Rotary Table Project - Computer Controlled

[Vinny]

I've been a bit lax on updating this. There was more progress so here we go...

The bolts took a few more days to get here (thanks USPS) but they finally did arrive. I got everything cleaned up, assembled and mounted on the table. The 2" round had to have the inside hole opened up just a bit in the 21mm section. It was a bit too tight for my liking so I opened it up to about 22mm.

Here it all is mounted to the table, sans stepper.



The stepper's not yet mounted 'cuze I have it on the bench to 1) change the connector and 2) because it takes up less space than the rotary table while I take care of the software/electronics part.

The software's taking the longest. I'm using a touchscreen LCD and was going to use the Arduino UNO. Two problems arose from that. 1) the library and routines for the menus alone ate up all the UNO's memory and 2) the display used all but ONE pin for I/O.

So I ordered up an Arduino Mega 2560, plugged in the display and it didn't work. So I put an LED on a couple of spare pins (the Mega has plenty) and modified the code in various places to let me know where the program was, if anywhere. Turns out, the only thing that didn't work was the display.

In their ultimate wisdom, the folks that designed the Mega changed the ports around so the pins used to send data to the display were on an empty connector. The guy that wrote the library for the display had already encountered this and there was a work around but not very well documented. Eventually I found it and you can see the result here...



The only drawback to this is the display is dog slow. I have another display coming that's made for the Mega but it's currently sitting in Customs in Chicago. So I wait....

That's it for now.

Edit: The X and Y numbers you see on the screen are just to tell me where, on the screen, it was touched. They're not part of the final work.