Somewhere along the way I decided to build another CNC machine.
This is still work in progress. Of course it had to have DROs.
I plan to have a manual mode on this machine so they should come in handy.

The DRO version used on this machine consists of a separate module for each axis. Each axis uses a 2.2″ OLED 128×32 display and a ATMega328p.

More on the machine later…

Again, the case is made from 1″ solid aluminium plate. one side is removable to access the USB ports for programming. (I got tired of using FTDI adapters and ICP headers.

Each axis has a OLED display board and ATMega328p board.

First – the display board.  The 2.2″ displays come in 4 different colours – Green, Yellow, Blue and white. They are based on the SSD1305 controller chip. The display panel requires 13V and 3.3V for operation. The 13V is provided using a FAN5331 boost regulator and logic level conversion is done by using a 74HC4050. Interface to the display is through SPI.

Previously I had used I2C to communicate with the displays. SPI is a lot faster. The OLED connects with a 0.5mm pitch socket. Difficult to solder 0.5mm with a standard soldering iron. You really need a SMD rework station for this.

The SSD1305 is not supported by the u8glib library at this stage. It is however very similar to the other SSD series chips. You can modify the code to support these quite easily.

More to come.