Also, I tried crimping and building all of the tiny 1mm pitch SH connectors by hand and almost had a meltdown when they stopped working. I ended up just soldering the cables to the board for now and poof everything starting working… I’m in communication with a cable manufacturer at the moment to get these connectors made much better and cheaper. Turns out my sanity is worth pennies on the dollar.

On the code side, I’ve made some fun progress with the path planning script. This  takes any gCode file, parses out the XYZ coordinates, and splits up the design into multiple passes to be cut at different orientations. This is essential for cutting more complex designs with only one axis of horizontal movement. Check out this neat visual representation:

I want to minimize the amount of passes and unique orientations the user has to make. The less distance you have to cut, the more accurate and easy the cut will be. I’m implementing an iterative k-means algorithm to minimize the amount of orientations right now. Looking into a way to efficiently optimize for the amount of passes at the same time (work in progress). Let me know if you have any ideas!

Repo Release

Also, for all you who are curious to dig into the weeds of the bountiful handheld CNC router garden, I’m working on organizing the whole GitHub repo for a public release some time next week. I’ll do another newsletter post once that is ready, stay tuned…

Name suggestions…?

Also as you may have noticed (and as many of my friends have so kindly pointed out), our logo may look a littttle like the Compass real estate company’s logo. It’s not a huge deal (they’d surely never sue me), but it has brought the question to mind of whether there could maybe be a better name for our beloved Handheld CNC Router to brandish. If anything really jumps out at you, let me know! Or hey, if you think Compass really rocks, let me know too. Who knows? I’m no name expert.