Milling - Part 2

This tutorial puts forth the experience and current method that I follow for milling PCBs, using Roland MDX20 Milling machine and Fabmodules.

Purpose - Mill a circuit board using Modela

After the background provided in Part-1, here is the process that one has to follow, for milling a ckt. using modela (Roland MDX15/20). Starting with setting up the PC.

Setup and installation of Fab Modules

Fabmodules is the key to start, for setting up a machine. Fab Modules is a software made available by MIT CBA in order to use all the machines available in a typical fablab. The Fab Modules Website describes the details.

First step is to configure the machine. Following has been done and tested on Ubuntu 13.04. However, I know from friends that it is also true for Ubuntu 12.04

As per the Fab Modules Website following list presents the dependencies for Fab Modules.

note* If you find any issues (such as errors or ambiguity) with this write-up, do refer to The Fab Modules Website to verify.

List of dependencies -

1) Python
2) wxPython
3) NumPy
4) GCC and G++
5) libpng
6) GIFLIB
7) Make
8) BASH
9) Okular
10) Boost (headers, thread, and system library)
11) cmake

To have these dependencies installed on the target machine, following command was executed.

sudo apt-get install python python-wxgtk2.8 python-dev python-pip gcc g++ libpng12-dev libgif-dev make bash okular libboost-thread-dev libboost-system-dev cmake

Once the installation is over, one can move on to downloading the Fab Modules.
Following is applicable after previous installations are over and successful.

1) Uncompress (extract) the fab_src.zip file.
2) cd to the extracted folder
3) make fab - this will build the source. This succeeds if the installations made previously were successful.
4) sudo make install - this will make fabmodules available anywhere, on the terminal, like any other terminal command.
5) sudo fab - this will invoke the "fab modules".

To be Continued to third part